2018 WWE Heritage Jumbo Pack

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, last week I was sick with a bad cough. While it still hasn't quite gone away completely, it's better to the point where I feel like can now function normally. I felt well enough last Saturday to drag myself out of bed and go with the family on our annual Target Halloween run. While we were there, I decided to treat myself to a few jumbo packs of baseball and wrestling Heritage. The baseball packs left a lot to be desired so I decided just to share the WWE Heritage pack, as honestly, these are the cards I was most excited about.

This year for WWE, Topps used the 1989 baseball design and, wow, it's works perfectly. For the Raw brand stars, the wave at the bottom is red, Smackdown blue, and NXT yellow. Baron Corbin is now the GM of the Raw show with Drew McIntryre holding the Raw tag titles with Dolph Ziggler. I was pretty happy to get the Ruby Riott RC as she's one of my favorites to watch.

The Smackdown contingent of the pack was far less interesting ... perennial lower-card star in Sin Cara, Peyton Royce who's one half of the "mean girls" duo The Iiconics with Bille Kay, and Tamina who is ... well, I'm not sure where she is right now.

Tag teams and stables get the horizontal card treatment. The Undisputed Era are by far the top group in NXT currently. Not pictured on the card though is Roderick Strong who, along with his tag team partner Kyle O'Reilly (far left) had a great run of matches with Mustache Mountain (Tyler Bate and Trent Seven) over the NXT tag titles this past summer. As far the the duo of Benjamin and Gable .... well, Benjamin is now a singles wrestler on the blue brand while Gable is over on Raw teaming with Bobby Roode.

There were four insert cards in the middle of the pack, a bronze parallel of Lana, a blue parallel of Tony Nese, a Randy Savage tribute card talking about his match at WrestleMania X, and a Bobby Roode card made in the style of the Topps Glossy rookies set.

Finally, there were four legends cards in the back of the pack. The design is very similar to the 1989 Topps Big cards. I like that they used the legends cards in a different design this time to differentiate them from the rest of the set.

While I didn't get any of the top stars in the pack, this was still a super fun pack to rip. The 1989 Topps design feels very natural, not like a baseball design was shoehorned into wrestling cards. I definitely recommend grabbing a few packs of this if you're out and about. You won't be disappointed.

WWE NXT Jumbo Retail Pack

With NXT Takeover and Royal Rumble this weekend, I thought this would probably be a good time to dive into a jumbo pack of some WWE NXT cards. We've got 18 cards in a pack so let's rip. Hopefully there's something good as I'm not sure what to expect out of this.

Apparently there's two different base sets in this, there's the base roster set and there's the base moments and matches set, along with parallels of each. Not sure who Aliyah is but Peyton Royce is one of the top competitors of the Women's division.

A few more matches and moments cards are the highlight of this batch. I think everyone was pretty well shocked when Bobby Roode showed up in NXT and he had a nice little run there before getting called up this past summer. 

Awesome! I got a Shinsuke Nakamura card! So far, that's my favorite card of the pack. Even better that it notes his debut match against Sami Zayn at NXT Takeover Dallas in 2016. If you're a wrestling fan and you haven't seen that match, I suggest going to watch it ASAP! It was by far one of the best matches under the WWE umbrella in 2016.

Not much here. I'm not familiar with Oney Lorcan although I did have a science teacher in junior high with the last name of Oney. I'm looking forward to the eventual feud between Ciampa and Johnny Gargano as they haven't been able to have a proper feud since Ciampa turned on Gargano last year at Takeover Chicago. 

Here's the best trio of the pack. Ember Moon is a favorite of my four-year-old and he runs around the house singing her music all day sometimes. Ruby Riot, now spelled as "Riott" since she's on the main roster, I remember seeing a few years ago at a local show where she wrestled under the name of Heidi Lovelace. She was good then, but she's even better now. Oh, and speaking earlier about Johnny Gargano, here's a card of his!

The final trio consisting of hall of fame manager Paul Ellering, current NXT champ Andrade "Cien" Almas (who I might add shocked the world when he beat Drew McIntyre for the title) and wouldn't you know it, a card of Gargano and Ciampa as a tag team. 

Overall, this was an ok pack. I got a few good cards but most everything else felt pretty bland. I'm definitely not going to be rushing out to get anymore of this off the retail shelves any time soon unfortunately but I guess it's always good to try a product at least once.