2011 Topps Updates Baseball should be on the shelves at your LCS and/or mass-market retail outlet by now, and with it are the inevitable gimmicks. I mean, this is Topps. Surely they won't allow the third series of their flagship brand be released without doing
something stupid, right?
So what's it going to be for this year's Update?
Is it going to be something like a squirrel, Joba Chamberlain listed "accidentally" as a Houston Astro, or a fake rookie card of Jacoby Ellsbury like they did in 2007?
How about purposely printing Evan Longoria, Jay Bruce, and Kosuke Fukudome's cards upside-down, like they did in 2008?
Stephen Strasburg hit with a shaving cream pie? Man, that's so 2010.
This year's gimmick is...
Nothing.
Yes, there are another 25 unannounced "Legend Variations." But other than that, there are no gimmicks in
2011 Topps Updates Baseball. At least none that have surfaced on eBay.
They even got rid of the Twinks!
Maybe the Topps product development team is finally getting it. Maybe they realize that their flagship brand needs no artificial inducement, gimmick, or other chicanery for collectors to buy it, and that
Topps Updates is good enough to sell on its own.
If so, that would truly be "game changing."