Failing Forward

[JollyElm]

Had a strange thought while thinking about some of my all-time favorite cards that I collected as a kid...and that was how God-awful some of the follow-up cards were the next year.
You know how in weight loss ads the gorgeous photos are always featured in the 'after,' not the 'before,' section? Well, it seems Topps preferred to sometimes switch up that narrative.


Case in point: in 1976, my older brothers and I were constantly ripping through the bounty of card packs our parents rewarded us with for being decent human beings.
Besides gobbling up all of the Mets, the prized gem was finding a menacing Johnny Bench 'standing tall in a swirl of dust' card. Man, what a frickin' epic image!!!!

Remember the joy of those days?
I sure do, but what no one seems to recall is having that same obsession the following spring when the new cards started appearing at the stationery store.
Gloriously searching through packs while annealing ourselves (I believe that metaphor works) to the 'foreignness' of the strange, new design, a pack finally yielded a Mr. Bench...and you suddenly found your brain
imitating the screaming guy on the bridge in that Edvard Munch painting as you thought, "What in high f*ck is up with this noggin nonsense??? The card is all head and nothing else. Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

BeforeAfter03Bench.jpg


Luckily, that bitterness was soon assuaged when (with a face full of plank-like gum) a phenomenal Dave Kingman card dropped out of a new pack, making you the envy of your friends.
"My goodness!!! What an awesome shot of 'Kong' (never called him that) launching one at Shea. And the All-Star banner is the icing on the cake!!!! Holy freaking cow!!!!" Life was good again, and that esteemed Kingman always sat atop any pile of cards I assembled.
The cream always rises to the top. (We, of course, had no idea that our tears would be flowing shortly as his first stay in Queens came to an abrupt end, but in hindsight, #26 will ALWAYS be a Met.)


Unfortunately, time is on its Harley forever speeding forward and 1978 arrived much too quickly...and with it came another embarrassing follow-up card. What did they do to Dave Kingman???? They Johnny Benched his head
to ensure it filled up as much space as possible, and the (apparently) drunk Topps Art Department did a kindergarten-level attempt at airbrushing him into the uniform of his fourth different team of 1977. Yuck!!!!!!!

BeforeAfter02Kingman.jpg


And again following a pattern, a beautiful vision in cardboard appeared to soothe our ever-desirous eyes - REG-GIE!!! gracing the surface of what is widely acknowledged to be the greatest card of the (then) modern era, and it left everything behind it in the dust.
The previous World Series had turned legions of Mets fans towards loving (or at least NOT hating) the Yankees. This was anathema to everything we believed in, but it was impossible to not get caught up in the fervor of him finally helping the Yanks become champs again!!!

A beautiful era, that...but here came 1979 with yet another saddening headshot. Did Topps not realize that kids imitate their favorite players' batting styles or glovework, and no 13-year-old cared at all about what a player looked like in close-up???
We wanted cool action shots, not cards that resembled the yearbookish (is that a word?) photos mom got of our siblings from the Sears Portrait Studio.

Growing up is tough, I guess.

BeforeAfter01Reggie.jpg


Anyone else have any other examples of these types of failing forwards??