Canadian Transformers News and Discussion Forum

[The Nemesis]

Really trivial/petty thing to vent about, but here goes:



Back when PotP was released and I was getting back into collecting mainline/CHUG stuff after years of only doing retro releases or collectors-y things like Binaltech or MP, I appreciated the included trading cards. I didn't love the whole "there's like 13 versions of each card!" bit because it seems like the sort of thing that will push OCD collectors to buy up multiples of a figure just to get the card they want or complete the set without having to find a ton of fans who have no need for them. But fine. I don't mind having the weird random assortment of Primes tied to each character in my set.


I also got a small handful of TR/CW figures and found that those cards had tech specs on the back, which I thought was an even cooler use of the card gimmick because it was like G1 boxes without the need to chop the box up and get an irregularly shaped thing that can't be stored easily outside of a scrapbook.


So I was psyched when it was revealed that cards were making their return with Kingdom. The whole "destinies" bit reminded me a of the PotP Primes-centric cards, but fine. Whatever.


Then I get my first Kingdom figure (BW Megs) and get an Ark card in it. "Huh. That's weird." I think to myself. "Why would they give you an Ark card in the box of a different character? But it seems to far out there to be a production snafu."


That's when I read up and discover that the card distribution is 4 subjects per wave, currently 1 destiny per subject with subsequent waves adding more characters and destinies.


So, for now, Wave 1 only gets you The Ark, Optimus, Blackarachnia, and Dinobot with 1 specific destiny each. Wave 2 apparently contains a new G1 Megatron card and new destinies for Dinobot, The Ark, and Optimus, but drops Blackarachnia.


That's dumb. There's now no guarantee you can get all the cards you're looking for across 1 purchase of the bots you want in a wave. So far I have the 4 deluxes and BW Megatron out of Wave 1. All I'm waiting on now are Cyclonus and Optimus Primal to show up in store near me. But of the 5 cards I have, I got 3 Arks, 1 Blackarachnia, and 1 Optimus Prime. No Dinobot. And no guarantee that the 2 remaining wave 1 figures I need will necessarily have that card packed inside.


What's stupider is that the cool holofoil effect on the obscuring part of the card is neat, but you peel that piece off to reveal the destiny and then what? If you wanted to display it like a regular card you would need a blank or duplicate cards to put the sticker onto for safekeeping. I keep all my previous cards in a binder like an index of what figures I have. But I don't have enough extra cards to show the versions where I might keep the sticker still on it or to hold the stickers I've taken off of others.


I realize that the part of the audience that might take the card collecting "seriously" is minimal to the extent that they don't need to alter the line to cater to those people, but this whole thing feels like an interesting idea poorly realized.


It also shows that they're missing the obvious thing to do with the cards that is staring them right in the face:


1) Front of a card is a big, flashy art piece of the character whose toy you bought.


2) back is a tech spec with ratings bars and a character bio/destiny bit, collectors' serial # (like what's on the WFC boxes, where figures are identified as "WFC-X#" where X is the line (S, E, K) and # is the release # in that line (W1 cores were 1-3, deluxes were 4-8, etc) whatever else you want to and can fit into the limited space (the CW/TR tech specs were far bigger than they needed to be to convey the point, so you could shrink them and gain more real-estate to do the other stuff)



3) If you want to do collectable variants or chase stuff, then do random versions of the cards with a different piece of art on the front, different destiny bit on the back (but otherwise pretty much the same) or random foil variants.



there. Now you've made a card that satisfies completionist/rare-hunter collectors, serves a purpose for indexing the line, and isn't gimmicked out to the point that collecting them becomes more trouble than it's worth.