The Last Pale Light In The West

Last week's peek at Hopalong Cassidy lollipops and candy promised a look at the cards released by Topps in 1950, and here we are.  It's not hard to describe the impact Hoppy had on early children's television - "massive" comes to mind quite easily - but he also had outsized influence for Topps. Their first set using a licensed character, Hopalong Cassidy sold and sold and sold,  brought a larger card size (2 1/16" x 2 5/8") and also kicked off a Topps marketing campaign dubbed "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" that would encompass eight different sets in total.  A cross-promotion with Bond Bread also saw Topps Hoppy cards included with loaves of bread.  

I've previously covered the various Hoppy packs in a post still holds up and you can click on over HERE to see them.  I will show the penny packs, as I think this was what most kids would have seen, based upon the number of surviving wrappers and packs:

You can see the "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" slogan endlessly repeating on the white wrapper as well:

The release of the set was somewhat complicated.  Topps originally prepared eight separate sub-series that used actual titles from the film depicted and contained anywhere from 21-24 "episodes" accordingly. Each was taken from the more recent Hoppy movie releases (the film release dates range from late November 1946 to July 1948) and assigned a unique color sepia overtone.  This is how the first 186 cards break down:

Numbers	Title	Color	Subset Total
1-23	Dangerous Venture	Blue	23
21-47	Borrowed Trouble	Brown	24
48-71	Hoppy’s Holiday	Pink	24
72-95	False Paradise	Light Green	24
96-117	Unexpected Guest	Black	22
118-141	Devil’s Playground	Dark Green	24
142-165	Fool’s Gold	Red	24
166-186	The Dead Don’t Dream	Purple	21

You will immediately note that there are some odd subset totals when it seems like 24 cards per title would have been the goal. This makes some sense, partially because it's neater but also because there are suggestions that the press sheets used for this size of card during this era used an array of 96. If you break the above into two groups of four, the first totals 95 cards while the second comes to 91. It's possible Topps messed up the "Dangerous Venture" subset for the first group and then had some kind of similar problem with the second but I don't believe that's the case.  Also in the mix: not enough stills were provided to them to get a nice, even 24 subjects per title, or perhaps there were not enough usable images for some. There is also the possibility titles were subbed out and replaced with newer ones as sales figures came in and that could even have included seeding of just a couple of cards from an upcoming title in with the then current titles.

Here's a look at each title:

 

The sepia tints are not all as subtle as that pale looking blue; this brown is pretty much on point:

 

Whereas pink is tending a shade toward red I'd say:  

Those are lining up a little weird, sorry.  I wanted to highlight the fact these can have odd cuts, like the one seen on "Hoppy's Holiday" in glorious pink. Some more now, light green first:

Can black really be a sepia tint?  Topps sure thought so:

Here's some dark green for ya:

The Hopalong Cassidy graphic on the series 5 and 6 cards is smaller than those from the preceding four, which makes me think that first group of four was all printed, or at least designed, together.

Moving on with red:

And a very purple purple:

The graphic regains its size for the last two series of the "low numbers" as you can see above. The highs really do have shockingly bright colors and can't be classified with the tinted cards. They have even more funky cuts sometimes than their predecessors:

Ignore the pumped up color on the last one, it's not mine and I had to nab it from eBay.

Each of the first eight titles also had a companion header card inserted into packs that was printed on foil-these are very desirable, scarce and also a condition nightmare today. While the cards are not widely graded by PSA, the foils, at least relatively speaking to the rest of the set, are. Of the 126 foils submitted to PSA, none grade higher than a 6, with the majority ranging from 1's to 4's. Here's a group shot, from an old Huggins & Scott auction:

Those are in what I would call typical condition for the foils. I wonder if Topps was playing at the "silver screen" with these?  The backs have details on the length of each "movie":

Those may have been withheld until the second batch of four titles were unleashed; it would have been odd for Topps to commit to two series before seeing how the first one sold. A late release of high numbers followed, covering two 22 card series, both in the same garish colors seen above, which look like overexposed Day-Glo and stand in stark contrast to the muted sepia tones of the first eight:

