Michael Scott Hockey Card

The Office is one of those gifts that keep on giving as far as me making some really fun custom cards.  This card is based on a Season 2 episode entitled "Michael's Birthday".  Kevin is waiting to hear back as to whether or not he has skin cancer which draws concern from his co-workers, much to the chagrin of the attention Michael feels should be paid to his birthday.  To shift the spotlight back on himself errr distract everyone from Kevin's impending prognosis Michael takes his crew to an ice skating rink for a skate party.  It should go without saying -because it's an episode of The Office- but it's a hilarious episode.

What's evidenced in the ice rink scene is that Steve Carell, in full hockey gear, is a very adept ice skater.  Growing up Steve was goalie and had aspirations at one time of a career in hockey, he even has an Elite Prospects page.  In the end Steve shifted his love of hockey over to a hobby to focus on a different career path.

Growing up I was not a big hockey fan because I didn't play hockey.  I've actually only ice skated once in my life.  Hockey is an expensive sport to get into and my family was a $5 Hot 'n' Ready family.  But I did collect hockey cards because... well ... they were cards.  The Red Wings were not dominant until I was in high school but it was still exciting to pull a Bob Probert, Sergei Federov or Stevie Y from a pack.

This card is done in the style of the 1990-91 ProSet hockey cards.  I remember buying a good number of packs of these at my local party store.  These were the first hockey cards from ProSet I believe.  ProSet was fun to collect because they were on trend with what was the newer look in sports cards back then.  They offered an alternative to Topps' traditional look.   White stock instead of cardboard, brighter colors and photography, less framed in and more full-bleed shinier photography and full color card backs, plastic packs as opposed to wax ... all things that could probably be credited to Upper Deck's influence on trading card aesthetics coming out of the 1980s and moving into the '90s. 

This is the second time I've used this particular template.  The first time was 4 years ago with this Sea Bass card.  My cards have evolved a lot since then.  The biggest difference is that back in 2018 I was only doing card fronts.  My thinking was that's what really counts anyways, but I've come to realize how much better a complete card presents.  It takes twice the time to finish a card but it's so worth it in the end.  Obviously still a custom, but less of a custom, if that makes sense.

Three For The Office

I was a little bummed that I couldn't have added Stanley "Secret Weapon" Hudson to my "Scanton Hoops" mini-set.  The orientation of the image just wouldn't work with the 1980-81 Topps basketball layout.  I still wanted to make a card for Stanley so I decided to put it into a 1989-90 Fleer basketball inspired template.  I chose that particular  basketball design because I liked the idea of putting "Secret Weapon" under the border curl.

While I was making this card a couple other fun trading card ideas for The Office came to mind.  I'm surprised it took me this long to make a "Prison Mike" card.  That one skit is probably my favorite of the entire series.  I've certainly watched those four-and-a-half minutes more than any other scene. For this card I went to maybe my favorite template to use, the 1984 Topps baseball inspired design.  I love the vertical lettering and the inset head shot in the corner.  Classic stuff.  Making this card, for whatever reason, also gave me an inspiration to make an Andy Bernard card.  He went to Cornell ya know, ever heard of it?  I chose again to use the same 1984 design as with the "Prison Mike" card.

Lazy Scranton

I wanted to do another card from The Office so I started thinking about different episodes and what ridiculous Michael Scott exploit would make for some tasty Phantom Cardboard.

There's an episode entitled "The Merger" where the Stamford Dunder Mifflin branch is merging with the Scranton office.  Michael and Dwight make an orientation rap video for the benefit of the  Stamford transfers.  The video parodies SNL's "Lazy Sunday" skit.

This makes a great addition to the growing 1991 Yo! MTV Raps set.

Scranton Hoops

The episode entitled "Basketball" (Season 1, episode 5) was the first episode of The Office that I ever saw.  Not a bad introduction to a series, eh?  It remains one of my three favorite episodes of The Office, the others being "Christmas Party" and "The Convict" for anyone wondering.  No need to wax poetic about how genius the show is so I'll get right into the cards.

The Office of course is a newer show and the episode for which these two cards are based on first aired in 2005, not all that vintage.  That being the case it was a matter of using what I would deem to be the funnest basketball template to put the cards into.  I briefly considered creating a design inspired by the 1990-91 Fleer basketball cards.  I've not used that base card but I did use the Rookie Sensations insert set for this card.  But, I was thinking I wanted to do a team card for Sales and Warehouse instead of individual cards which brought me to the iconic 1980-81 Topps basketball inspired design.  I had a feeling that they would be pretty sweet done in that style.

Since it was a pick-up game I wasn't to concerned with positions but I did have a little fun with the Michael and Dwight card.  If you're not familiar with the episode Dwight asks Michael if he can team captain and Michael shoots him down saying that he's the team captain.  Dwight them tries for Michael's permission to be team manager, Michael shoots him down again claiming the manager role as well.  So, Dwight tries again, this time for assistant team manager and Michael finally acquiesces to assistant "to the" team manager in keeping with the show's running Assistant to the Regional Manager joke.