1995 Studio

One cool thing about Studio is that they were always trying to do something not seen on cards before. These are no exception. Yeah, they're a little bit schlocky, but as a one-time issue I like 'em. The credit card motif works and lends itself well to the info on the front of the card like the debut year and birthday. 

The 1995 Studio Detroit Tigers:

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

53 Chris Gomez

70 Chad Curtis

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Alan Trammell

191 John Doherty

This is one of the few cases where the parallels turned out better than base set. Technically, they are not parallels, since they didn't do this for every player, but trust me, they're parallels.

The Gold and Platinum series were a no-brainer for something credit card related. I like the rounded corners and the gold foil hologram pops a lot more than the silver base set cards. Personally I would have like to seen an insert set along the lines of Past Due or Credit Declined, but that's just me speaking from personal experience.....

Gold

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

As Platinum cards typically designate something exclusive and hard to get, it should come as no shock that there were no Tigers in the Platinum set. (FTR is looks like about half the teams didn't land a single player in the Platinum set.)

1994 Studio

I'm a big fan of the Studio "franchise." I get what they were trying to do and more often than not they were a nice issue. But this is one of those "not" times, and not because these are bad looking cards. It's more to do with the way they went about it once they came up with the concept. 

I like the "locker room" concept. It's a fresh idea. But it was all down hill from there. The first glaring mistake is the jersey hanging on the wall. Any half-assed fan can tell that those aren't Tigers jerseys hanging up there. There's no name on the back for one. Second, the numbers on the jerseys are huge, and in no way resemble the numbers on the real jerseys. I could live with that though, if it wasn't for the other glaring noticeable mistake.

They used the same locker for every picture. Every card shows a picture of a locker in the corner of the room. It's easy to identify by the shadows on the right side of the card. A closer look at the left of the card shows that there is no locker on that side either. But when you really look at the card close, it looks like the "locker" is actually one of those cheap pieces of Sauder furniture, that any bachelor can easily identify. You know what I'm talking about. The thing that comes unassembled in a box, with four pieces of wood and eight screws, yet takes three hours and several expletives to assemble, and there is always one screw left over. Yeah, those.....

The 1994 Studio Detroit Tigers:

189 Eric Davis

190 Cecil Fielder

191 Travis Fryman

192 Tony Phillips

193 Mickey Tettleton

194 Alan Trammell

195 Lou Whitaker

1993 Studio

It's not often I praise a Donruss release, but I will do so here. This is one of the nicest looking sets ever made. This was such a simple concept that it begs the question of why it was never done before. The only thing I don't like about this set is that I didn't collect the entire thing. Even the foil stamping looks elegant when used in this format. 

Of course it's a shame that they found the doofious (yeah, I made it up, so what?) picture of Kirk Gibson they could possibly dig up, but I still love them. I may have to hunt down a complete set on ebay after the holidays. These are that nice. (I just looked and you can find one for about $15-20. Not a bad deal at all for a set this awesome.)

The 1993 Studio Detroit Tigers:

26 Rob Deer

37 Cecil Fielder

76 Lou Whitaker

108 Travis Fryman

138 Mickey Tettleton

165 Kirk Gibson

213 Tony Phillips

Okay, I only have two beefs with this set. How the hell could they leave out Alan Trammell, yet include Jerald Clark and Orestes Destrade? How?

There is an insert card that I was never aware of at any time in life until fifteen seconds ago. 

Silhouettes #5 Travis Fryman

1992 Studio

Donruss did a much better job with their second year of Studio cards than they did with their first. The metallic gold borders and grainy sepia tone photo were both innovative in '92. Unfortunately, there isn't much else going on here. Unless you count the photo of the dad from Seventh Heaven on Frank Tanana's card. You don't think that's him? Look at the t-shirt. Enough said.

The 1992 Studio Detroit Tigers:

171 Milt Cuyler

172 Rob Deer

173 Cecil Fielder

174 Travis Fryman

175 Mike Henneman

176 Tony Phillips

177 Frank Tanana

178 Mickey Tettleton

179 Alan Trammell

180 Lou Whitaker

1991 Studio

Wow. Where to begin. Somebody at Donruss was dating someone at Olan Mills and voila! Studio!! I graduated HS in 1986, and I swear that 99% of the guy's senior pics in my yearbook look exactly like Lloyd Moseby's. Sadly, the other 2 pictures look just like Rob Deer's. (and Wyatt Earp's...) I will not be posting my own picture at this time.

The 1991 Studio Detroit Tigers:

51 Milt Cuyler

52 Rob Deer

53 Cecil Fielder

54 Travis Fryman

55 Bill Gullickson

56 Lloyd Moseby

57 Frank Tanana

58 Mickey Tettleton

59 Alan Trammell

60 Lou Whitaker