Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Bad Ideas

OK, I'm the 99 Cent store on Monday (everyone does that on their first day of Spring Break, right?) and as soon as I walk in I see a display of these:


Yup, Root Beer flavored Pop Tarts. C'mon man! I'm guessing that these didn't sell well in the regular groceries since there were so many 99 cent boxes available Monday. I'm thinking that two folks at Kellogg's lost their jobs over this....the person in R&D who dreamed them up and the dumbass in Battle Creek who signed off on them. 

Late last year I was in there and they had Maple Bacon flavor. I can almost understand Maple Bacon Pop Tarts, but Root Beer? Nope. That was a bad idea.

A little later I saw this display:


Look, I'm not a wine snob. I enjoy it at Italian restaurants but as a regular thing, I'll pass. But even I know that buying wine at the 99 Cent Store is probably undoubtedly a bad idea. Yes, the bottles were mostly $2.99 and $3.99 but still. 

Sidebar: My wife and I attended a friend's wine/dinner party a few weekends back. Everyone was supposed to bring a bottle of wine and tell the rest of the guests the story behind it. I kid you not. We brought a bottle of the stuff we served at my son and daughter-in-laws' rehearsal dinner last spring. Everyone seemed to like it. It wasn't from a bag or a box, It was like $17 a bottle. And that was the story......"We served this at our son and daughter-in-laws' rehearsal dinner last spring. The End". Other folks' stories mostly involved being served this particular wine at a Chef's Table experience in France, being given a bottle by the Prime Minister of Bolivia, discovering a wine on a bicycle tour of Napa Valley vineyards, and so on and so forth. To paraphrase the immortal George Gobel...that party was a tuxedo and my wife and I were a pair of brown shoes. /Sidebar

All that is a long way around to the subject of this post....the bad idea I had later on Monday....


Heritage isn't the bad idea...me buying it is. Hey, I like the cards just fine. I got a nice autograph out of my first purchase but I have no need to buy a hanger box of something I'm not going to collect. But like the guy in Battle Creek who knew in his heart that Root Beer Pop Tarts was a stupid concept I went ahead with buying that box.

I actually did OK with the 20 cards I got. First of all I had no dupes. That's unusual for me. Normally I buy a pack of something and a month later buy another one and half the cards are dupes.

Second of all I got this card:

It was the first one in the cello I think. And it instantly made me think of this card:


Well done Topps! A Heritage that mimics the original set. I suspect a lot of the '17 Heritage are supposed to. I like when it's pretty obvious.

I also got this which is supposed to be some kind of disk.But it's square which sort of ruins the effect. It would make a cool button and I may use the button maker at work to try it. Maybe not.
.

I don't know why my scanner makes these game cards square. And cuts off the top. I tried a couple of times with the same result.


Most shocking of all was the fact that I got an Oriole!!! My only out-of-a-pack Oriole for 2017. Mike Bourn is out awhile with a broken finger but he's an Oriole! Plus he's a Houston Cougar. Doubly nice.


I'm showing Buster Posey just to see if Night Owl reads this far.


And I'm showing Hernan Perez because the Photoshop'd pic with him in front of that sky makes him appear to be in one of those '3-D Jesus' pictures my wife's grandmother had on her wall in San Antonio.


Yea, this one...


And finally I'm showing the Sean Doolittle card because it's a mini. I didn't know they were doing minis. Chris Carter is there for perspective. And because if he swings he's not likely to hit anything.




12 comments:

  1. 1. Yes, I read that far. Glad YOU pulled it.

    2. The photoshopped sky backgrounds are so strange. Why? Why? Why, why, why?

    3. What planet were those wine people from? Wine stories? What?

    4. I'd eat root beer Pop Tarts before maple bacon Pop Tarts.

    5. I refuse to buy food from the dollar store. It's probably fine, but I have to draw the line somewhere. At least I'm probably drawing it lower than those wine people.

    6. What's spring break?

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    Replies
    1. 1) LOL...don't worry I won't send it to you
      2) agreed
      3) Planet Pretentious (that's probably unfair, they were very nice otherwise)
      4) Hard pass on both for me
      5) also agreed. I don't trust companies that try to mimic the labels of major brands to sell theirs. It's remarkably like going down aisle after aisle of Wacky Packs come to life
      6) Whatever it is, it's almost gone

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  2. Congratulations on finally pulling an Oriole... I know that's a milestone in your collecting history. :-)

    The thing with the sky background is that it would be so easy to fix. Send some intern to a spring training facility or minor league ballpark... Hell, even a high school field... and just have them stand at field level and take a series of pictures of the stands, the outfield wall, etc. Voila, instant multipurpose generic background. Is that so hard?

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    Replies
    1. If I didn't know better I'd swear there was a real conspiracy afoot

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  3. I saw those Pop Tarts at my local Dollar Store too. I like me some A&W root beer just fine, but I know for a fact those things will taste like ass. But I would have explored some cheap wine. The Aldis by us carry wine and some of it is rather good.

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    Replies
    1. I acted all snobbish but I probably couldn't tell the difference between a $3 and a $50 bottle of wine

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  4. I stopped getting suckered into buying a hanger of something I don't collect, until the next time I buy a hanger of something that I don't collect.

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    1. word But I did actually go into a Target yesterday and completely bypass the card aisle

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  5. Back when I was a bachelor in San Diego, I did a pretty good portion of my grocery shopping at the 99 Cent Store, occasionally taking a chance on weird varieties. Sometimes they'd be surprisingly good.. other times not. I remember their big slogan was "nothing over 99 cents!" so that's funny (sad) to hear they now have stuff over that magic price. And yeah, I totally would have slummed it with some discount wine. The chain doesn't seem to exist up here in the pacific northwest, instead we get the similar Dollar Tree.

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    Replies
    1. Dollar Tree at least has cards...crummy random repacks but they are good for a rip session once a year or so

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  6. Nope, wasn't tempted in the least. But then again I'm not a huge fan of Pop Tarts anyway. I can't remember the last time I had one.

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  7. The Pop Tart flavors they come up with now are kinda insane. Give me frosted strawberry or cherry any day of the week. Tried grape once... and that was pretty good too. I'd probably try maple bacon if someone else bought a box... but I wouldn't even waste my calories on root beer.

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