A Package of Whack

Even though my first exposure to Topps Wacky Packages came just a couple months ago, this product first hit the market way back in 1967. In case you are unfamiliar, they are parody cards in sticker format, and they poke quite a bit of fun at the baseball world. Best I can describe it is if Mad Magazine got into the card business. Topps (wisely) inserted a few of them in 2016 Baseball packs, which is how I finally learned of their existence. I got a couple from Ain't Nobody Got Time for Cardboard, but earlier this month, my girlfriend stopped by Target and bought two packs for me.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #16 Cubs Honey

This set is filled to the brim with puns, and certainly puts a smile on my face. This squeeze bottle of honey with a Cubs logo (get it?) is great for helping "get your pitchers out of sticky situations". While this is of course a parody, it has more than a grain of truth to it, as pitchers have used all sorts of foreign substances to help get a better grip on the ball for nearly as long as baseball has been a sport. Sunscreen is a favorite these days, especially since it has legitimate uses on the field, unlike, say, a squeeze bear of honey.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #7 Blue Jays Bird Bath Sports Drink

If you want to achieve "Beak" Performance, be sure to try out this flavor of Gatorade. Yes, we all know that's supposed to be a Gatorade bottle. I'm pretty good with logos and trademarks. I can almost always discern the make and model of a car, or even something like a computer monitor, when they blur out or cover up the logos on various reality TV shows. Personally, I've never had blue Gatorade (or Gatorade at all, for that matter), but we sold a lot of it at the Conoco station where I worked when I was 16.

Of course, I never saw a bottle with an actual bird inside.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #10 Braves Cutlery Set

It's a bit of a crude method of food preparation, but if you ever need to chop a baseball in half or "carve up the competition", why use a cleaver when you can instead use an official Braves tomahawk? Millions of Braves fans have the motion down perfectly, though I can't say whether the annoying chant would improve your results.

This reminds me a bit of the Samurai Delicatessen, one of the John Belushi's great skits from the early days of Saturday Night Live.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #20 Dodgers Sushi

Speaking of Japanese cuisine, what better than a little 9-piece serving of sushi? Because that's how the Dodgers "California Roll".

Yeah, some of these puns are better than others.

I'm not sure if I'd go for ballpark sushi, but getting little baseball bats as chopsticks might seal the deal. I'd just have to forgo a beer or two, because when a sixty-cent hot dog goes for six bucks, I can easily see ballpark prices for something like this being well into the $20 range.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #22 Giants Magic Beans

Using honey is obviously breaking the rules, but climbing a sturdy plant to field a ball is much more vague. The rules say that a fielder must have "one or both feet on or over the playing surface" to legally make a catch, but if these magic beans grow quickly enough and can germinate in the outfield grass, then such a catch may not truly be illegal. After all, they're magic! And according to the fairy tale, there are real giants at the top of that beanstalk!

There's a bit of truth to this one too, as groundskeepers once discovered hundreds of marijuana plants growing in the outfield at Anaheim Stadium following a concert by The Who in 1976. Apparently, fans with on-field seating scattered seeds all over the outfield, and no one noticed anything was amiss until just before the season began.

Thanks, Reddit!

2016 Wacky Packages MLB Red Seam #83 Nacho High Cheese

I personally prefer the term "chin music" for a high and tight fastball, or simply "high heat", but apparently "High Cheese" also describes such a pitch. I'd never heard that phrase before, but if it can give us another food pun, then I have no problem with it.

These Red Seam parallels don't seem to be on the sell sheet or checklist, but here they are nonetheless. The base cards just have a white background, but we can always count on Topps to make a bunch of parallels, even ones that aren't advertised.

Longtime fans of David Letterman may vaguely remember a baseball joke they used to do many years ago called "Ball, Get Out Of My Nachos!" Biff Henderson, the stage assistant they brought on the air once in a while, was shown sitting in a crowd eating nachos, when a baseball suddenly landed on his plate. Rather than keep the souvenir, he'd shout, "Ball, get out of my nachos!" and fling the ball back on the field.

Can you tell I'm a fan of late-night comedy shows?

Nachos also happen to be my girlfriend's favorite ballpark snack, so the fact that this card dropped out of a pack she bought me is quite appropriate. And the use of high cheese one card after a marijuana reference was a complete accident. Though in Colorado, you never know. Next time you visit friends in this state, double check with the host before you munch on a brownie.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB Red Seam #75 Charlotte Stone Crabs Cakes

A few minor league teams made it into this set, including the Charlotte Stone Crabs and Asheville Tourists, though the Yard Goats were left out. The Stone Crabs are an affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, so there is definitely some sea creature lineage in that organization. I'd probably avoid cellophane-wrapped crab cakes even more so than ballpark sushi, although these seem to be a pair of actual crabs stuffed inside the package, with a little Hostess Cupcakes icing on top.

Rather unappealing to my palate, but the "Pinch Hitters" pun might be the best in the whole pack.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #76 Toledo Mud Hens Hen Sanitizer

Surely it hasn't escaped your notice that everything I've shown so far is in some way related to food. That's true for most of the set overall, and might have continued on for the whole post if not for this one. The Toledo Mud Hens, the AAA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, happened to be my team name for my second (and final) year of little league. If I stayed in one more season I'd have been old enough to get on a team with a Major League name, but even in my little league days, I didn't make it out of the minors.

Interestingly, I finally decided to look up what a mud hen is, and it turns out it's a duck-like bird called a Coot. And with this handy hen sanitizer, the birds can be cleaned up regularly, although a true pitcher would look at this and just see another foreign substance to experiment with.

2016 Wacky Packages MLB #87 Salty Pretzel

This last one was my favorite, and yes, it's food-themed. A soft pretzel with a bit of mustard sauce is an excellent snack (my mouth is watering as I write this), and another great option for ballpark food. This "salty" pretzel looks to be quite unhappy, with angry eyes and everything. He even has "a chip of salt on his shoulder".

I'm no expert in slang, but I've heard "salty" quite frequently in the past year or so to describe someone who is upset or agitated. Really, go look at Twitter. I'd say it's 50/50 whether someone is describing actual food with it. And for Topps to tie both meanings together shows a fair bit of genius, I'd say.

As an aside, if you enjoy salted pretzels, or salty snacks in general, you ought to go find a salt bagel. They can be a bit tough to come by, and are typically firmer than soft pretzels, but are well worth trying. It's like the salt equivalent of sugar crystals on a cookie.

Thanks for reading! Now I need to go find something to eat.