Boy Crazy Card Game from early 2000's (featuring REAL boys)

[CableCat]

Okay soooooo... I went to a local card shop for the first time. My partner and I walked through the front door, and right at the front was a countertop, and on that countertop were bins. One bin was labelled "Old, out of print (OOP) card packs, $2 each" in black sharpie. So I peeked through the small selection and stumbled upon around 10 or so purple packages with early 2000's "girly tech" graphic design with bold text that said "BOY Crazy!" on the front of a big heart.

It reminded me of the "girl board games" of the 80's that my mom and aunt used to play like "Perfect Wedding" (which they still have and we played together) except it was from the time of my early childhood and thr design gave me a mega dose of nostalgia. It just reeked of girls being pandered to, and the design was reminiscent of the companies that wanted to be "not like other girl companies" so instead of pink tones and curly fonts a la Barbie, they used purple and green and funky bold fonts to look "cool" and "modern".

I had to buy a pack.

I bought one and was seriously excited about it which was probably an anomaly for the shopkeeper where a Magic: The Gathering tournament was happening with mostly male participants. He told me the cards were hilarious, and he had opened some packs and taped them to the outside of a regular customers package order as a joke to throw off the guy's mail deliverer.

I opened my fresh pack of cards, and was not disappointed. It is the 2000's version of multiple boy's dating profiles, boys from ages 12-22. The card packs state that these are REAL BOYS, "not celebrities, attainable and relatable boys" (paraphrasing). I doubted the truth of this statement (nowadays the profiles would be AI generated and the photos purchased from a stock image site) so I did some investigating. And no, they ARE REAL. The company that made the cards had a Boy Crazy website which I checked out on the Wayback Machine (it is amazing, check it out for your Neocities inspo!) and the website touted the next issue of Boy Crazy MAGAZINE and how to NOMINATE a local boy to be featured in the magazine and cards! They had a whole "Boy of he Year" contest where players and readers could vote on the featured boys. The winner would get a $10,000 Scholarship(!!!) and a modeling contract.

I laughed all evening with my spouse as we talked about the cards and the fashion of the time, and what it was like being a little girl back then. I don't know if a game like that could come out nowadays.

And the next day, I went back and bought all the rest of the remaining packs.

I'm making a deck, and I plan to go to the local gamer bar with friends and play this with them when everyone is sufficiently "loosened up".

Does anyone else on here know about this game, or did you have it growing up? Did a sibling or friend have it? Apparently the "Jason Colorado" Card is going for like $400 on ebay. 0_o

[shevek]

I've never heard of this before, but I just googled and I am looking at all the cards together with a friend and my girlfriend now this is absolutely wild. I remember this type of girl content, especially in some tween magazines, like everything was about boys and their ~dreamy eyes~

This would probably not be released nowadays. Reading some romance stuff about how this 12 year old boy is a "cutie" and is gonna seduce the reader or all the girls with his eyes is so odd and didn't age well on the cards

I wonder how it is to have been printed on these cards. "Yeah when I was 16, I was in a girls trading card game for my looks" 

[Badgersaurus]

These are hilarious. I kinda love the graphic-design of them, though, with the ridiculous fonts and the purple and green (my favourite colourscheme).
I also love that the wikipedia article on it cites this (rather critical) page, which looks to be untouched since it originally went up in 2001 or so. Neat!

[CableCat]

I also love that the wikipedia article on it cites this (rather critical) page, which looks to be untouched since it originally went up in 2001 or so. Neat!

That review actually sums up what my friends an I talked about. But she's more focused on the girls. I don't thing she's wrong on her take but definitely one-sided. We also talked about how the cards encouraged competition among boys to be the "Hottest hottie" and to have a bunch of girls drooling over them (like encouraging boys to seek fame and infamy and be players) which could also be unhealthy. Also the youngest boy we pulled from a pack was like 12, and if you're like 17 or 18 and seriously rating the dude it could be pretty weird.

I remember being like 12 and 13 and having sleepovers. From what I've talked with my partner about, growing up as a girl at that age was way different than growing up as a boy, and us girls were definitely more likely to be very innocent or ignorant when it came to things like this. And with the way it is marketed, I can't imagine the average public school 16-and-up girl playing this game. Maybe it was different then. But I definitely feel this is a 15 years old at most game.

But then that also brings up that it's weird if the girls playing are probably around 12-15 years old, but the oldest guy we drew from a pack was 23 years old. That's a YIKES age difference!

