It depends on who you believe I guess but you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks things are fine for the Carlsbad card manufacturer. We have had multiple reports that Upper Deck have indefinitely suspended all release dates on all products, entertainment AND sports. This has been coming from distributors, as well as shop owners and at least one now former employee.
Upper Deck have stated that they will be releasing Basketball and Hockey on time according to SCU and this interesting tweet from Upper Deck regarding Hockey. Upper Deck are saying things are fine, but that’s far from true. I have to admit we may have misjudged the situation in the last Upper Deck post, because just 24 hours later we found out that according to Ed from SciFi Cards Upper Deck have cancelled the whole Marvel and DC Vs line of cards. This line is one that they had problems with for a while now and recently pulled the plug on free promotional packs that were to be issued on the annual Free Comic Book Day event held across the US. The amount of money they put into the promotion of this card gaming set means that pulling the plug at this late stage had to have a major finical impact.
The Upper Deck statement that sets are on time is interesting because it only appears to cover Hockey, giving no reassurance about other products and leading to speculation about the now late Iron Man 2 film tie in set. If the rumblings are right then this set may not be coming out at all. I have to stress the point that this is NOT proven information, it is information that is coming from multiple sources some more reliable than others. With the number and variety of sources we know something is going on, and we are trying to verify exactly what that is. None of these sources have commented on the Iron Man set specifically, it seems t be considered to be a side issue when compared to the sports sets potential release freeze, but the lack of an entertainment set could prove to be a disaster for the already on the ropes company. This may have something to do with the Upper Deck entertainment departments lack of resources, if my information is correct they have less than 5 members of staff left in the entertainment division. The staff layoffs are no secret and have been reported on several times.
What ever is going on Upper Deck are not doing well, they cant be when there own distributors are telling people hat they are out of the game. They may not be out just yet, but it looks increasingly like Upper Deck are on life support.