187-208	Silent Conflict	Multicolored	22
209-230	Sinister Journey	Multicolored	22

We know these came later thanks to the five cent wrapper, which is also a scarce item:

You can see the original eight subset titles listed on the nickel pack wrapper, also indicative of packaging once both series were being issued..  These were sold in panelized form, with two cards per panel, and scored, leaving little nubs behind when separated:

Again, scarce items today. Some foils were also panelized and as such, almost impossibly rare now (and show the nubs quite well in relief):

If you tote it all up, there's 230 cards plus the 8 foils. That a whole lotta Hoppy!

Hopped Up

Way back in 1950, when television was really starting to take off, a need, quickly voracious, for content developed. With some foresight in this mad scramble, William Boyd, who had gained fame by portraying the good-guy cowboy Hopalong Cassidy in dozens of old "oaters" that were staples of Saturday movie matinees in the Thirties and Forties, acquired the rights to and packaged up a gaggle of his old movies and had them formatted for the boob tube.  If Hoppy wasn't the first kids fad fueled by Tee Vee it wasn't far behind.  It also set the stage (sorry), along with the Lone Ranger, for a phalanx of kiddie TV Westerns to follow.

Topps took advantage and made their first major foray into licensed character products with Hoppy.  A long series of cards were issued (stay tuned for a post on these), along with a virtually unknown saddle bag pack with candy inside.  I've posted, albeit briefly, about the saddle bag before, which is a thing of wonder:

For a product made of thin carboard, it's very well-designed.  Check out the back:

Given the ingredients, I suspect the candy was like Sugar Babies, or very similar. The one thing the packaging lacks, despite the ornateness, is color. Topps took care of that with a product called Hoppy's Wagon Wheel Pops. You got fifteen pops, in a box that had some other features beyond lolly-holstering:

Friend o'the Archive Dan Bretta, provided the above color image and most of the ones below.  Here's the all important indicia:

Topps made a go of selling candy for about eight years, including a run of Christmas-themed lollipops, but shut down their Candy Division in 1951. Thanks to Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Guide to the Non-Sports Cards, we know what the lolly wrapper looked like:

There was a nice surprise inside the box as well:

As you can see, that is puzzle number two.  California Carlson was one of Hoppy's sidekicks and a kid could have a rootin' tootin' good time connecting the dots there to cipher what he was up to with that lasso. We'll get to a count momentarily but the big prize was the advertised picture of the star of the series on the box back. Mr. Bretta sent me images of two of these. I think I'll dub this one "Hoppy Gazing":

Here's Hoppy atop his horse, Topper:

You can see how the box lid fit over the box bottom, like old sets of record albums.  I have one of these myself, (a proof) and scans of two others:

It's muddy but that upside down wording states: "Please note: Every box of Hoppy Wagon Wheel Pops features one of six Hopalong Cassidy portraits and one of six Hoppy Pop Puzzles"

So good clues there, although I'm not sure why that statement isn't on all the other portraits I've seen so far except this one:

The pictures with the statement are all smaller and show a lot more white border than the ones without it and I wonder if Topps reissued Hoppy Pops again in 1951 before their license ran out. This one doesn't look cut down but check out Hoppy's gun-it looks hand drawn! There's a lot of added whites on the jacket and hat too, which is quite possibly the handiwork of Ben Solomon.

It's plausible they each come both ways but that needs to be verified somehow and these are now hard things to find.

Right now we have one Puzzle:

#2 California Lassoing

While 5/6ths of the portrait checklist is as follows:

• Hoppy Gazing
• Hoppy Atop Topper
• Hoppy Next to Topper With Gun (and Topper looks partially illustrated to me)
• Hoppy in Relaxed Pose
• Hoppy Pointing Gun In Front of Mountains

I'd love to get the portrait checklist finished off if anyone has the last subject handy but think finishing the puzzle checklist off could be "California Dreaming."

