What the Heck is going on with Panini Unparalleled?

Most of my Football card news comes from searching for "2016 Redskins" on the old popular auction site and comc, so I had never heard of Panini Unparalleled until a search come up with the monstrosity above. First off, it took me a while to find Bruce Smith, tucked away in the top left like a bad "Where's Waldo". Not really the best use of space on this card, and the whole set is pretty much like that, a small cropped photo among an expense of refractory, foily insanity.

Then we get to the name, Unparalleled. In an age where the hobby is lousy with parallels, we have a set called Unparalleled, that has so many confusing parallels that Cardboard Connection had to make a graph breaking them all up, and I still have no idea if the Bruce Smith above is a base card or a "base teal wedges" parallel. The whole set looks like a bad acid trip (or maybe a good one, my acid trip knowledge is admittedly low.)


There is also a bizarre mix of retired and current players, including a couple Bills Hall of Famers in the above Bruce Smith and Andre Reed in Redskins uniforms, two players that combined played in 438 games with the Bills and 75 with Washington. I find something really weird about seeing old-school guys like John Riggins and Roger Staubach on "Base Rupture Base Teal SP" parallels.

I am not here to bash Panini, I have always liked the Prestige brand and really like the 2016 Donruss, but this, this is going to far.