Although the calendar might say there’s still three weeks of summer left, for most of us it’s over. The unofficial end for many is today as tomorrow it’s back to school. For students it means new clothes and that new pencil smell. It also means that lockers should also smell fresh seeing as how there shouldn’t be any moldy sandwiches and bananas buried at the bottom of abandoned lockers. Today back to school means a blaster break of that “classic” (I use the term loosely to describe the phenomenon it has become rather than my critique of the film) High School Musical.
Thus far Topps has released two HSM sets and a third is on the way later this month or early next with the theatrical release of HSM: Senior Year. I grabbed this blaster on clearance at Walmart to see what they were like and use the cards as rewards for my students.
Topps appears to be aiming at the young female demographic with this set, splitting the packs between cards and stickers. In each pack there’s supposed to be four cards and three stickers of varying types. The base set consists of 50 cards and the basic sticker set has an additional 30. Most packs have two regular stickers and one puzzle sticker (20 in that set), however the puzzle sticker may be replaced by either a glitter (10-sticker set) or felt (five-sticker set) counterpart. Finally there’s a pair of costume cards, although they’re tough to come by.
The blaster box contained six packs and collation was perfect. I received 24 base cards, which amounts to just under half of the set. As expected I also got 12 basic stickers, four puzzle stickers, one glitter sticker and one felt sticker. No costume cards were found.
I like the feel of this set. The captions may be corny as heck, but there’s a lot going on. This is similar to many 80s Topps non-sport sets in that it offered more than simply cards. There’s the puzzle to build using the back of stickers. This was hugely common 25 years ago. Put the basic stickers together and flip them over and Troy will do a stop-motion dance. Finally the glitter and felt stickers are the kinds of things I’d want to add to the sticker book I had back in the day.
Perhaps what’s most important about Topps’ High School Musical is that it serves an ignored part of the hobby. By aiming at the female collecting base, this is the type of set that could open up the hobby to new venues. With its many easily collected parts, HSM is a fun and laid back set.
2007 Topps High School Musical Break Summary:
Packs: 6
Base cards: 24/50
Doubles: 0
Stickers: 12/30
Puzzle Stickers: 4/20
Felt Stickers: 1/5
Glitter Stickers: 1/10
Costume Cards: 0/2
