I know, if I want stuff like this to be popular, I have to get a quiffy haircut and do a 100 box break or something on YouTube.
Balls to that.
I know this has been a gaming site for a while, but I want to write about other things that interest me and I have always had a penchant for stickers. I’ve discussed it before on my other site, but Panini Football 87 and the earlier Mexico 86 albums really got me into collecting. As a kid, I didn’t get a lot of packets of stickers and my collecting days tailed off around 1990. Until I hit 40 ish, then I just started splashing out!
Since then I have completed every Euro album from 2008, every World Cup album since 2010 and I’ve partially got other ones from earlier full. I like to think I know what makes a good album, and what does not, and after picking up the Euro 2020 Tournament Edition album, I thought I’d do a review.
I confess, I was excited to see the collection drop, there’s something about tournament football that (usually) makes a great album. It’s all well and good opening up players from the Premier League, but when you start seeing Hungarian names or the Macedonia badge come out of packets, it is just different gravy. My first taste of international footballers came from Mexico 86, so it is almost like a learning curve for many kids (and 42-year-old kids).
The Album
My initial reaction after opening the album was mixed. I like the feel of the cover and it is a small, compact album like other years, rather than a big, chunky offering like the Premier League ones. Sadly, the colour scheme does not do it for me and whilst that might be dictated to some degree by the actual tournament branding, it feels a bit, I dunno, cheap perhaps? The album doesn’t, the cover has an embossed texture which is nice, but the orange doesn’t work for me. As a young lad, I avoided green shirts because I had orange hair and maybe I’m alone in thinking that was sensible, but for me they are two colours that do not mix and yet some stickers have green edges.
As I began turning pages, I felt a little more let down. Firstly, another ‘staple’ of some albums are the venue stickers. They certainly make a World Cup album, but were not included in the Euro 2016 effort and they’re not back this time. At least 2016’s album pictured the venues, all we get this time is a couple of stickerless pages telling us where the venues are. Dare I say, a missed opportunity. I figured Panini might want to bump up the sticker numbers a bit with some extras, after all, are they not what makes an album interesting? Instead, they bump it up in other ways.
Next up are the preview pages, the introduction to each group. There are bonus stickers on here, and in the past they have been shiny. Everyone loves a shiny sticker, but in this years they appear to be action shots. No team photo, just standard action shots of celebrations and the like. All the relevant information is there though, and there are four stickers to a page.
The team pages are fairly bland, they were in 2016, and you’ll notice the stickers are landscape, not portrait. I’m told this was done to differentiate between the previous Euro 2020 build up album, and again you’ll either love it, or hate it. Sadly, I’m not a fan, but that is preference I guess. There is not a lot of information on the pages, but they’re neatly laid out and do come with the customary shiny, although again no team image and each team has 20 players included. In Euro 2012, the team images were four stickers combined, a nightmare for those with OCD! They’ve been gone a while now and I knew what was coming next….
Noooooo! Not the bloody half and half stickers. These have featured in the last two Premier League albums, as well as the last Euro one. I’m not a fan, they feel fiddly to stick and are much harder to get straight. I like the fact Panini do try to vary the albums a little bit, but I’d prefer they ‘varied’ these out and brought something else in. Even a cut out sticker of a player would be nice. I confess, I don’t know if any of these are shiny or not, they were in Euro 2016 but I haven’t opened enough packets to see if it is the same this year. One positive I would pick up on is the chunkier outlines. They may be fiddly to stick in, but at least there is a little margin for error!
That just about covers the album and there are few surprises. Towards the back there is a section on past tournaments, they used to be featured on a sticker, but that is not the case this year. I did skip the front page, a standard offering with five shiny stickers, but you know that is more or less a given in any tournament album. The album runs to almost 700 stickers, and when you consider the cost it makes it a very expensive one to collect, perhaps the most expensive ever. For that, you would hope for better quality, wouldn’t you?
