Iconned myself again

I made another trip to the dollar store (have I mentioned I do this for fre--oh, yeah, I did, several times. Forget I wrote anything about it) and, impulsive dreamer I am, I gambled another buck on another pack of Panini Americana Heroes & Icons cards. If you need a refresher, click HERE for what I found in the first pack several weeks ago.

After opening another quintet of these cards, I hereby suggest another moniker for this series: Panini Presidents, Swimmers, and Astronauts. There just ain't a lot of variety in this assortment of "heroes and icons," and I suggest the good folks at Panini expand their definition of those terms next time out. I would love to see a fireman, Matter-Eater Lad, even a hero sandwich--anything except another Olympic swimmer (though my Summer Sanders exception still applies).

Now, I can't complain about the best card I got this time: Abraham Lincoln. You could argue a George Washington card would too it, but that would be like arguing about a Reggie Jackson or a Shooty Babitt. I mean, they're both awesome, right? And this Abe card is pretty cool, though the text on the back doesn't even give George Washington a place at the table:

To the overwhelming majority of historians there is no debating that Lincoln was our greatest president."

Whoa! That's pretty definitive, Panini. I hope you'd keep a more open mind when choosing between Reggie and Shooty.

After ol' Honest Abe, anything might seem a letdown. President William McKinley suffers a little bit from being in the same pack with one of the all-time greats. Hey, I just noticed two assassinated chief execs in one group of cards--that's a little odd.

Next up, it's swimmer time, and today's athlete is Rowdy Gaines. He seems a decent enough guy, and I always have love for those '84 Olympians in particular, but...eh, yeah.

Then we get to the requisite astronaut portion of our pack, and this time out it's Charles Duke and Dick Gordon. Again, much respect to our moonwalkers, but two of them? I would rather have had a little more variety WITHIN the pack, let alone among the two I've bought.

So I think I'm done with the Heroes & Icons cards. I'm only gonna be disappointed by the presidents, swimmers, and astronauts from here on out. At 20 cents a card, these are kind of cool, but I still think my money would be better spent looking for 1982 Shooty Babbits.