Bicycle Day of The Dead Playing Cards (KS)

[badpete69]

Collectable keeps on rolling

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2104052526/bicycle-day-of-the-dead-playing-cards

[Rob Wright]

Collectable keeps on rolling

Not from my pocket!

[Rose]

This creator has done a deck, (too soon after the successful 'Meurtos Day of Dead' deck by Steve Minty) and this most recent adaptation does does live up to its name for me, the pips seem random and the court cards look a bit messy. While this is not for me the deck has function and the creator has a lot of experience with Kicksarter.

[Don Boyer]

Wow.  Those pips really hurt my eyes.

It's also pretty clear that the artist has little idea of what the traditional "Day of the Dead" festival in Mexico is all about.  To him, it appears to be about wearing party clothes and getting your face painted...  I especially (dis-)like the Viking (!!) with the axe, the smoky-eye makeup and the sword that extends off the edge of the card...and how the entire Club suit of courts are now the "Suicide Courts" rather than the King of Hearts, who looks like he got lost on the way home from a Ren Faire with his buddy, the Jack of Hearts, who is carrying a bird that looks like the result of a peacock mating with a New York pigeon...and the Queen of Diamonds, who would look more at home in New Orleans on Mardi Gras or in Key West for Fantasy Fest (which coincidentally is also held on October 31st)...I half-expect her to shout for more beads as she pulls down her dress neckline to show off her natural assets...

At least he got the use of marigolds right...except for the funky-looking eyeball...

As far as being made in a timely manner...well, that train left the station, crossed the bridge and reached the terminal before this deck made it out of bed...

In the event the designer should read this - no, this isn't a personal attack on you.  If done a couple of years ago - and a little more faithfully to the celebration, and with pips that don't feel like lasers scorching my retinas - it might have been a really good deck.  But the thing of it is that Dia de los Muertos joined a list with the likes of steampunk, zombies, minimalism, pirates and Cthulhu as an overdone theme for a deck of playing cards.  When the field gets that crowded, sure, you could make a deck that follows one of these overdone themes - but if that deck isn't head-and-shoulders above the others in the category, it will be hard to get collectors interested.  There have been much better designs that came before this one.

Possible different directions might have included showing the altars to the dead, people leaving offerings at a grave site of a loved one, perhaps even holding a picnic there as is the tradition in some areas.  The closest thing to a sugar skull you have is on the back design - and if someone handed me something that looked like that and invited me to eat it, I would respectfully - but VERY swiftly - decline...

[DarkDerp]

Your such a purist Don. Sure, there isn't any Day of the Dead imagery, or anything to represent the culture and ethnic group that celebrate it. But... Wait, what was I talking about?

[PurpleIce]

and how the entire Club suit of courts are now the "Suicide Courts" rather than the King of Hearts,

I was wondering about the same thing...there are some things you just can't change without any good reason.

And YES, the pips really looks out of place, and the JoS looks like he is carrying some weird sci-fi weapon because of the motif of the same weirdness in colour in the middle. If the creator has so much experience, surely he should know how awkward the pips stands out compared to the rest of the deck?

[Don Boyer]

and how the entire Club suit of courts are now the "Suicide Courts" rather than the King of Hearts,

I was wondering about the same thing...there are some things you just can't change without any good reason.

And YES, the pips really looks out of place, and the JoS looks like he is carrying some weird sci-fi weapon because of the motif of the same weirdness in colour in the middle. If the creator has so much experience, surely he should know how awkward the pips stands out compared to the rest of the deck?

Perhaps for him, that's what the Day of the Dead is really all about.  And that sci-fi weapon thing is in part the center design which looks really bad - it's the card's suit pip displayed four times at ninety-degree angles and overlapping.  That strange-looking square in the middle is actually four overlapping spade pips.  Yet another bizarre, out-of-place element in a deck that's chock-full of them.