The Bonus Cards

So the first half of 2019 has come and gone. It all happened so fast right? A lot happened in that time but one of the more notable things I've noticed is that there were an abnormally large number of cards distributed outside of the usual pack/box/case medium. Not just baseball cards mind you, but a large variety of trading cards.

Today I thought I'd go through the special bonuses that I've encountered. Conveniently enough they're all different entities/genres entirely.

Pokemon

Leading off will be the first of these that I picked up. A few months ago you could get packs of Pokemon cards with specially marked boxes of General Mills cereals. A sequel of sorts to how you could get them with Fruit Roll Ups in 2018.

There were two types of packs. One type was pretty much standard, but the other one had an additional card in the checklist, a foil Bulbasaur. For the record my starter Pokemon was always Bulbasaur. I loved green things as a child and eventually I became a grass/psychic-type based trainer.
Unfortunately I didn't pull a Bulbasaur.

Instead I pulled two Cubones. I like Cubone but Pokemon needs to stop depicting it being so sad. I get it. It's one of the few Pokemon in the game that shows that it's existence signifies that its mother is dead. I don't need to be reminded of how it's lonely and sad all the time.

I did like how I pulled a Cubone and Kangaskhan in the same pack though. Because there used to be this theory when I was a kid that Cubone's dead mother is really Kangaskhan. Since they look so similar and Kangaskhan was the only mother Pokemon in the game at the time. I don't really believe it but it's a fun theory to reminisce on.

Basketball

Michael Jordan and Hanes team up for a set of trading cards using screenshots from commercials MJ did before his services became ungodly expensive.

The gimmick here being that you could get a pack of MJ-only basketball cards if you purchased specially marked Hanes brand underwear or T-shirts. Who knows, you might even pull an autograph of his?

Unfortunately I didn't pull the autograph. But instead I got the first five MJ cards I've ever owned. Including two parallels.

I needed to buy some underwear (boxers) anyway so this was a fun little addition to my purchase.

That said, I firmly think LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan.

Baseball

Topps and Utz team up to give collectors more diabetes and cards within specially marked packages of Utz brand potato chips.

I didn't buy any because instead of spending $5+ on these generic chips at Stop & Shop I opted for discounted $1.88 Cool Ranch Doritos bags from Walgreens (it gave me a headache but it tasted good). But thanks to Once A Cub, I got my hands on two Yankees cards from the set.

At the time this was my first Jonathan "Johnny Lasagna" Loaisiga card, and I also got former-staff ace Luis Severino. With this kind of help from my friends, I can experience the joy of food-issues without having to eat the drivel we tolerate as "food" because it's cheap.

Soccer

Here's a really fun one. I was walking through Target and I noticed this.

What? Topps? MLS? Cutout cards? Am I in a bad Twilight Zone episode?!

Nope. Turns out that MLS and Post Cereal teamed up and gave the world four special Topps brand cutout cards featuring MLS players.

I thought this was cool. As a guy who still eats sugary kids cereals well into his 20's, I gladly bought some.

This gave me my first ever MLS cards, and one of a NYFC player at that. Woof!

I feel like this made the collecting experience richer for me because these are the first cards I've gotten that I had to physically cut out (excluding my customs). Luckily my dad had this guillotine paper trimmer, making it so I wouldn't have awkward lines caused by scissors.

It's been an interesting year so far for bonus cards. I started the year with potato chips that came with a Yu-Gi-Oh! card, now I'm finding that that wasn't just an anomaly. Neat!

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).