Fire... Good?

Yes, yes. Fire good. 

I'm not really sure that I can put my finger on what Topps Fire did in the way of improvements over previous seasons, but I don't hate this year's set from what I've seen. I actually kind of like it. The Target-exclusive had been on the shelves at the local Fred Meyer (yeah... I don't even ask) for weeks now, but I finally took the bait and bought a couple of fat packs over the weekend. Fat packs are starting to become my preferred retail format of late, since they seem to be largely ignored by the local thieves who buy, reseal and return packs these days.

The base design is still silly, but they seemed to have swapped out the "fire" look for more of a splashy art paint thing. All we get is a big block letter last name on the front, but I imagine this isn't a huge set and we mostly should know these guys by their surnames.

I think I like the base design more than the parallels and inserts, which included this orange parallel of Orioles starter Alex Cobb that I pulled. It's numbered to 299. I don't think there are any Orioles fans around these parts these days, so this will go into one of my boxes for another day.

Each of the fat packs contains a "blue chip" parallel, but I'm just not much of a fan of the foilboard look. Or maybe it's just that these pretty much remove the color splashes and make them closer to a monochrome look.

None of the inserts are labeled anywhere on the card, although the card numbers themselves are a clue. You can tell it's an inserts because the design is completely different. Walker Buehler looks like he's about to drown in a sea of swirls.

Again, here's another totally different design, so it's another some kind of insert.

Here's my other blue chipper, featuring the Astros reliever Josh James. There probably aren't too many non-closer relievers in this set, but James is a "RC" so he gets to be in whatever he chooses.

Giancarlo Stanton played 3 games in March and 6 more games in June and that's been it for 2019. Weird.

Trout Alert!

This is apparently a "flame" parallel even though I see no evidence of flames or fire anywhere on this card. Also, there is a much better Alonso in the game now, so maybe this last names only thing isn't the best approach after all.

Lastly, here's a couple of Brewers on the same card - past and present. I don't think that's what Topps is calling these, though. The card number has an LL prefix. Lasting Legacies? Legendary Luminescence? Lusty Lechers?