Pro Set Superstars Musicards Ad

Title: Ad for Pro Set Superstars Musicards
Date: 1990
Category: Advertisement
Current Status: Recycled

Remember back in the 80's and 90's when trading cards were huge? I mean, first it was baseball cards, the football and basketball, and hockey, and then trading cards of Musicians seemed the logical step, right? Hey! Do you have an MC Hammer rookie card? I'll trade you a Vanilla Ice and a Lita Ford!
Really, it's no wonder trading cards are now worth virtually squat. The sports card market became heavily over saturated, but these non-sports cards were just too much. I remember (and still have) when Topps put out trading cards for Desert Storm. I think I have a Saddam Hussein card somewhere. Is that weird? Yeah, it is.
Pro Set started with football cards in 1989 and redefined the trading card world. That was the year of the Barry Sanders and Troy Aikman rookies. Granted, Score put out a more collectible (and more valuable) set, but Pro Set was flashy. They had rookie cards of guys who just got out of college... heck, the cards even showed them in their college uniforms! Baseball cards took notice and stepped up to the plate after giving us such abominations as '88 Topps and '90 Donruss. Within in a couple of years, it was impossible to keep up with all the different sets of cards for everything imaginable... comic books, rock stars, Elvis, movies... if it had any popularity, it probbly got a trading card.

So, Pro Set, after taking the world by storm in football, quickly jumped on hockey and then... pop music. This was the pre-grunge world where the music part of the music business wasn't nearly as important as the image part. New Kids on the Block, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Bel Biv Devoe, Madonna... these were as much fun to look at as to listen to while staring at your swatch watch and unnaturally colored oversized clothing. Malls became places to actually see your favorite performer. Drum machines received writing credits!
To publicize this inventive foray into mixing the bizarro world of hardcore wax pack purchasers and the MTV zombies, Pro Set released this ad. I have no idea where I got it, but I know why I kept it. Look at this wonderful collection of late '80's/Early '90's youth. This should really go into a time capsule so that people a hundered years from now can look at this and realize just how stupid we were and be baffled at how we could go from the obscenely ludicrous glam of the late 70's and end up with whatever the heck this monstrosity of fashion was ten years later.
Let's take a closer look at this quartet of happy youngsters. At the left we have The Fresh Prince of Chris Rock (complete with Friendship Bracelets), followed by Debbie/Deborah Gibson (who looks pained to be in this ad) and Tiffany (she is a part of the Rhythm Nation) and then in the front, white kid who needs a character building butt whooping and a pair of socks. Chris Rock-kid and the too girls are largely okay, I mean, they look like normal kids for the era (if their parents had money) and seem to have some sense of credible modeling skill, but WTH is wrong with that little doofus in front? His face is frozen in a combination of fear, surprise, and about-to-eat-a-hamburger. Perhaps that's the face his brain made when it realized that his body was nowhere near limber enough to strike that pose. Madonna was wrong. There IS something to striking a pose. That's more Vague than Vogue. Is his belt really that close to his armpits? Did Don Johnson and Urkel have a love child? This kid is good old fashioned nightmare fuel.

I'm pretty sure Pro Set is long since out of business, but fortunately, they've left such fine examples of American culture like this ad as their legacy. Thank you Pro Set, you morons.