• Review: Ultra Pro My Little Pony Card Sleeves - Trixie, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Vinyl Scratch

    Whats this? 600 Trixie sleeves?! Can you even handle power of this magnitude?

    If you have followed EQD for any number of years, you have probably heard me mention card games at least once or twice.  Outside of pony and video games, this is where I spend the majority of my free time.  One major aspect of said games is the sleeves that contain your cards! I know a bunch of you out there are newbies to the world of CCG thanks to the MLP card game, so hopefully someone has clued you in on the world of PROTECTION.  Nothing is more cringeworthy than some 10 year old throwing a 100 dollar card around without a sleeve.

    Anyway, I have a bunch of Ultra Pro sleeves to review, so get that below! I swear it's not just Trixie 20 paragraphs of Trixie. 

    I'm still amazed that we have our own officially licensed sleeves.  Of all the merch I would have expected to see when I first started the pony madness, I never even dreamed we would get far enough for these.

    I'm going to do a quick overview first for those that haven't been following the merchandise news.  At the moment, there are six different designs available, including Vinyl Scratch, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash released in December, and Trixie joining Rarity for January.  At the moment they are a bit difficult to find in physical locations, though you can grab them online at various sites.  A few different counts are available if said sites are any indication, but mine came in packs of 65.

    Now onward to the actual review! 

    At the moment, Fluttershy has seen the most play time thanks to her earlier release so most of this is going to be based on her.  I've also primarily played Magic the Gathering as opposed to the MLP CCG, as this is what most of the people in my area play.  Both cards are the exact same size (aside from pony ones being maybe half a hair thinner), and like all CCG, the main stressor comes from shuffling, which brings me to the first topic:

    How Well do they Shuffle?

    As someone who has many a year worth of card gaming time and a plethora of different brand sleeves to go with it,  one of the most interesting aspects is the shuffle.  Some sleeves are super slippery and require a few games before they stop sliding across the table, while others can be a bit on the sticky side, making swift shuffling a bit difficult.  These guys are somewhere in the middle.  The artwork on the back provides a very small amount of traction, but not too much to where it makes difficult to quickly slide cards between each other.  I'm currently running 100 card decks in the EDH/Commander format, so mash shuffles and piles are the two primary ways to randomize.  These sleeves are thick, so if you are used to thinner ones you may need to adjust a bit when mash shuffling, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, which brings me to the next topic:

    How protective and Durable are they?

    Probably the most important aspect of card sleeves is how well they protect! One thing I learned early on the hard way with some relatively expensive Magic cards was not to skimp out with penny sleeves.  You are going to be rolling these cards around on tons of different surfaces, from beaten up wood to cheap card shop plastic. Sleeves are meant to take the brunt of it. After around ~50 games and hundreds of "bored at my desk shuffling while reading Reddit" with Fluttershy, she is holding up surprisingly well.  I was skeptical of the images on the back at first thanks to previous experience with graphic sleeves chipping away at the artwork and leaving marks, but these guys seem to avoid all of those issues. 

    Expect a few surface scratches, but there aren't plastic sleeves out there that avoid these, and you can only really see them if you look with a glaring light:

    Another thing to worry about is how well the sleeves block stuff from getting in once filled. The surfaces I mentioned above will probably have dust and other tiny particles that can get in and scratch away at your cards.  Generally tight is good. These guys do a great job of closing off the insertion point.  You can see from the image below a bit of dust trying to creep in already. 

    This is actually where Vinyl Scratch differs from the others.  Her sleeves are actually a bit tighter for whatever reason.  I've had a few people I mentioned this to run into the same thing.

    (Vinyl on the left, Trixie on the right)

    I grabbed some white border cards to show the difference.  It may not look like much, but hers are a millimeter or two smaller.  Honestly though,  all of these sleeves do a great job of hugging the cards. I'd just pick your favorite horse and run with it.   

    In the end, I've beat the crap out of these things with an almost OCD level of shuffling and they are still going strong without any noticeable blemishes. I couldn't be happier there. 

    How do they look?

    The final thing I'm going to cover here is the look.  I've run sleeves in the past that "fog" over with scratches in the front, and others that don't provide a clear image in general.  These guys pass the test with flying colors here.  All of the cards look crisp and clean through the front plastic piece.

    The actual pony images on the back are high resolution with smooth lines and the usual detail you'd expect from out flash animation cartoon equines.  Trixie looks sufficiently smug, Fluttershy is cute, and Pinkie ridiculously happy. 

    One thing a lot of people worry about with graphic sleeves is variations in the art, and that doesn't seem to be an issue with these.  You may run into a judge or two that dislikes sleeves with images in general, but these hide any kind of damage or marks very well. 

    Overall, I'd say these are well worth it if you want more pony in your life. While some companies just love to milk the brony money machine via cheapo knockoffs, Ultra Pro is going all out with the same level of quality you'd expect from any of the big sleeve makers out there. Two pieces of plastic stuck together may not sound like something that requires any sort of complexity, but in a world where your deck might be rockin 500 dollars worth of cards, every little variation counts. 

    If you want them, both Cool Stuff Inc. and Toywiz have them in stock.  Ultra Pro doesn't sell them on site.

    Seriously though, Trixie is a card sleeve. It's not stopping here either. Expect world domination VERY SOON.