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Topps to launch new VeeFriends partnership, cards at New York Comic Con
As the leading sports card brand in the world, Fanatics and Topps have been venturing into the non-sports card universe with recent partnerships with Disney and Marvel.
It’s next venture into non-traditonal trading cards begins this week as Topps partners with VeeFriends, the popular entertainment community created by entrepreneur and noted collector Gary Vaynerchuk.
Gary Vee’s VeeFriends cards will now carry the Topps Chrome label as the two brands debut their multi-year partnership at New York Comic Con Oct. 17-20. Free Topps Chrome VeeFriends promo cards will be handed out at the VeeFriends booth (#1217) on Oct. 17.
This marks the second partnership between Gary Vee and Fanatics. In 2021, Gary Vee partnered with Fanatics brand zerocool to produce the first VeeFriends trading cards, which feature unique characters designed to promote kindness and accountability.
Topps is thrilled to once again partner with Gary Vee, who created and drew the VeeFriends characters.
“We’re excited to bring it back,” said Kelvin Smith, SVP of global licensing and partnerships at Fanatics Collectibles. “We’re doing more together this time around with the goal of it being bigger and better. We love the VeeFriends brand and Gary has been a friend of the company and his entire team has been great to work with, so we’re excited about it.
“We see ourselves as innovators who are focused relentlessly on serving fans and collectors and we think VeeFriends sees the role the same way. It is a natural partnership for us.”
VeeFriends President Andy Krainak says having VeeFriends characters on Topps Chrome products “helps elevate our brand but also allows us to tap into innovation, global distribution and another level of credibility as we continue to build.”
VeeFriends, an entertainment company that features stories, games, events and collectibles, uses its 283 unique characters to foster a sense of community and create a better world. It’s mission to connect kids and families also fits with the Topps brand.
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“I think our dreams at VeeFriends and Gary’s vision for VeeFriends is that these characters connect and have a meaningful impact on families and kids and we can grow up with kids through different mediums and formats and content and trading cards,” Krainak said. “That is something that I think an 8- or 9-year-old boy or girl can really gravitate toward and identify with Notorious Ninja or Patient Panda and start collecting that character while also consuming some of our cartoons and comics ... . It’s a form of storytelling and I think [partnering with] Topps [contributes to that] from a trading card standpoint.”
It also fits Topps’ mission to grow the collecting hobby by reaching for more kids and new collectors.
“For us, we want to bring new collectors into the hobby and we think this brand speaks not to just young folks—although there are lot of young folks who love the VeeFriends brand—but we really think it spans across a range of collectors, which is important to us as we build the next generation of collectors,” Smith said.
“I think a big part of what is so exciting to us is we are looking for ways to branch out outside of our core sports consumer, and VeeFriends is a brand that is recognized around the world that aligns with what our fans and collectors have come to love about Fanatics and Topps. It's a natural partnership for us that allows us to reach new consumers that might not otherwise be in the fold for us.”
Krainak says New York Comic Con is the perfect event to launch the new VeeFriends-Topps partnership. He and Gary Vee attended the event last year and Krainak says he was “blown away” by the energy and passion.
“The audience is spot-on for VeeFriends,” he said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a sports card audience, but there are characters and animation and collecting, which is a sweet spot for VeeFriends. It has a very broad audience, from kids, parents, teachers, and there is no better place to launch this than at New York Comic Con because of that audience. I think that is going to bring a lot of eyeballs to our booth.”
For Topps, the new venture is another step toward expanding into a new market.
“We announced recently an extension of our partnership with Disney and Marvel and Lucasfilm. That and VeeFriends are two great IP holders,” Smith said. “We do want to do more in the non-sports card category. We think that is largely untapped so expect to see a lot more there.”
Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.
