She's a multimillion-selling crop (country-pop) artist, a perfumer, and a maneater. Head over to your local Albertsons and take a gander at the greeting cards section and you'll discover Taylor Swift is also adept at slapping pictures of cute puppies onto cardstock and writing gems such as "Wow. Just Wow," on the front, too.
Yep, the 23-year-old mogul has the card market cornered, partnering up with American Greetings last year for a line of sugary-sweet visual cards that include images of everything from kids doing handstands to hands full of rose petals. So, how do the cards, uh, stack up?
The images are accompanied by cutesy, cursive-heavy fonts, everything a tween girl could want -- heck, there's even a Facebook page dedicated to the cards. And, just this February, Swifty's cards went digital -- now you can send syrupy salutations from your smartphone, too.
Now, I'm a sucker for cards with dogs on them. In fact, if I'm going to buy a card, I get only one if it has a dog on it. As much as I want to throw up in my mouth whenever I hear Swift talk, I found myself holding one of her cards last week, walking up to the checkout line.
Design: 3 (out of 5)
I think the pugs are definitely cute, but I don't like the hats they're wearing. In fact, I picked this card only because the dog card selection was pretty sparse -- and I had picked out a semi-decent dog card for someone else already. I don't think dogs need hats to make them cute, and the font is really hard to read -- it definitely looks like a kid has written it. But the colors (magenta and blue) are really pretty and you can't look at dogs and not smile -- well, at least, I can't.
Originality: 3
I feel like I've seen a lot of dogs like this. I do like the colors and feel like the card is definitely geared toward teenagers -- which isn't an audience I see targeted too much in the card section.
Text: 3
The font on the front is definitely hard to read -- not really a card for a little kid even though dogs with hats are on the front. The inside is a simple, legible "happy birthday" (not capitalized). I really like the sparseness of the inside.
Envelope: 4
The front of the envelope has a really cool frame where you can put the recipient's name into. The seal has a really cute butterfly on it. I appreciate these two details but don't know if I'd pay an extra $0.50 or so for the extras.
Value: 2
This card cost $3.49. What happened to the days of $1.50 cards? I can't believe this card cost so much, but it actually was the exact same price of a non-Taylor Swift-branded card from American Greetings, the other dog card I got that wasn't nearly as fancy. And, to find out the price, I had to look at Taylor Swift's autograph on the back, along with a Taylor Swift Productions-branded butterfly. I almost returned the card to the rack after I saw her name, but I was out of time.
Impact: 3
If I got this card, I would smile at how cute the pugs were but probably throw it in the recycle bin quickly after. The card would be more about the message inside, since there's a lot of blank space (which I like), but cute dogs in hats make me sad, even though they're so cute. If I noticed that it was a Taylor Swift card from a friend, I would definitely think that my friend was young-hearted -- and I wouldn't be surprised if someone like my mom got this card for me.
Overall rating: 3
Overall, It's a cute card -- like Taylor Swift, who, you have to admit, is cute. But I think it would have been cooler if she went by an alias instead of plaster her name on her cards -- it seems like an advertisement for her, not a work of art. But then, there are those pugs . . .
What do you think of Taylor Swift's card line? Is it covetable or worth skipping over as you're perusing? Let us know in the comments.
