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Hello and welcome to Talking Cards with the Juice. It is just me, the Juice, today with a very special April 1st mini sode. I just wanted to make sure that we got this out to you tonight because there's a few things I wanted to cover that I've been meaning to talk about for a little while. As you all know, this is your source for all things greeting cards. And today I will cover a few quick topics in this mini sode Hallmark and how they are just ruining the greeting card hobby. They have all the licenses now, they pretty much have a monopoly. They say they are trying to 10 times greeting cards, but really they're just 10 times, just multiplying the junk times 10. And it's just a really sad state for where the hobby's been since they've taken over. Without the competition, there's no reason for innovation. When was the last time that we saw them come out with a really cool SSP greeting card? Where are the pop-ups? Where are the shadow boxes that we really like? You know, they really got to cater to their audience better. Get me excited about greeting cards again. I'm tired of seeing the same bland products year after year, you know. And when it's my birthday, getting the same card just in a couple different fonts or something. The words don't mean anything anymore. It's all the same stuff. They've lost all meaning. I'm no longer touched by greeting cards like I was. And when was the last time you saw them even do a really awesome postcard? No, nothing. And this goes along with all the price increases that we've seen. There's been no justification for these price increases. When the quality of the product is just going down, they know that we're gonna pay it because we're their only, because they're our only source of cards. So it's just been ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that their website has become a total joke. Whenever there is a nice new greeting card out, whether it's Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, they're just making up holidays just to sell more cards too. You know, just when you think that we have all the products and it's dilute as possible, they're just gonna create another, you know, love your brother-in-law day or what have you. And we're gonna buy them because we're suckers. So yeah, trying to get it on their website though, you know, just the carts, the checkouts, it's just killed by bots. Bots have taken over the hobby. But what is really, really ruining it is to greeting card breakers. These guys get cases and cases of greeting cards, cases and cases of Mother's Day cards, you know, even the get well soons. You know, if I want to see someone in the hospital and get them a really quality card, I gotta go through a breaker now. They manage to get all the product and then they price it to the point where it's totally unjustified for me to even do it. You know, it's either I gotta pay these overpriced for these overpriced cards with these breakers, or you know, hope that I can get it through retail. Maybe get some, get lucky and find like a restock at Target or Walmart or CVS or something. But yeah, when it's your only access, that's all you can do. Not to mention all the green card scammers out there. You know, you expect to get a high quality Hallmark card, you finally get something nice, and then you just got a Microsoft Office printed card off of a printer, or they claim that it was an e-card, so you get an email with the card. It's just it's just garbage. So I just wanted to take a have a quick rant of all the things I've been unhappy with because we've all been feeling this about the green hobby. We've all been feeling this about the greeting card hobby. This is talking cards with Grand Sami and a juice. It is just a juice today. You can listen to us all the time for all of our greeting card takes. That is what this podcast and this hobby is all about. And happy April 1st, everybody.