Grocery-Store Trading Cards The Best Thing Since Affordable Groceries

A leaked email from the head office of an unnamed grocery-story chain reveals a heated debate took place about whether to lower the cost of groceries or offer customers complimentary trading cards. 

A minority of quiet but brave executives made the case for the trading cards.

"Yes, people are experiencing poverty," said their initial email, copied at the bottom of the thread, "but a lack of trading cards is also a kind of poverty."

The odds were stacked against this small, dissenting group of visionaries within the company, with most shareholders holding to the belief that it would be worth it to sacrifice profits in the short term to repair a damaged public reputation. But what people need even more than a relief in pricing is nostalgia for trading cards paired with nostalgia for superheroes. 

"It was millions well spent,” Bob Hammond, an employee who worked on the campaign, told the Alliston Gerald. "We had to get the royalties, a development team, and then print and distribute them, but it’s paying off now. Every time I go on social media, there’s a mom seeking cards for a collection for her kid.”

In Alliston, a month-long boycott of grocery stores belonging to the parent group made it clear that people needed a change. And, now, the change has arrived.

“Our vision is a new kind of business—two parts grocery store, one part collectibles shop,” the email indicated.

It appears that, while planning the campaign, cardboard super-hero cards were not the only option on the table and other lines of trading cards may still be in the works.

“Picture this: produce cards… We hand out trading cards of the fruits and vegetables people may or may not have purchased during their visit,” Hammond reported. “I’ll trade you a three-heads-of-broccoli card for a dozen-eggs card. I can just see it: a playground of children bartering over the card versions of vegetables they’ll be eating the frozen version of that night at home.”

The produce cards would also serve as a kind of advertisement for items people could purchase on their next visit. If a bag of apples was too costly this time around, well, what better motivation than being handed a cardboard photograph of a bag of apples?

“Where I work, we’re all about empowering people,” Hammond added.