30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Nifty 90's Nostalgia #2: Action Packed

Some of you may be experiencing "deja vu"... since my buddy Charles just covered this over at Hoopography. I just figured, I'd piggyback off of his post and share some of my favorites.

From what I remember... Action Packed first released promos in the late 80's. I believe the first one produced were of baseball players. Later the company came out with football, basketball, hockey, racing promos too. They even produced a promo card of Sugar Ray Leonard... but I'm not going to get into that, because I don't own any of those. Some of them pass the century mark... which is too rich for my blood.

Nope... I'm sticking to the cheap, mass produced stuff. Early 90's football.

If you've never owned any of these cards... I encourage you to go out and buy a few packs. They shouldn't be too expensive since it's from the junk wax era. Anyways... the cool thing about these cards are that they're embossed, so they jump out of the card. My scanner doesn't do the cards justice, so here's a photo that shows of the card's texture:


Well... that's it. That's what made Action Packed different. Topps had put out something previously... called Topps 3D, but they were a little bigger than standard sized cards. Sorry... getting off track... here's my early 90's Action Packed collection highlights:

1990 Action Packed



1990 Action Packed Rookies



1990 Action Packed All-Madden



1991 Action Packed



1991 Action Packed Rookies



1991 Action Packed All-Madden


Action Packed stuck around for several more years... but 1991 was the last product I busted boxes of. Although... I did find this little gem inside of my promos collection:


It's a 1997 Action Packed promo card of Jerry Rice. The insert set was called Studs... and the cards inserted into packs actually featured a real diamond. Unfortunately... the little rock attached to Jerry's ear on my card is fake. I must admit... it's a pretty unique concept though.

I did some research... and from what I can tell... Action Packed went on hiatus after the 1997 season. They didn't resurface until 2002. That year, they were put into packs as inserts in Leaf Rookies & Stars. I'm old school though. Give me some early 90's Action Packed and I'm happy.

What about you? Did you guys ever bust this stuff?

Well... have a good evening everyone. Only three more days until my two week vacation. Sayonara.

4 comments:

Charles @ Hoopography said...

I def like these cards. They just look cool and great idea with the pic to show off the raised images on these cards.

SpastikMooss said...

I have 2 Action Packed NFL cards and a whole set (almost) of WWF cards. So fun.

AdamE said...

I bought a bunch of it through the 90's. I liked it then. Now it just sits in a box and I wish I could get rid of it.

Fuji said...

charles - thanks charles... it's tough to see the texture from just the scans

spastikmooss - I noticed they had WWF card... I totally want some of those

adame - if you're looking to get rid of them, just ship them to me.. i'll take them off your hands ;-) jk... yeah, i hear ya. most people consider them junk. they're pretty much worthless to most, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.