To the Moon and back

Oh, hi there. It's nice to be back. I sure was gone a looooong time, huh? Well, the vacation was had and spring has sprung. I figured it was time to poke my head out and say 'hello.' Opening Day is a few short days away so let's get this thing back on the rails.

In thinking for another insert idea for Clubhouse, I figured I'd go with something simple like 'guys who hit a bunch of homeruns.' That seemed easy enough. But then came the hard part of coming up with a name & concept. I passed over stuff like 'Home Run Kings' since they have been in recent products and thought that the Clubhouse brand could use something a little more fun. So I started thinking of different slang terms for homers. Unfortunately, most were either semi-perverted (dingers, dongs, goin' deep) or had also been used elsewhere (going yard, touch'em all.) So I was back at square one.

But during my research, I kept coming back to the term 'moonshot,' thinking it really lends itself to something fun and interesting design-wise. Even though Ultra ran an insert in 2003 with the same basic premise, I figured I could update and improve upon it.

Looking at these cards, the first thing that pops out is either the UGE moon image or the absence of edges on the top. Yep, these are my first die-cuts. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that die-cuts can be really cool but I always prefer the ones with at least 2 true corners. They need to be able to sit level in a sleeve or toploader, which usually means the bottom corners. I have a feeling that if some other card companies tried to die-cut this, they'd jump for the completely round die-cut and obliviously annoy collectors.

With the full moon image taking up a lot of real estate, it makes a nice backdrop to the player images. The photos here are of the batters directly following their 'moonshot' swings. With the Howard and Reynolds cards, they're stoicly staring down their long balls (or fly outs) while Teixeira is starting his trot towards first. The dark blue color complements the gold moon while adding a little bit of subtlety you wouldn't get from black. The names are below in a 'space' font to extend the lunar motif going on here.

On the back side, the symmetry of the die-cut really helps keep things clean. Instead of the moon, we get a circular close-up of the players, which fades out towards the bottom to make room for the text. I also found space for the team logos somewhere within the photo frame (these all happen to be in about the same spot but that was just a happy accident with these particular photos.) The checklist totals 20 though I didn't really put it together completely. I thought it would be nice to include some guys like Reynolds here who have better numbers in the HR category while not really nearing the leaderboards elsewhere. Adam Dunn would be another candidate but would probably need to get off to a good start in 2012 to justify a spot here. Anyway, 17 of the 20 spots are still open.

Alright, thanks for checking in with me again after the long lay off. I promise the posts will keep coming semi-regularly like they used to. See ya soon!