legends of pleasantville?

i scanned a few more cards from my neglected monster boxes. i bought a lot of 2009 topps at target back in the day, and so i had a decent stack of their gold legends of the game inserts.  here are a few:

jimmie foxx

lou gehrig

honus wagner

what struck me when i was looking at these cards was that only the player was colorized. the backgrounds were left in black & white. it reminded me of that movie "pleasantville" where tobey maguire and reese witherspoon find themselves in a black & white tv show (thanks don knotts) and help bring color to the residents therein. jimmie, lou, and honus would have been initially ostracized in pleasantville until the rest of the background catches up to them.

i am guessing the color and black & white motif was a conscious choice by topps, similar to what they did that same year with their "ring of honor" insert set. here's thurman munson's card from that set:

in this case, the background would have been purposely made black & white, as i assume this photo was a color one.

however, there are some more modern players in the legends of the game insert set that have full color photographs - bob gibson

mickey mantle

and nolan ryan 

are examples, and i found another earlier player whose full image was colorized, so maybe it wasn't a fully thought out approach by topps.