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Finishing off Ginter Blaster #4: Pretty Lady Edition

Yesterday, I ripped into the first half of yet another blaster of A&G.  What can I say, I have a problem where I buy way too much of this stuff!?

Anyhow, the blaster has already been ripped into at this point so I might as well finish it off.

Blaster #4:
Packs 5 - 8:

We start with one of my favorite base cards of this year's set.

I love oddball stuff like this in Ginter - and I can only wish that Topps did more of this, rather than less (which seems to be the pattern, unfortunately).  Still, what a great card - but I do have to ask you to look at the "driver" of the Bullpen Car closely.

Something's not right there...that doesn't look natural to me.

Shifting gears entirely, I suppose I should also show off one of this year's token "pretty ladies" in Allen & Ginter. 

Paige Spiranac is actually a professional golfer who happened to also appear in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.  She's apparently quite busy on social media (YouTube and Instagram).  Unfortunately for me, I must be getting old because I had never heard of Miss Spiranac until I pulled one of her cards in this year's Ginter set.  To be fair, I don't watch golf but still, she completely passed me by in terms of any sort of name recognition. 

Here's my question about Spiranac's card:

Is this card sexist?  Is Topps blatantly trying to cater to the male demographic here?  On the one hand, I'd say yeah Topps is going for the whole "sexy sells" bit - but an argument can be made that Paige is a successful athlete and therefore fits the A&G brand.  The world is full of many types of woman, some happen to be both athletic and attractive and it's nothing but a coincidence that Topps chose her instead of some other (perhaps less attractive) lady, right?

Ahem.

Kelsey Plum.  Who is she?  I dunno, she's a basketball player according to her card (this is an A&G back mini but you'll have to believe me since I'm not scanning the back of the card this time).  Once again, she appears to be an attractive lady - but here is where Topps gets a bit of redemption.

In a very quick Google image search for Spiranac, you'll definitely get some "sexy" images (mostly thanks to her to SI photo shoot I presume).  On the other hand, a quick image search of Plum yielded nothing but photos of her actually playing basketball.  Plum was also the leading NCAA women's scorer so she's a legit champion as well. 

So what did we learn here?  Well, nothing really. 

Topps includes pretty girls in their A&G set each year.  Sometimes those ladies have a clear sports focus...other times the card backs have to resort to referencing things like SI swimsuit photo shots.  To each their own, I guess.

What about the rest of the minis you ask?  Well, a Nick Castellanos black border, a Powhatan Indigenous Heroes, and a Landing of Columbus Postage Required mini round out the blaster.

Unfortunately for me, I already had the Powhatan but the Postage Required card was new for me...and with that and the Drone Racing insert from the first half of the blaster, I'd say this purchase was barely a success. 

One more blaster to go (and my Gint-a-Cuffs box) and then I think I'm done with buying packs of Ginter.  I'll have tons of trade bait - so stay tuned for that!

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