Friday, March 10, 2023
Rachel Stuhlmann
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
On The YouTubes
Recently I was contacted by a gentleman named Myles who had an interest in my cards. It's always flattering to get messages that are complimentary about the cards I've made. It's comforting to know that there's a good number of junk era wax kids out there like myself pretending to be adults.
During our email exchange Myles floated the idea of me opening up some card packs for his YouTube channel. I've been approached in the past about guest interviews and things like that. Typically, I shy away from that type of thing. I'm pretty introverted, so I enjoy the anonymity of my cards. My cards allow me to contribute to the nostalgic/artistic community without really promoting myself. It's about the love of trading card and pop culture nostalgia. I don't feel an urge to put myself out there as 'the guy behind the cards'. But, with all that being said, I did figure I could have fun opening a pack of cards without it feeling like a "look at me" type of thing.
Myles actually sent me a few packs and I started to open them for a longer video but the problem with that is that I ran out of space on my phone. You see, I horde stupid memes so I always have the right joke as a reply to a conversation and custom card screen capture inspiration. So, I had to make a shorter video as opposed to actually cleaning up my camera roll -- please don't talk to me about cloud storage so I may stay blissfully ignorant.
I was saving the Napoleon pack for last as it was the most intriguing to me. I didn't even know these were a thing. For a long time I've had an idea for a Napoleon Dynamite set. That idea isn't totally scrapped because it would be a lot different presentation than these cards. I love that movie. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen it, but I'm confident I can annoy you by going line-by-line with the dialogue. Plus, the Uncle Rico cards I made were really well received, so that's a very encouraging factor to still keep that idea around.
As far as the video I think Myles did a great job. I didn't think pack opening could be entertaining, but I have to admit I was eager to see which cards were next while remembering 11 year old me busting 1991 Topps. I wouldn't mind doing something like that myself, but I have ZERO knowledge on video editing and, honestly, it overwhelms me to think about setting out to learn it because the last thing I need is a new obsession.
As an added bonus my 8 year old son now thinks I'm some sort pseudo celebrity because I'm on YouTube. Kids these days place a lot of importance on that. YouTube to him would've been like me at his age having an '86 Topps Bo Jackson rookie, so I get it.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Paige Spiranac Card Dump
![]() |
Inspired by: 1990 & 1992 UD baseball |
![]() |
Inspired by 1993-94 UD basketball / 1989-90 NBA Hoops |
![]() |
Inspired by 1991 UD football / 1988 Topps football |
![]() |
Inspired by: 1992-93 McDonald's UD basketball / 1991 UD football |
![]() |
Inspired by: 1985 Topps First Blood Part II / 1986 Topps baseball |
Thursday, November 3, 2022
Sig. Showcase: Rose Namajunas
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Frankenhooker
This 50 card set is the custom set I referenced as a "passion project" back in this post. I began tinkering on this set at the end of June. A combination of things; it being a 50 card set and a couple of printing setbacks, stretched this one out for months. There was no rush because I make these for fun. I didn't give myself a deadline, so the proximity to Halloween is a ghoulish coincidence.
At 50 cards (52 if you count the promo card and special "Dream Ghoul" card) this is the largest card set I've done. I learned a lot, most specifically that I'll never do a set this large again. It's just too much for my one-man Mickey Mouse operation.
This set came to be thanks to my son and his repeated viewings of the Blu-ray, which eventually I had to hide. I can't recall if I've mentioned it on other blog posts -probably not, I try to keep it about the cards- but, my son is on the spectrum. He's non-verbal, so movies are a form of communication and bonding for he and I. The only issue is that when he likes a movie he can't just watch it once, or even two or three times. It's back-to-back-to-back for days or weeks or sometimes months. He's done the same thing with Cliff Hanger, Total Recall, The Running Man, Return of the Living Dead Part 3, Suspiria, among other movies. He gravitates towards the intense action scenes.
I decided to make a set from Frankenhooker because the more times I watched this quirky movie, the more I fell in love with it. I've always been fond of the film, but I really started to deeply appreciate the performances, the aesthetic and story. It's crazy to me that the idea for the movie was originally an on-the-spot ad lib by director Frank Henenlotter after another of his more thought-out movie concepts was shot down by his would-be producer.
Another pseudo-factor in liking Frankenhooker is that it's an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It seems everyone has their favorite Marvel and DC characters (Incredible Hulk and Plastic-Man, respectively) but I'd also be interested to know other's favorite Universal Monster character. Mine has always been Frankenstein.
Horror movies (or horror comedies in this movie's case) are my favorite to make sets from. I just really like the special effects visuals. Monsters are just fun to create a vintage inspired custom cards out of. That's also how this set ended up being 50 cards. By the 87th -give or take- viewing I loved so much about the movie that I wanted to include as much of it as I possibly could. I wanted the card set to follow the sequence of the movie and present nicely that way in a binder.
I considered a few different card sets looks from 1990, but I felt that a template inspired by the 1990 Topps baseball design would work out best to give these cards a look unique to the movie but still recognizable as a classic Topps design. Plus, the '90 Topps frames was purple after all... "I'm looking for a tall purple girl. She's got a black forearm and fresh stitches". I also wanted a design that would lend well to using captions as is the case with non-sports card sets. That might have been my favorite part, coming up with the double entendre puns.
The same approach was taken for the card backs. I wanted them to resemble the '90 Topps with some Frankenhooker flair. I watched the movie scene-by-scene pausing to get exact quotes for use on the card backs. There's a few scenes that did not have dialog so those 4 (I believe) cards have movie trivia questions on them. I also wanted to give each card a fun fact because I personally place great importance on that type of shit of zero consequence, rather than figure out how things like stocks or mortgages work. It's not enough to like a movie. I need to be able to annoy others with "did you know?" type information that they couldn't really care less about.
![]() |
Pretzels GOOOD |
The set ended up being 48 cards, which with being that close to 50 didn't sit quite right with me. So, I made two checklists which is ironic because I'm not planning on parting specific cards from the rest, so if you have the checklists, you have the rest of the set. But, it gave me an excuse to use a couple cool behind-the-scenes shots that otherwise didn't have sequential story context. Which begs the question of why didn't I just just cap the set with a couple of behind-the-scenes cards instead of checklists? That is a pretty good question actually. I don't know. It's just what I did. Consider it just a homage to set collecting where the checklist let you know which cards you needed to complete a set, like back in 1990.
The Dream "Ghoul" card is a play on the Dream Girl cards I do, which of course are a play on the Dream Team subset from the 1991 Score baseball set. In the time it has taken to produce this set I've plugged upwards of 20 or more images into the Dream Girl template. Patty Mullen was such a babe and a brilliant choice to play Elizabeth as she had a great look (1988 Penthouse Pet of the Year) and had the comedic chops to soften a character that is essentially a prostitute monstrosity.
I also made a promo card for the hell of it. In the early '90s I remember promo cards really coming into vouge, especially with non-sport card sets. I totally marked out to those oddball type of cards. They were the epitome of rare and special to me. You couldn't get them in packs. Sometimes they were dealer exclusives or sometimes they'd be a magazine premium. Either way, I was in awe of them, so I thought it'd be cool to recreate that with this set.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Pizza The Hut And Vinnie
I was cleaning up my camera roll so my phone has enough storage to do an update and came across this card I made awhile back but never shared for some reason.
This of course is Pizza the Hut and Vinnie from 1987's Spaceballs. Being that Spaceballs is a Star Wars spoof I did this faux sticker in the style of the stickers from Topps' 1980 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back -- specifically the Boba Fett / Storm Trooper sticker.