2024 Bandai Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection

Last year, Bandai teamed up with Namco to release a 36 card set featuring caricatures of players.  The set was called something along the lines of "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection".  "Deforme" refers to an art style of a figure having a big head and small body (H/T Nippon Baseball Retro) and you'll see in a minute that that's a very apt description of the artwork on these cards.  The cards were given away with bags of something called kaki no tane which is a bar snack consisting of soy crackers and peanuts (although the bags don't have peanuts).  

Generally I'm not a big fan of art cards or cards that feature artwork rather than photographs.  I was somewhat surprised that I liked the look of these when they were initially published in July last year and thought about picking up the complete set.  The prices were pretty high though so I settled for asking Ryan to just pick up a couple singles for me.  Sometime over the winter, however, I came across a complete set on Yahoo! Japan Auctions selling for around 3000 yen and asked Ryan to get it for me.  It was yet another item in the box I got from him last month.

If you've been paying any attention at all to NPB sets, you'll have already guessed that the 36 card set is split evenly among the twelve NPB teams with each team having three players in the set.  There's a further breakdown of the cards, though, as each team has an "Ultra Rare" card, a "Rare" card and a "Normal" card.  Here's a sample card of each type:

#BDC01-H01 (Ultra Rare)

#BDC01-O02 (Rare)

#BDC01-E03 (Normal)

You'll notice that the cards are numbered by team, with each number being "#BDC01-X##" where X is a one letter prefix to identify the team and ## is either 01, 02 or 03.  It turns out that all the cards with an 01 number are "Ultra Rare", all the cards with an 02 number are "Rare" and all the 03 cards are "Normal".

The cards themselves are 2 3/8 inches by 3 3/8 inches in size, a little smaller than the standard card size.  They're made of plastic instead of cardboard so they have kind of an odd feel.  They also have rounded corners which don't really come across in my scans.

The set contains many big stars from NPB in 2024, including Yuki Yanagita, Tetsuto Yamada, Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Make, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hiroya Miyagi and Chusei Mannami along with veterans Tsuyoshi Wada and Masahiro Tanaka.  I did think it was kind of odd that the set didn't include two of the biggest names in NPB, though, as neither Munetaka Murakami nor Roki Sasaki are in the set.  Murakami is in the 2025 edition (more about that in a minute) but Sasaki, obviously because he's no longer in NPB, is not.

Here's a bunch more example cards - all either "Super Rare" or "Rare":

#BDC01-L02

#BDC01-C02

#BDC01-D02

#BDC01-F01

#BDC01-Y01

#BDC01-T01

#BDC01-B01

Bandai and Namco released the 2025 version of this set back at the end of March, just in time for the beginning of the baseball season.  One of the unexpected things that Ryan included in the box was 12 cards from it, a third of the set.  The new set is pretty much identical in design as the original one - same three card designs, same numbering scheme (except the card numbers start with "BDC2"), same card size, same set size - but, naturally, with a different roster of players.  The one big change with the 2025 set is that there are "facsimile signature" parallel versions of the "Ultra Rare" cards (which I guess would make them "Super Ultra Rare"?)

This year's set includes the afore-mentioned Murakami along with Kensuke Kondoh, Takeya Nakamura, Tomoya Mori, Hayato Sakamoto and Shosei Togo.  It also includes some foreign players which the 2024 set did not - Gregory Polanco, Domingo Santana and Livan Moinelo.  I think the biggest name who has not yet had a card in one of these sets is Teruaki Sato of the Tigers.  Here's a couple of the 2025 cards (one "Ultra Rare" and two "Normal"):

#BDC02-F01

#BDC02-D03

#BDC02-T03

I should mention that the card backs all use the same design, regardless of whether the card is "Ultra Rare", "Rare" or "Normal" or which set the card is from.  Here's an example back from each sets:

#BDC01-M02

#BDC02-G02

I really like these cards - they're just a lot of fun.  I probably won't break my vow of not getting any new sets to try to complete the 2025 set but I might try to at least get the Nakamura and Sakamoto cards from it.  You can see all the cards from both the 2024 and 2025 sets over at Jambalaya.

Ryan also sent me a couple unopened packs from the 2024 set:

Ryan also made good on his promise (threat?) to send me an unopened bag of kaki no tane.  Opinions seem to be divided some on the quality of this snack with Sean not being a fan (although he's softened his stance some) and others like Kenny and Fuji being fans.  I had never tried it so Ryan sending me an unopened bag (albeit one from last year that had passed it's "freshness" date on the package) was an opportunity to see what the fuss was about.  

My wife was game for trying it as well, so we opened up the bag and poured its contents into a bowl so that we could share it:

Since it's a common bar snack, we each opened a can of a Pale Ale from Sierra Nevada to have the full effect.  Our verdict...meh.  It wasn't bad so I don't think I agree with the hate but I don't feel any need to get any more of it either.  I will say the taste was somewhat familiar but I haven't been able to place it.  My wife and I both agreed that the traditional version of it with peanuts would probably have been better.  Maybe the next time I go to Japan, I'll try to hit a bar and try it there.