It Was Bound To Happen

In the baseball card world, the news is out that Topps has filed suit against Upper Deck over the design used on this year's O-Pee-Chee cards.

For a brief historical background, starting in 1969, Topps has partnered with the Canadian O-Pee-Chee candy company to produce baseball cards in Canada. The O-Pee-Chee cards used the same design and photography as the American Topps cards with the exception of bilingual (English and French) text. O-Pee-Chee continued producing the Canadian versions of Topps cards through 1992. O-Pee-Chee produced its own original set in 1991 with O-Pee-Chee Premier, as well as the Topps-design regular set. O-Pee-Chee also produced O-Pee-Chee Premier and the Topps-design set in 1992. O-Pee-Chee broke off from Topps in 1993 with its own original set in 1993 and produced its final baseball card set in 1994.

In 2007, Upper Deck bought the rights to the O-Pee-Chee brand name and used the name for their hockey card product. In 2008, Upper Deck included O-Pee-Chee branded cards as inserts in Upper Deck Baseball. The design of the O-Pee-Chee cards mimicked the 1969 design, though not exactly. In 2009, Upper Deck included O-Pee-Chee branded cards that mimic the 1975 design, though still not exactly.

However, later this year Upper Deck has plans to release an O-Pee-Chee product which will include a parallel design of the 1971 set. There have also been images of a 1977 design floating around the internet, as well. Both designs happen to look exactly like the original Topps cards.

Here are some of my thoughts:

* First of all, even if you are trying to inspire the look and feel of the old O-Pee-Chee cards, why in the world would you want to create cards that remind collectors of your biggest competition?

* The new O-Pee-Chee cards are not even bilingual. The only thing that made O-Pee-Chee cards fun back when I was a kid was not because they had the same design as Topps cards... it was because they were bilingual. It made me think it was cool (when I was 10) to have cards that came from another country... even if it was Canada. The fact that the text on the card was in English AND French made O-Pee-Chee cards unique. Even after O-Pee-Chee broke off from Topps, the card were still bilingual.