Ginter wrappers

Allen and Ginter was one of the things that got me back into the hobby. I loved, and still love, the idea of historical figures and weird things mixed in with my baseball cards. And minis. Man, I love minis. Especially parallels.

Some people hate Ginter. Differn't strokes fer differn't folks. I don't really the undercurrent of "I don't like it, so your stupid" going on, but perhaps that is a sign of the times.

The premier edition of A&G is my favorite design, and the first year packaging is pretty good too. The Old Planter is featured prominently, as is some fancy 1920s typeface action across the top.

2007, my second favorite design (probably because it is so damn similar to the 2006) and the packaging has some good Currier and Ives type action going on.

I think 2008 has the best minis, but the cards sort of fall off a bit. Some of the pictures are really weird, like super oversharpened in Photoshop. The packaging has started to look less old-timey to me. So long, Old Planter.

The 2009 packaging has the old time cheese going on, with a mustachioed Minty Beans making his first appearance. 6 cards though, you cheap bastards?

2010 is a very sort of mature design. A bit too much verbage, I feel, and that stupid exclusive trading card logo ruins any old timeyness left. If you slapped a picture of Albert Pujols in Minty Beans place, it would be 2011 Topps, essentially. Sort of.

So in terms of actually telling you what is inside, I would say that 2007 and 2009 do it best. The best overall design, I think, is probably 2009. 2010 is the sell out design, a bit slicked up for a fringey, but popular, product. Kind of like the design of the cards, come to think of it.

Since we have seen almost every aspect of 2011 Ginter months and months before it will appear on the shelves, the last thing we will see are the wrappers.

No one cares, but I always find the packaging and presentation of a product to be interesting.