2013 BBM Rie Tanaka Gymnastics Card Box Set

Japan's most important women's gymnast is Rie Tanaka - like America's pixies (Carly Patterson, Shawn Johnson, Kerri Strug) she's successful, attractive, and has a great personality (I am told). BBM is always happy to release a card set that'll sell, and with the success of other women-in-sports issues why shouldn't they release a special box set just for her?

The base cards in the set are all found below, giving a sort of historical timeline from her birth with a heavy focus on her adult career, plus several modeling shots. Autographs, memorabilia, and other special cards are found randomly inserted into the boxes. This might not be the first time Rie's had her own card set, and she's appeared in many of BBM's other women-in-sports and gymnastics issues. I bought my base set cheap, because many collectors want master sets, and buy multiple base sets to collect all the special random inserts.

Each card has a caption. I'm going to give you another.

 "Her first time on a mat."

 "Didn't like wearing pants while doing sports, even at a young age."

 "Her first corporate sponsorship was Hello Kitty!"

 "Family members exploited for no reason"

 "She was so beautiful her friends all looked blurry around her."

 "She collects sculptures."

 "Practicing her pose of the letter Y."

 "Where IS my crown?"

 "I use the internet too!"

 "You didn't think it was this big, did you."

 "Uneven Hands"

 "Butterfly Hands"

 "Jazz Hands"

"RIE's neck, you know you want to touch it, don't you, freak"

 "She got another corporate sponsor!"

 "Here's a card image from 2010."

 "Here's a card image from 2011."

 "Here's a card image from 2012."

 "You wish you could go on a date with Rie."

 "She CAN read. Trust us."

 "Rie hasn't discovered deodorant, so nobody sits next to her."

 "She can do gymnastics in the stands!"

 "Rie gets angry." (By far the least flattering image in the set.)

 "Playing in the Puddles"

 "Choco-holic"

 "Oh yeah, she's a gymnast, so we should remind people of that."

"She made the face too much, and it stuck that way for more than a month."

I like the set, despite my goofy comments above! I wonder if they'll make another next year...