Even still, the way I put it to my friends is that this was supposed to be a counter to the celebrity culture of the time, and that culture did market "hot actors and singers" of those ages to girls in tween magazines. So it isn't surprising for the time. Definitely not okay now though!

[CableCat]

This would probably not be released nowadays. Reading some romance stuff about how this 12 year old boy is a "cutie" and is gonna seduce the reader or all the girls with his eyes is so odd and didn't age well on the cards

Oh yeah, definitely not. It's also like heteronormative in an unhealthy way, which people are definitely trying to move past now. It's like the closest thing to a beauty pageant for guys that I've seen. It was trying to be progressive and alternative for its time, but looking back it's kind of... not, haha.

I wonder how it is to have been printed on these cards. "Yeah when I was 16, I was in a girls trading card game for my looks" 

I saw a Youtube video when I was trying to find more info on these cards where a lady was going through her binder full of them. A commenter said her husband was in one of the cards! And we found out why the Jason Colorado card (#154) is so expensive: https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20210510-785/ TL:DR, Jason (Jason Holck) promised anyone who mailed in a copy of his card a lifetime supply of free Canabis seeds on a December 2020 livestream. He was working at a Canabis breeding company and did it to promote the business. I guess if he has his own card he could turn it for a profit now!

I was reading on the Boy crazy website on the Wayback Machine about how the selection process was done. These people set up tables in malls and had a photographer on site!

[CableCat]

Continuing my "Boy Crazy Saga":

I hosted a "Crack-A-Pack" event on Voice Chat with friends tonight where I went through the rest of the 10 packs. 90 cards total, 99 including the original pack I bought. We also (facetiously) rated the boys on a scale of 1-10 as part of the intended Boy Crazy experience. We had some great laughs! A few cards threw us off. We also learned a bit about late 90's and early 00's teen boys, and that was pretty hilarious.

The Top Boy of all 99 cards was Charles Colorado (#144) with an almost unanimous 10/10 rating. In the words of my friend, "He was raised by his uncle, so I feel like he comes from a broken household, but it says he was raised to be sweet and sensitive so they pulled through and he was raised right and is overcoming his broken house! Also that 90's hair, it's awesome. And he's already a model!" And my other friend, "He looks like he could be from Forks, Washington. His favorite car is the Eclipse, but he could be IN Eclipse! [The movie] He's a vampire!" (Note: I voted lower for him because he said he wanted to be financially stable... in 10 years.)

The unanimous 0/10 Boy was Ryan New York (#26) because his flavor text says he is "All for the women's lib movement!" but then immediately follows with his idea of a great date being one where the girl doesn't mind footing the bill. Yikes! It also says that Ryan says his worst quality is that he doesn't clean up after himself. It is worth stating here that Vic Washington (#108) was a very close runner-up for lowest rating, but we gave him a unanimous 1/10. I think we would have also given Vic a zero, but we drew him much earlier in the event so we were being more generous.

There was one boy whose favorite cause to support was stopping the melting of iceburgs, but his favorite movie was also Titanic (1997)! That one made us double take and start laughing!

And the one thing that REALLY threw us all off was when the Boys listed a favorite actress, it was always Meg Ryan. My guy friend who was in the chat asked "What did Meg Ryan even do?? What was she in?? She wasn't even the hottest actress at the time..." And then the second time we saw Meg Ryan listed, he had looked it up and said she was in Top Gun and When Harry Met Sally at that time. And THAT was when it clicked for me. I asked him on the call "Was she the lead actress in When Harry Met Sally? Was she the one in.. THAT scene? The diner scene?" And nobody knew what I was talking about at first because none of them have seen that movie! So I had to explain it to them and I had to share the clip of the scene. I re-checked through all the cards three times. There are cards that list favorite ACTOR, and those ones have more variety like Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson. But only 3 cards that we drew list favorite ACTRESS, and they all unanimously agree: Meg Ryan.

We concluded this was probably an in-joke or "insider knowledge" related to that specific movie scene. It was both hilarious, but also something I didn't necessarily expect to learn or want to learn. IT was also another awkward "Yikes!" moment.

It is funny in hindsight sine this game is old, but also makes me glad nothing like this is made nowadays!

[wygolvillage]

This is such a funny little relic. I'm not even attracted to guys but I'd love a deck of these just for the novelty of it 

[PainterFight]

Oh. My. God. This sounds like one of those bizarre rabbit holes that I could dive into.