Upper Deck’s sense of humor rears its ugly head (again!)

First there was Ex-Rod, and now Upper Deck is taking shots at Barry Bonds and Topps in two cards released with 2007 Sweet Spot Baseball. The first is a “Michael Buysner” rookie card, an obvious caricature of Michael Eisner, former Disney CEO and the new owner of Topps.

The back of the card reads:

Upper Deck welcomes this season’s newest rookie, Michael Buysner. After humble origins as a page for a top TV network and stints that included crashing a hamboni machine at an Anaheim hockey arena, he is now the topp dog searching for a way to bring Bazonka Joe into the 21st century. As Big Cheese of his own cardboard kingdom, he is enthusiastically searching for the baseball cards his mom threw away and no one will be surprised to see a new big budget film titled, ‘Bazonka Joe and the Temple of Lost Trading Cards’ in the very near future. Upper Deck wishes Buysner well – in the candy business.

note: Bazooka Joe gum is a Topps Product

Upper Deck has stated the public release of the card was inadvertent and has even issued notices asking customers to return the product. Despite this, the card doesn’t seem to be extremely rare and several have been sold for around $20-$25 on eBay, except for one poor sap who paid $310.

The Barry Bonds asterisk “autograph” card is much rarer, with a few sales already in the $1,200-$1,300 range. It isn’t serial numbered and no information on print runs have been released.

Check out the 756 below the asterisk. This is an obvious shot at Bonds’ breaking of Hank Aaron’s home run record and shows just how Upper Deck feels Bonds should be remembered in the record books. Bonds has an exclusive deal with Topps, which is why there are no real Bonds autographs in Sweet Spot or any other Upper Deck products.

Personally, I find these “mistake” cards really gimmicky. Topps got a ton of press on the mistakenly released Alex Gordon rookie and the altered Derek Jeter card and now it seems like Upper Deck is trying to drum up some publicity in a similar way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 12:17 am and is filed under Misc. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.