EDICOLA NEWS: THE REVIEWS nr. 332
album: Wednesday (Panini)
stickers: 180 (1-161, X1-X19)
starter pack: album + 5 packets 4,90€
box: 24 packets (5 stickers per packets) 0,80€ each
blister: 5 packets 3,90€
Trick or treat? It wouldn’t have been bad to write the review on Halloween evening, but Panini preferred the trick to the treat, only packets arrived on newsstands, the album two days later. Patience! We were very curious about the creation of this collection, a potential success or a sensational misstep? Only Panini will know the sales figures later, we hope the public decides to reward the formula, the substance and the editorial proposal. We, in our small way, will do it!
In an end of the year full of editorial news and splendid surprises, Wednesday also emerges from the darkness, a successful TV series and album that retraces the first season with guessed hints on the characters and also on the most iconic moments of the series.
All in an absolutely interesting proposal, excellent quality album, with portrait cover, perfect matte paper, effective graphics, in some ways essential, but precisely for this reason well thought out. No cards, packets at 0.80 euros, the right number of stickers in total and no exaggerations that have often characterized sticker collections in recent years, not just Panini. If you want to be a pain in the ass, it’s a shame about the box containing just 24 sachets, boxes of 50 are now rare, but at least 36 would have been a more welcome solution.
On the other hand, it is clear that the Modena publisher aims to limit the damage (i.e. returns from newsstands) and to sell the blisters. In the past we hypothesized that the type of box (24, 36, 50) could be a point of reference to understand which collections Panini is focusing on or which I believe could be more successful, it is probably not so automatic, even the recent Spider-Man it has the same type of box.
Album of uncommon beauty, from those of us who come from the world of comics, the use not so much of photos from the set but of drawings, dark as the context requires and which make the whole even more enveloping and in line with the tastes of those approaching, especially among the younger ones, a similar collection.
In the first part of the album the presentation of the main characters and the context where the TV series takes place. The first page could only be dedicated to the Addams Family which brings back memories of childhood and old black and white TV series but also of cartoons, for the less young among us. Often the re-proposal of something already seen does not correspond to expectations, so it is right to twist and dedicate ourselves to Wednesday, one of the most iconic characters of the series, certainly the most teen style.
Central poster guessed right, the unlikely dance steps during the school party dance have gone viral on social media, probably far beyond what could have been imagined, creating an aura of myth around the TV series even if we are talking about a recent product and still in progress of development. The Rave’n then becomes the mainstream of the album, with the special, but also shaped stickers and Wednesday dominating everything. It’s not a poster in the strict sense and that’s a good thing because it integrates perfectly with the rest of the album, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find it stuck up in some bedroom of aspiring queens of the night.
In the second part of the album we relive some moments from the television episodes, selected not so much to reveal all the secrets of the show but on the contrary to introduce Wednesday and his “friends” to the world. The captions are another successful aspect, at the beginning of the page a text that tells what the stickers will be able to (partially) show, alternating them with effective phrases, aphorisms, dedications, thoughts that we could also find in school diaries.
The stickers are partly classic collections linked to the world of cinema and television, re-proposing “frames” of the episodes, on the other hand they are graphically important, with rough details in relief and always leaving that aura of mystery that distinguishes the whole album. Classic oval shapes and perhaps a little more could have been done on this.
The starter pack also includes tattoos, without numbering and which we do not find inside the boxes and blisters, therefore a nice gadget but not part of the collection, in our opinion. The hope is that the album can find the success it deserves and thus be proposed again perhaps later with the arrival of the second season.
(EN)