A little more information, regarding the trading card in question, from the writeup above.
Not long after the first
production line had shipped, people noticed the now-infamous "
FUCK FACE"
scrawled on the knob of the bat held in Bill Ripken's
1989 Fleer baseball card. After it was 'discovered', there were three attempts to 'fix' it, in subsequent printing runs. First came the
hasty "
scribble" variant, where the phrase in question was scribbled over with a
magic marker. Next came the "whiteout" version which means, obviously, that someone in production had taken to using white-out to solve the problem. Finally, for the remainder of the printings, a more typical, but none too elegant method was used to obscure the remark -- a
black box. One wonders why they never
airbrushed the card for a more
aesthetic result.
How did this happen? To this day, no one is
100% sure. The original theory was that someone from Fleer scribbled it on to the print, but that was
downplayed once Ripken 'admitted' that one of his teammates had pulled a
prank on him. This said, I find it hard for this statement to hold water. Based on what I seem to remember from my youth, Ripken, while by no means a star player like his
brother, was said to be something of a
prankster himself. Thus, I have suspicion that this was his own doing. Furthermore, even if his teammate(s) had pulled off the phrase, how would it have been guaranteed that the text would be aligned, perfectly
horizontal, as it was in the photo?
I also don't
discount the notion some have put forth, that, despite their plea of innocence, Fleer knew about the card, but took no action, because the
company knew it would result in more publicity and sales. The fact that it
did - and the fact that Fleer put out three subsequent variations on the card, creating an "
easter egg hunt", in essence -- both lend
credence to this idea.
For what it's worth (
no pun intended), the "whiteout" card is the most "valuable" of the four variations generally commanding four times in value what the original and the "scribble" cards go for. The "black box" variant, of course, has little value, other than perhaps some
intrinsic interest, an
epilogue to the whole controversy.