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It's official. Michael Eisner has now pretty much destroyed my childhood!

In news today, an Eisner led group has purchased Topps, Inc., the baseball card trading company. Eisner, who pretty much destroyed Disney, is now poised to do the same to the trading card industry. While Topps has declined as "the card to have" over the past several years, for many years, it was THE card. After Bowman exited the scene in the early 50's, it was Topps that carried the ball all the way into the late 70's. Without Topps, there would be no rookie cards of so many of the greats we know and love.

This is the latest in a long line of bad Topps decisions, in my opinion. In 1990, when they tried to modernize their design, the result was a pretty crappy looking card. The years afterwards saw them abandon the cardboard standard for a higher gloss card stock, eliminate the wax pack and the signature card in the back with wax stains that we all hoped wouldn't be a key card to the set, and eliminate bubble gum. Everything that made Topps wasn't Topps anymore. I've tried cardboard and I've tried high gloss card stock, and the card stock just doesn't have the same satisfying sound in the bike spokes, sorry.

When Eisner took over Disney, he destroyed a similarly iconic image. In his acquisition of Topps, he takes over an icon that already destroyed its image years ago. But he is, in my opinion, the worst person in the world to restore it, as he has no clue about what it was that made memories of Topps baseball cards for so many of us.