I'm still dumb so I bought a blaster of 25-26 Upper Deck Allure

 

Since I've had a run of good luck lately, I decided to buy a blaster box of 2025-26 Upper Deck Allure Hockey. I've never owned anything from this series before. It was quite alluring. I was hoping my luck would keep going, but it ran out with this box. Hockey blaster boxes usually really suck, so it's not surprising.

 

The cards are really nice. They are really high quality card stock. It's such a weird thing that these card companies put so much effort into designing these really nice base cards that feel great physically, and they are absolutely worthless crap that no one wants and will be forgotten about in a few months time. Like, the cards are so high quality that it is tempting to collect a base set of these cards, but this is a parallel type product, so that would be a difficult and expensive feat with little reward. It's just so strange.

One thing I really like that Upper Deck does with their parallels is that they actually tell you what the parallel is on the back of the card. This is a Glitter Bomb, which are blaster exclusive. I got two of these in this box. It makes things so much easier, because Topps doesn't do this and these companies really such an ungodly amount of parallels that after I open packs I spend more time trying to figure out what the hell I pulled than actually enjoying the cards. Upper Deck assumes I am too dumb to figure it out, and they are correct. I appreciate it.

 

These are two Color Flow cards I pulled. The cards are really nice. The only knock I have is that Upper Deck hockey cards are plainly for the Canadian market, so they can at least spell the word 'colour' correctly.

 These are the other 'hits', including the other Glitter Bomb I pulled and two Black parallels. None of these players are of any interest to me, and in fact I haven't heard of most of them. It was a waste of money, and I knew my luck would run out at some point.

Upper Deck has had the NHL license since 1990. In fact, since 2005 besides Upper Deck only Panini briefly had an NHL license before the NHL went exclusively with Upper Deck again. I know a lot of people hate what Fanatics is doing with Topps (for good reason!), but I have never been a fan of Upper Deck. I liked it when Panini was making hockey cards, too, because competition is good for the consumer.

I wish both Upper Deck and Topps had NHL licenses. I don't like all of this exclusivity in the major sports, and wish the leagues would allow at least two licenses. Both Panini and Topps could have easily shared the NBA license, for example, because there is so much demand for product. 

I know Upper Deck does O-Pee-Chee retro parallels, but they kinda suck and I badly wish there were Topps Heritage hockey products. I hope Topps at least does NBA Heritage, although NBA products are nearly impossible to find in Canada, so I guess it doesn't really matter.