Card Companies Capture Favre as a Viking

Upper Deck
In record time, Upper Deck has secured training camp photos of the most-talked-about player in the NFL – newest Minnesota Vikings signal-caller Brett Favre – and will have him appear in his new purple color scheme as early as next month. A short-printed card showing him during his first practice with the Vikings on Wednesday, August 19, will appear in 2009 NFL SPx, which is scheduled to hit store shelves on Sept. 15.

“We’re always trying to be the timeliest to market and this is just another example demonstrating how quickly our product development and creative teams can react to today’s volatile, ever-changing sports landscape,” said Brandon Miller, Upper Deck’s Football brand manager.

Panini
Panini America announced today that the company stopped the presses to include the FIRST trading card of Minnesota Viking’s quarterback, Brett Favre, in its August, 2009 retail release of Donruss Threads Football. Favre pulled on the purple #4 jersey for the first time last Friday night in the Vikings preseason victory against the Kansas City Chiefs. Panini America dispatched a photographer to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome with the sole intention of creating this historical card.

“We wanted Favre’s first official Vikings trading card to be an in-game action shot of him wearing the purple #4,” said Panini America Marketing Manager Scott Prusha. “We were able to send a photographer to the game Friday night, print cards Saturday and have them ready for product insertion first thing Monday morning.”

With production of hobby boxes in their final distribution stages, 4,444 Favre cards were inserted exclusively into Wal-mart blaster boxes and packs and will also be inserted into 2009 Donruss Threads Target blaster boxes and retail packs.