The Stickers
If it is quality you want, then you might be disappointed too. Firstly, I have an issue with the price. These cost 90p per packet for five stickers, and with fewer shinys than before, packets do feel a little bland. You are almost always opening players, endless landscape faces with ill-matching colour and logo. The layout just doesn’t work for me, it is ambitious to try to reinvent the wheel and in this instance, Panini have missed the mark I think. The stickers have all the information needed, but they just don’t feel very ‘Panini’ to me. Some of the backs are even different colours which I know seems completely irrelevant, but it is just plain odd. I’m also a little disappointed they don’t include a players club team on the front. 2016 did, so why not this one?
When you hold a sticker in your hand, they feel quite thin and cheap too. I really liked the Premier League 2021 album because the stickers were big and chunky with a quality feel, tearing some from the backing felt like tearing cardboard in half. These feel like I run them off myself from my printer. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the price is up from previous years and you don’t get anything more for your money. If anything, you get less, fewer shinys for a start.
These are the 50/50 stickers and again, I take offence at some of the colour scheme. It just doesn’t feel classy to me. Maybe I’ll change my mind over time, but I remember thinking the same about the Euro 2004 album. The stickers there were black and had an odd feel and time has not made me like them. Euro 2012 experimented with colours too and they did grow on me, but then they were also portrait and felt like better quality. Everything about this album feel like it is pointed towards making money; fewer shinys, fewer special stickers and cheaper materials. Only the cover of the album does anything to refute my belief.
Still, there are always the badges, right?
You have got to be kidding me. Why is the badge on a white background? I pulled this from one of my starter packs (I got four in the pack and have 100 coming tomorrow), so maybe not all shinys are like this, but having watched a pack opening on YouTube (purely for research), it seems they are. What is the point in a shiny if you are sticking colour all over it? The thrill as a little something glistens when your tear a packet takes me back to being ten or eleven again, but these are not shinys, they’re hologram stickers, aren’t they? I don’t care for a logo embossed over the badge, I just want something nice and succinct on a foil background. Like this below from Mexico 86. Now, that IS a shiny, Panini.
Conclusion
Firstly, I’ll say I will collect this anyway. I started up again in 2016 and have retrospectively collected since, and sticker collecting is back in fashion. It is estimated the average age of a collector is 31 in the UK now, with a generation of adults reclaiming their youth. It means people will collect this album, especially with England as one of the favourites for the tournament.
That doesn’t mean it is a good album though, and I think it is the worst of the last few years, probably since Euro 2012. At 90p per packet, stickers cost 18p each with five each time. With 678 to collect, that means a cost of £122 if you bought all loose and complete without a swap. I have heard that if you buy a full box you are far less likely to get duplicates, but what nine-year-old kid can afford £90 for a full box? What sensible adult would pay £90 for a full box? (Not me, I have a guy, you know, who sorts me out cheaper). That means a lot of packets and duplicates that won’t fetch 18p on eBay. I’d wager many will be selling 10p – 12p a sticker, and it might even be worth waiting until swaps start coming up, rather than buying the packets. That’s a bit sad in my eyes: you could buy the whole album and loose stickers for £120 on the Panini website, but isn’t opening packets part of the fun? it is, but not if it is not affordable for everyone.
I can’t help but think this could be an own goal from Panini. The price rise, the quality of the sticker and the poor variation within means this is not a classic album, not one that the kids of today will recall fondly. I thought they were on the right track with Russia 2018, but I fear greed has come into play. Fewer shinys, more stickers and a bigger price make this a hard sell, no matter how much they push it in your local supermarket.
Still, I’m collecting, so hit me up in a couple of weeks when the swaps start coming in!
It has been pointed out to me, after the review, that this is the only album mass produced during a pandemic, which is a fair point which might make up for some of the issues I’ve mentioned. There have still be some bad choices though, even if I will still collect over the coming weeks.