EDICOLA NEWS: THE REVIEWS nr. 328
album: Mare Fuori seasons 1-2-3 (Cocoricò Italy)
stickers: 192 (1-192) + stickers stick & stack
starter pack: album + 2 packets 3,99€
box: 40 packets (5 stickers per packet) 1,00€ each
“Nun te preoccupá, guagliò, ce sta ‘a figurell’ fore”
The incredible success of the RAI TV series, carried away by the refrain of the main song of the soundtrack, also becomes (finally) a sticker album. Or rather two, because after this collection which retraces the first three seasons of the fiction, the fourth season album is already expected in February 2024.
The risk with albums of this kind is to find something approximate, stripped down. The series is so successful that some might think you could easily sell anything related to it, without too much effort. Cocoricò, a new entry in the publishing world of trading cards, fortunately thought of it differently and the final result is largely satisfactory.
New entry? Often behind new publishers there are already well-known names that for various reasons present themselves with a different guise. For certain details this album reminds us of Gedis products, among the best sticker publishers, it’s a shame they stopped. The fact remains that if this is a first album with the plan to make others, not just Mare Fuori, well the start is absolutely encouraging.
We particularly like the format, where the story of the first three seasons is alternated with many details, curiosities from the set, information, even messages which, in the small form of a sticker album, can make young people who read them think about what happens to them environment. Moreover, our solidarity stickers project was also born with a similar intent.
As the TV series is set up, the album also has continuous time jumps between the present and the past. This is because page after page we discover the most important characters, it is also a good idea to point out the names of the actors and actresses who play them, accompanied by their stories, but at the same time the story of Mare Fuori continues until what has not yet been revealed at the end of the third season.
The album also wants to have a diary effect, therefore space for messages on the walls, for phrases that can also be from all of us, even without ever having lived the experience of prison. This aspect is important, the album does not fall into the mistake of glorifying the crime, on the contrary, through the details it underlines the story of young boys who often fate or the context where they found themselves led them on the wrong path. It doesn’t mean that they are innocent, but at the same time it has the aim of not making them feel too distant from girls and boys, their peers, who watch the episodes on television and who we hope will also purchase this product.
Naturally the album cannot have an exhaustive role in what has been seen in television, so it is dedicated to giving ideas, which have a logical path but which cannot replace the pleasure of viewing. But if you are still among the few who have not seen Mare Fuori, the stickers can be a continuing spoiler. On the contrary, if you have seen the series, attaching the stickers, leafing through the pages, reading the texts, we assure you that the desire to do a marathon of the first three seasons while waiting for the fourth will be very strong.
In addition to the 192 stickers, most of them “frames” from television images, but of excellent quality, we find the stick & stack stickers to attach and detach in the central pages of the album. They do not have a numbering so, at the moment, it is not known how many there are and they will hardly be orderable as missing stickers. Opening a box of 40 packets we found 21 and none of them were the same, even if some show the same design in a different size or with a different detail.
Given the stick & stack formula and the images on the album of the prison premises, we believe it would have made more sense to place the characters and therefore hypothetically allow us to create stories or in any case move them from scene to scene. It must be said that this album has a potential target audience aimed at the world of teenagers, perhaps less interested in this game formula. Probably more to use logos and writings to put on diaries, notebooks or scooters. Perhaps the publisher, even if it is not written, thought of this double function and was probably right.
Excellent overall quality, we will find out if the Mare Fuori public is sensitive to a product like this with the sales data. In our opinion, the final result is really interesting and successful, even in its contents, which are never banal, on the contrary with a search for detail that we greatly appreciated.
Album strongly candidate to enter our top album chart of 2023.
(EN)