Contract High

I don't know if his estate is moving items after his death on June 18th of this year but I expect a bunch of Willie Mays' personal memorabilia to hit the market in the coming years.  One such item is already upon us, although it could have come from a different source-his 1954 contract with Topps, which popped up recently at Mile High Auctions:

Mays started out with Bowman in 1951, was with both them and Topps in '52, then Topps only in 1953 before appearing in both company's 1954 and 1955 sets. He was in the military for most of the 1952 season and all of 1953, so Bowman probably didn't have him locked up on auto-renew like Topps did.  Mays was also buddy-buddy with Sy Berger, and, I believe while unrelated to the events being described here, he holds the record for appearances in the most Topps sets (including inserts and supplemental issues) covering his playing days from 1951-73.

He's card no. 90 in 1954 and you can see he signed his contract on March 8th.  Topps did something weird with the distribution of the set after the first series, so it's not clear if he's a second, third, or fourth series card (or possibly fifth but I'm not positive it went that far in '54) but given how late the date is, he probably wasn't locked up until the third array of cards was being composed. As a reminder, his 1954 card is one of the best ever issued of him:

The back notes his time with Uncle Sam:

The contract itself has enormous historical value of course, but I like how simple the language was. That would change, as would the methods used by Topps to retain players over the years but the other thing I like about it is the signature of Turk Karam, who was employed by Topps as a talent scout and all-around "Sports Dept. guy" before they had an official Sports Dept. 

Mays would earn his only World Series ring with the Giants in 1954 and was the National League MVP to boot-Say hey!

Very Nice

All sorts of wondrous non-sports items have been popping up of late, including some really tough Topps test cards. Today's entry is Captain Nice, a failed 30-card test set from 1967 TV show that featured the exploits of a mild-mannered chemist named Carter Nash. Trying to exploit the camp-superhero craze that began with Batman, with a good helping of Marvel-esque angst, the show bombed, despite it being the product of Buck Henry's crazed mind; the success he had with Get Smart clearly could not carry this unfortunate turkey. Launched as a mid-season replacement show on NBC in January 1967, it lasted fifteen episodes and bit the dust by the end of August.

Given its lackluster network showing, Topps created a test set that was bound to fail. Despite the show being aired in color, the cards, which were rendered in black-and-white - albeit with a colorful cartoon on the back of each one - were kind of a letdown. It's a bit odd but Topps hadn't really yet got around to using full color for their TV show related tests in 1967, which I'm guessing was due to the higher costs for color printing. Anyhoo, a proof sheet that provides a look at all 30 cartoons recently had its debut on eBay; check it out:

 

I'll provide a closer look in a sec, but first check this out-the front only used two colors and this proof didn't use the photos, while the back was a full-on four-color test.  Doesn't this look odd?

Here's the card backs, in four groupings:

These are very reminiscent of the cartoon used on the backs of most Land of the Giants cards.

Super colorful, right?

Assuming the show had seen more success than it did, I wonder if the test would have done better featuring the cartoons on the fronts.

Topps repeated the top row of the sheet at the bottom, hence the count of 30 subjects vs an array of 33 cards. Kinda weird but not unheard of with licensed characters.  Here's the row-by-row breakdown:

1 2 3

29 19 14

10 26 10 (more on this shortly)

29 13 23

18 21 11

5 15 25 

12 20 7

22 9 24

4 17 27

8 6 30

1 2 3 (repeat of first row)

You will note there is no number 16 and thanks to the images over at Trading Card Database (click on over, it's a great site) we can see what the two number 10's look like (Topps must have glitched on the second digit):

Combo #1:

And combo B:

Yup, a real yukfest!

Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins sent over some wrapper scans that are also very interesting.  Note how the packs were sealed with the stickers that usually appeared only on the fronts of the packs; Topps used a small ingredients label with these (from a recent find) to seal the white test packs normally because of the bubble gum sold with the cards, so I wonder if this set even hit a retail test or if it got pulled just prior.

Wowsers!

Here's the intro to the show for those of you that are interested, it's pretty ghastly: