Be careful what you wish for

I received two more Jackie Robinson Story cards from Paul's Random Stuff yesterday. This means I have four of the 10 cards in the set, which is pretty good for me.

It's a nice little set, although the Robinson retrospective has been done several times in cards already and some of the photos (staring directly at the card on the left) have been used as often as I go through post-it notes. But it's well-designed and the cards like the one on the right make up for that.

This is the Target-exclusive set this year. Walmarts feature the Babe Ruth Story. I happened to pull one of those cards the other day and it's still freaking me out.

Please don't turn out the lights when this card is in the room. I'm sure something in the head region will start glowing.

The fact that these are the respective Target and Walmart exclusives means the red and blue parallels that were the respective stores' exclusives for the last few years are no more. And there doesn't even appear to be a separate parallel as there has been the last four years (diamond, golden, rain forest green, blood red, in that order).

And that makes me a little sad.

Yeah, I know, I know, I asked for it. A lot of us asked for it when we said there were way too many parallels over the last few years. Red, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink, camo, black, platinum, sandy beach, draped in velvet, magenta on the moon ... oh, sorry, those are nail polish names.

But, yeah, there were too many. I think we all agreed. Who had the time? Who could complete anything? What was the point?

Topps apparently agreed, too. Or at least listened. So, not only are there no red or blue big-box exclusive parallels anymore, but there are no greens for hanger packs or yellows for hanger boxes or any of that craziness from last year.

The only readily available parallels are gold because we're all still obsessed with the 1999 Topps base set for some reason, and rainbow foil.

But those parallels bore me. Gold has been going on for too long and I've never cared about rainbow foil.

That's the rainbow foil parallel I pulled. The scanner doesn't reflect the foil, so I took a picture.

Sure, it's shiny. But I'm not seeing any rainbow. These foil cards were played out in 2009 and they never appealed to me in the first place.

I need things much brighter and colorful. I grew up in the '70s when cards looked liked this:

I've been trying to get back to that ever since.

The color parallels from the last few years were a little tribute to that.

Sure, it's not the same. It takes four cards to come up with a single 1975 Topps, but I enjoyed them. Now they're gone.

There are some other parallels that are less available. Pink is still around. So is black and platinum. There's something called "snow camo" in case your card is on a recon mission in the Yukon. And there are clear cards and printing plates.

But the parallels on my level are down to foil and gold.

This is the price I pay for asking for fewer parallels.

However, there is a silver lining to all of this. In fact, it's the best development of all. It's the reason that all of the above whining is really without merit.

With a set as colorful as this, who needs parallels?

We have a base set that has made parallels almost irrelevant!

I'm telling you I like this set more and more.

We're going to get back to '75 Topps yet.