Afternoon all,
Long-time lurker, first time poster. By way of a quick introduction, I’m Jake and I have been a fan and follower of the eFour forums for many years now.
I know I have spotlighted this elsewhere so many may have already seen it but I felt it was long overdue to post this here.
For your viewing pleasure is this Pokemon Neo Destiny salesman sample/mock-up prototype dual blister pack that I acquired directly from TCA Gaming many moons ago. In terms of the history of this item, it is believed to have been developed internally to advertise the Neo Destiny TCG expansion to prospective retailers at trade shows and similar promotional events.
Whilst much of the final booster pack and blister card design is similar, there are several differences between this example and the final product that went on to hit the shelves. What makes this item more unique and interesting is it was likely developed before the production of the Neo Destiny expansion. As such, no Neo Destiny booster packs were readily available to assemble the blister and so a Pokemon ‘Jungle’ and a Magic, the Gathering ‘Exodus’ booster pack were used as proxies. Both boosters were wrapped in a thin plastic sheet featuring the 1st edition Neo Destiny booster pack art and mounted to the blister.
As far as I’m aware (and I’m happy to be corrected), there are two other known salesman sample/mock-up blister packs to have survived from the WotC-era; one being a Jungle and the other being a Team Rocker single-pack blister.
Thanks very much for taking the time to view. I have attached some photos to this post and will upload a video of the blister shortly.
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Here’s the video, as mentioned:
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Very interesting item, thanks for sharing!
Weird that they included a barcode for a sample product. I wonder if it correlates properly to anything else.
I hope someone with more info comes along with more confirmed or verified information about the process of why and when this was made.
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@ItemfinderCo
@OCDCompletist
Have any better pics of the back to read the text?
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No problem at all!
That’s a good point and not one I had thought about before. I suspect that, with it being a late-stage preproduction item that was used as a salesman sample, a lot of the design elements had already been finalised, including the barcode (although whether this is representative of barcode used on the final product or not, I’m not sure).
Absolutely. All feedback/thoughts on the history and purpose of this item is welcomed!
I’ll get some clearer photos of the back and post them shortly.
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I can’t find any pictures of the back of the double booster pack blisters. The single blister English is only 1 digit off.
I would be really curious if possible to see a close up picture of the ink on the mock wrappers.
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I can certainly arrange for some close-up photos of the mock-up wrappers to be taken (I am away from home at the moment so relying on my brother to take any follow up photos).
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Hey, Nightvulture. Here are some better photos of the card back where the text is more legible:
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Hey, Packyman. I was scrolling through my camera roll and came across some close-up photos of the mock-up boosters. These are the best photos I have at the moment but will work on getting some clearer photos of the booster packs out of the acrylic case:
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