I'll be taking a look at the backs of the Heritage cards over the next couple of days. Today I'll be looking at the cartoons.
Topps has been doing this for a while. If the backs of the original set has cartoons, Heritage uses the same cartoons and rewrites them for the modern player. Topps also uses the same cartoon on multiple cards.
It's too bad that Topps goes the cheap route with this. You'd think they'd be able to have someone use all the computer technology to be able to whip up a new cartoon for each of the Heritage cards. Nope. Cost too much or just too lazy.
The 1974 set has cartoons and so we get to see the 1974 cartoons reused in 2023. There are cards for 22 Cubs players in the set. Only 15 different cartoons are used on the 22 cards, meaning there is lots of duplication. In fact, there are three instances where the same drawing was used for three Cubs players. Boo!
Below I have all of the original Topps cartoons paired up with their Heritage partners.
One thing that seems noticeable players from 1974 had better handwriting, than todays players.
ReplyDeleteThe cartoons are unfortunate but par for the course for Heritage the last few years, strictly on-field facts. The Cubs didn't even get the guitar-playing guy, at least those are slightly interesting.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't mind the re-using of the cartoons so much if they'd not keep re-using the same ones over and over, and when they're appropriate. The Mancini, the Kilian, and the Wisdom, for example, work fine. But when you're using a cartoon of a guy bunting to illustrate someone's pitching success, you just don't care. Jeez, Topps, hire one frickin' cartoonist for a couple days to bang out a few new ones.
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