Upper Deck is showing the SpongeBob SquarePants CCG, which looks about like you’d expect for a game where you’re trying to convince the most people to eat Krabby Pattys. A casual look (all I’ve had time for) didn’t reveal any interesting game mechanics, but nothing egregiously stupid, either. However, in the thin-line-between-stupid-and-genius department at Upper Deck is BreaKeys. As the website fails to reveal, they are plastic key-like things, which you insert into one another and twist to see which one breaks. Yes, breaks. Why hasn’t anyone done this with a collectible game before? The guys at the booth said there will eventually be characters and stuff printed on the fobs. If they stay away from making it too genre-y, they could have a great bar game, for cocktail waitresses to sell right off of their belts; if they don’t, they might have the next POGs. You can even build stuff with the pieces, after they break.
Also at Upper Deck, unconfirmed rumors paint an entertaining picture of booth-setup day. It seems that when they inflated the big inflatable Hulk that stands there to promote the upcoming Marvel and Hulk games (they aren’t showing either at the show), they forgot to put its papery purple pants on first. “The guy was standing there trying to wiggle the purple pants onto the Incredible Hulk. And people were just standing there, thinking, ‘That’s not something you see every day.’ “