Cool As Ice

Here's another gem I got reacquainted with during the stay-at-home order we're currently under here in Michigan.

Here's a little admission, I was a huge H-U-G-E Vanilla Ice fan back in the day.  I remember getting the To The Extreme cassette tape in December of 1990.  I bought it for myself while Christmas shopping for others.  Not only did I know every word to every song I also know how those songs sounded when the batteries to my Walkman were about to die, which usually happened to and from school on the bus.  I had posters up and I even read his, what I know was highly fabricated, biography from a book I got from the Scholastic book order.  Easy to say I was the perfect demographic mark for the Ice Man.

Here's some nice things I'll say about Cool As Ice.  It does a pretty good job of encapsulating some totally early 90's fashions.  Let's see, it features Michael Gross (dad from Family Ties) and Kristin Minter (older cousin from Home Alone).  It's quotable.  There's three nice things for ya.

But, this is a bad movie.  I like bad movies though, so I do legitimately like Cool As Ice.  It's overtly obvious that this movie was simply thrown together to cash in on Vanilla Ice's rocket ship like ascension to the top of popular music --  To the Extreme spent 16 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, and sold 15 million copies worldwide.  But, the movie made zero sense to the point it's comical.  It cost $6 million to make but only had a box office gross of $1.2 million.  Ironically, after being on top of the world a year prior, Vanilla's run was pretty much over by this time as a paradigm shift to grunge music took the place of Ice's sequined and airbrushed pop-rap.  It's kind of a shame too because Vanilla is a pretty charismatic guy (as evidenced by all the reality TV he's been a part of over the years).  As good as the timing was for his music career, this movie's timing was equally as bad for his acting career.  I would be genuinely interested in seeing him in a movie role where he wasn't just playing a caricature of his rap caricature.

As for the card, this is of course inspired by ProSet's 1991 Yo! MTV Raps card set.  I think, like Cool As Ice, these cards are an example of the cash in on the card boom of the early '90s, or, as it's come to known as, the "junk wax era".

ProSet's 1991 Yo! MTV Raps

I've done a number of cards in cards in the past.  They all, sans the B-Rabbit card, have fun with the gentrification of rap music.  This card is obviously not an exception.  What does set this one apart though is that I've gone little deeper into the design, giving the card a little more flava with a full bleed card back complete with a Johnny Van Owen Yo! Fact!