I stumbled upon an interesting article on these Kraft panels today and I think the author may be a member here as well.
https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2019/...bering-scheme/
I was trying to find a list or photos of entire boxes or flat boxes to verify a personal discovery I made today. I have several sets of these and collected a variety of panels, flats and boxes for the Steve Garvey combinations, but had never taken notice beyond the different pairings, maybe because I didn't have any variations for the Garvey boxes side by side to notice. i'll have to pay attention when I eventually dig them back up again to see.
What I found today in a stack of about 30 flat boxes was that there were two different products featured. The most common was the plain old Macaroni and cheese dinner, but maybe 1/4 of the boxes I had were a slightly different product with slightly different packaging, spiral macaroni and cheese dinners. The only real difference is the mac & cheese dinner had a dark blue box color and the spiral mac and cheese uses a light blue box color.
that made me wonder if the same player panel pairs could be found in the different dinner boxes and within my small sample, i confirmed 3 panel combinations were found in both dinner varieties.
Now for the card variation purist, there is no difference between the two boxes when it comes down to the cards. Once removed from the box in either panel or single form, you would have no idea which box they came from. This raises an interesting question for some fanatical collectors...Does this constitute a true variation?
For me, I would definitely want the two different boxes if they were to feature any of the 5 Garvey pairings. In theory, there could be up to 5 more Kraft boxes that I now need for my collection! I have flat boxes and full unopened boxes for each of the 5 panels and in at least 1-2 or more cases, a proof or unfolded/unused box as well. The want list may have just grown by 2x-3x if all 5 pairings have dual box types. I am that kind of collector, at least for the Garvey stuff, that would welcome this variation even if it did not affect the actual card itself.
This may be old news to some, but thought I would share just in case anyone else was as oblivious to it as I was.