Saturday, January 16, 2021

A Tale Of Two Berts

A recently concluded REA auction had a pretty sizeable offering of 1969 Mod Generation Stickers original art. You can click on the appropriate labl to see but I've shown a half dozen or so of these previously.  A couple of the originals have already been shown here so I'll skip those and there's one little headscratcher as well.

There's nine to show.  Here's Bert:


All well and good but this is also Bert:


It looks like a second Bert label was created and incorrectly applied as that particular elephant-flared individual is known as Louis in the set.  Charlie is pretty far out man:


Is Herb looking for some herb?


Judy, Judy, Judy....what kind of instrument is she holding?!



Personally, I've always liked mini-skirts:



Why does Paul have a cane?


Meanwhile Pete is really groovin':


Maybe Phil's playing along?


The set was definitely a period piece and at this point I think all the actual flower children are in their 70's (or worse). A lot of nostalgic fads have come and gone only to be reignited a generation later but it seems to me the hippie fashions did not really re-appear in the 90's.  Maybe Pete and Phil are playing an elegy.....



1 comment:

David Paul said...

I have some info on the Topps Mod Generation on my website bubblegumcards.org. In this group you have here Bert is actually number 14 and number 26 is Louis in the final test set release. So someone must've just put Bert's name on Louis's image.

According to David Saunders, Norm Saunders son, all 55 cards in this series were designed by an unidentified Topps freelance artist, presumably Trina Robbins. She told me she did the roughs and was really mad that Norm changed up some of her designs. David says least 36 of the images were painted by Norman Saunders. This was a test issue which proved unsuccessful so it was not widely released.

There were 55 stickers in this series. 1 of them are still unidentified mysteries. 27 were designed and painted by Norman Saunders.

The finished works of art were not considered appealing enough for general release. The test issue proved unpopular and they were not widely distributed.

You can read more about this elusive set at David Saunders website.

http://www.normansaunders.com/ModGen%2C01.html

List:

01 Alice
02 Bill
03 Susan
04 Ray
05 Phil
06 Ann
07 Diane
08 Dave
09 Phyllis
10
11 Barbara
12 Teddy
13 John
14 Bert
15 Paul
16 Helen
17 Pete
18 Fred
19 Jimmy
20 Irv
21 George
22 Millie
23 Jerry
24 Rose
25 Roy
26 Louis
27 Natalie
28 Ellen
29 Don
30 Jackie
31 Herb
32 Dotty
33 Shelly
34 Michael
35 Donna
36 Mary
37 Charlie
38 Betty
39 Minda
40 Gloria
41 Marie
42 Nancy
43 Connie
44 Tony
45 Richard
46 Judy
47 Joe
48 Lois
49 Frances
50 Larry
51 Barry
52 Joan
53 Fay
54 Esther
55 Chris