(dramatic tune)
(upbeat music)
(humming)
♪ I said whoo ♪
- I just butchered that song completely.
Today as promised, we got a special deck review now.
A few months ago, I actually reviewed Drake's playing cards,
I don't know if you guys remember.
The title of the video was
"Why Drake's Playing Cards are Garbage."
And the video did really well,
so I guess a lot of people agreed with me
that those cards were indeed garbage,
the design was so lazy, just not well thought out
there is no thought put behind it.
They did however print with USPCC,
so the quality of the cards were there
but the cards themselves were lackluster
and quite frankly they were trash.
Myself as a playing card collector and a magician,
I mean I hold playing cards to a higher standard
so that's just me going into this
you're coming into my ring.
I'm sure Drake would agree that my music sounds like crap
so I'm here to tell you that his cards are also crap.
But that's not who were discussing,
today we're discussing none other than Abel, The Weeknd.
So probably the second most popular hip-hop R&B artists
to come out of Canada except for Justin Bieber.
We don't...
We kinda gave him over to The States anyways.
Happily represented by The Weeknd,
he's an incredibly successful artist.
He even has his own record company or his production company
called XO and that is actually the company that released
these playing cards.
Now these were done in a very very small limited window.
There's no way to know how many of these have been printed
but my guess is probably anywhere from one to 2000,
I don't think he would have went more than that.
So a few months back, I try to get on the site
and try to buy these cards,
but obviously they were sold out instantly.
I had to wait for eBay to pick them up
and then waited a couple months
and then finally got my hands on them
and now we're gonna take a look at the highly anticipated
Weeknd playing cards which are aptly named
after his latest album "After Hours,"
which has that whole Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
vibe to it.
So without any further ado,
so this is a tuck case as you can see
it says, "The Weeknd After Hours Playing Cards."
It even has that Bicycle feel that you would find
with normal Bicycle playing cards.
On the top of the deck you have that XO logo
as I mentioned his production company.
And on the side, it says, "Standard Size, Standard Pack,"
will get into that a second, okay.
Then you have the amazing back design,
now I'm actually in love with this back design again,
emulates the traditional Bicycle playing cards
but with this crazy spin on it
which also reflects on his album work,
it's all kind of this lick a frog,
get high type of vibe to it,
that's it for the tuck case.
Before I move on to the cards,
I just wanna mention as well that this box is a lot bigger
and I'm not talking like taller but a lot thicker
than your average deck of playing cards.
Also nowhere does it say, USPCC, little bit worried.
Before we get into the back design,
we're gonna get into the actual deck.
Now, look how thick that is,
right here we've got a comparison
between a normal deck by USPCC versus this deck.
Quite clearly, this is not USPCC
which absolutely surprised me
because they blatantly took the Bicycle back design
even on the tuck case, even on the back of the cards
and tried to sorta emulate that classic feel now,
it bugs me that if you're gonna go that far
into designing a deck, why don't you just find out where
classic playing cards are printed not hard
there's one company in the United States that does it.
But obviously this was not printed in the United States
probably somewhere overseas
because the quality of these cards is terrible.
Here's a fan, that's how the fan looks like,
look how clunky chunky that is.
And again, they're so thick
so it makes it really awkward to handle these cards,
they're very stiff.
I almost think there's like a fake air cushion,
like they wanted to make an air cushion on the back of these
and if you can see with the macro lens here
there is these tiny little pockets
but they're not even pockets,
they are lumps which is super weird.
Normally air cushion have little pockets
so the air flows through
and they make your cards nice and slippery.
These guys just went the other way
and just put a bunch of rough lumps on the back of it,
so kind of a weird thing to do.
Let's get into the back design,
now as I mentioned back design for me is absolutely killer,
I love what they did here.
You've got that frog in the corners,
you've got the XO logo,
you've got that bleeding broken heart
and you've got The Weeknd himself
walking down the strip in Las Vegas much like
blinding lights video and it has this,
yeah, it has this kinda trippy weird vibe,
you even have like that skull
which is in the middle here is like the shape of a skull
and so it's got this dark edgy kind of vibe to it.
I've checked to see if this was marked,
it is not marked but it is, I just noticed that, okay.
So this deck is actually not a two way design
which is weird, which is funny to me
because if you look at the back design of this,
so there's like a mirror pattern happening
that just goes to show you whoever design this
probably his first rodeo in terms of designing playing cards
because anybody who designs playing cards
knows that you want to mirror it diagonally.
It's like putting a mirror down the middle of it, right,
which makes it symmetrical
but does not make it a two-way design.
I mean kinda cool
because then you can figure go out a magic trick
that you wanna do there
and maybe put one of the cards upside down
and you can find that card later.
But again just an oversight from the people designing it.
This might be a shout out to The Weeknd
or anyone else in the hip-hop game
that wants to put out a deck of cards,
I will happily work with you pro bono, for free
to help you properly design a deck of cards.
I'm not talking about the actual artwork in here,
the artwork is fantastic we're gonna get into that next.
But I'm just talking about sort of those little things,
those little things that matter.
Let's take actual look at the artwork in depth,
totally different from Drake's deck.
This guy absolutely crushed it out of the park
with his design and art like blew me away,
I did not expect to see this much detail
and this much work put into a deck.
This deck is 100% fully custom artwork design,
which makes it bitter sweet
because the quality of the cards are crap.
I kinda wanted this to be really good
especially when I saw the box,
I was like this is Bicycle, yes, and no it isn't.
First things first, let's take a look at the Jokers.
The Jokers are identical and they feature this frog
standing on a skull and again, you'll find that skull design
and the frog on the back of the card.
So this whole theme is about sort of him hallucinating
and tripping out in Vegas, which I think is really dope.
They are absolutely identical
and they have the little X in the corner for the pip.
Again, same font being used as USPCC
which surprises the heck out of me
that they haven't pursued legal action (laughs) on this
because they're pretty tight with their designs,
let me tell you.
You can't just take a USPCC design
and be like I wanna change it up a bit and take it elsewhere
because even if I were to reprint
let's say a normal Bicycle back and change a few things,
they wouldn't let me,
they're very very strict on their traditional design
so I would expect if they caught wind of this
they might be a little upset.
Let's take a look at the hearts here,
this usual what the hearts look like
so these little broken hearts which is really dope.
I mean that just...
I love that small added touch
that doesn't take away from the deck,
it doesn't make it something completely unrecognizable.
Those hearts are featured on all the cards.
And now let's get into the court cards here,
so we got Jack, Queen and King of Hearts.
One thing you're gonna see on all of these suits
is the Jack, Queen and King always have a Doberman
or two Doberman, a lady or an angel in a statue
and then they have Abel himself The Weeknd,
doing something whether that's having a drink,
having a smoke or licking a toad,
but they do change it up, which I thought was really cool.
So at first when I saw it, I was like,
oh they just repeated the court cards over and over again
when they actually didn't, they change the artworks
so check this out.
That's the Jack features the Doberman there,
you got the Queen of Hearts.
And then my favorite card in the entire deck,
that is The Weeknd actually licking a toad.
So you got that red and green sort of melting together,
the color scheme on there it's just so wild.
Let's go into the diamond, so the diamonds again kinda have
a feel like that diamond is melting
like there's continuous theme of like
this acid trip going on which is really dope.
The Jacks this time, the Doberman have their mouths shut,
they got some red eyes going,
you got the Queen of Diamonds looking like an angel again.
And then the King of Diamonds, he's here
enjoying a cigarette or a smoke or maybe something else
who knows he's in Vegas.
Moving on to the clubs, same thing for the clubs
they are very sort of just off, just like hand-drawn
but cool and artistic, I love that.
Jack of Clubs this time,
you got the Doberman growling and snarling.
You got the Queen, she's actually a devil now
and so on the red card, she had a halo
on the black card she has horns
and then you got him sipping some drink here,
I don't know what he's got going on there
but he's drinking some Cognac or something expensive I bet.
Spades, let's talk about first the ace of spades again,
dude, how like they got away with literally stealing
the ace of spades like the Maiden on the Maiden backs,
you got a Abel instead here.
The After Hours font is very cool
it says, "The Weeknd XO ink Las Vegas USA X 2020."
(mumbles) completely custom aces spade this is dope,
the Spades again had this sort of drippy weird flow to them.
The Queen has horns, the Jack is barking
and the King of Spade
is throwing up some dice and he's smiling
and that's such a cool design once again.
So that is it for the design of the deck.
Let's talk a little bit about how they handle not a lot.
This is me trying to spring them.
(cards scratching)
It takes all my strength.
(cards scratching)
And you see how they shoot out like pop pop pop.
That's because like my hands aren't even strong enough
to spring these consistently.
(cards scratching)
Ain't that weird.
I mean again, like we looked at the thickness,
I would have to take away a third of the deck
for it to be a normal sized bike deck.
And then if I were to do that now we're talking.
(cards scratching)
Now they actually spring.
(cards scratching)
You hear that sound how weird that is,
listen to that.
(cards scratching)
That's not your average sound is a little bit weird.
(cards scratching)
Fanning looks like this,
so you really have to like,
you really got to do like a pressure fan
to be able to get anything that resembles a card fan
because otherwise a thumb fan is gonna look
just clunky, they just keep getting stuck here.
So not a great feeling deck,
great for just obviously just cardistry
if you're doing packet cuts and stuff like that.
Handles really well,
they do have a very thick cardboard feel tune,
I should have mentioned they are made of paper,
they're just a really thick stock, kinda gross.
It feels like you're handling an invisible deck
like the rough and smooth.
That's all I gotta say about the feel of that I mean,
there's nothing much to say like grabbing a double lift here
feels like I'm grabbing four cards.
So, that is The Weeknd's new deck
After Hours playing cards by The Weeknd.
Final thoughts, super impressed with the design,
the artwork there is unmatched even in the magic world
in the playing card industry, this guy went above and beyond
and put the same work in that most of these guys out there
creating deck for a living are doing.
Aside from the asymmetric back design,
but that can be forgiven because perhaps it was intentional,
I don't know.
Other than that tuck case is kinda cool,
it's got this gold look to it, I think that's fine,
it's okay to little bit gimmicky in my opinion.
Maybe some embossing and some actually cool
like tuck design, I would love to help him design a deck
or any popular celebrity out there making music
and wanna branch out into
the magic world and playing card world
I would love to help them out
and actually make something worthwhile
that you'd be proud to own and be proud to play around with.
These unfortunately are gonna stay in the box,
stay on a shelf.
So guys that was it, I hope you enjoyed this review,
if you did leave a like, subscribe if you're new here
and don't forget to go tag The Weeknd on Twitter
and span him and let him know that I'm offering my services.
Will see you on the next video.
Peace.
(acoustic music)