What's The Big Idea?

I've not touched upon Woody Gelman's Topps archive (hey!) of Idea Sheets much during the long time this blog has been active but a few of these ephemeral bits o'paper came to light recently that made me take a closer look at them.  These pop up occasionally, usually on eBay and offer fascinating glimpses into the archaic ways of old filing systems at Topps, in this case maintained by the New Product Development Department. Don't get me wrong though, a lot of stuff was never really organized at all in the barely controlled chaos there.

Speaking of ancient ways to store things, Topps also had albums holding full reference sets of cards that were taped in front and back, that they kept in-house at Brooklyn HQ, just like we see below. Some set binders -not nearly close to all there would have been though -  were auctioned in 1989 by Guernsey's:

Nowadays you would, if physical storage was required, simply use binders with a variety of clear sheets and holders to keep the cards intact and free of adhesive. But until such things were developed and had widespread availability (late Seventies basically), paper and tape was the most secure and efficient method, despite the damage it would cause to the cards. Damage though, was not something Topps cared about, the cards were essentially without real value to the firm once the retail and overstock releases were over with.

They also stored uncut half-sheets for reference at Topps, often folded into quarters (yikes!) to allow for easier retrieval. Of course, a ton of material was tossed, with some rescued from the refuse bins out back over they years. If not discarded some long time after production had ceased, the myriad albums and folders and drawers that held what would have been a fairly complete record of production at the company ended up pillaged, auctioned and, in some cases just unknowingly scattered. And even then, stuff was thrown out all the time, often at the behest of Topps Art Director Ben Solomon but sometimes just at random. 

We are left with remnants to decode then, and while it's something I obviously enjoy doing, it can also be frustrating as there's almost never a complete picture that can drawn. So when I recently looked through some Idea Sheets, it occurred to me that Woody Gelman may have been a two timer!

Take a peek at this sheet for Freedom's War, a 1950-51 issue that's a favorite of mine:

It's pretty plain vanilla and uses sub-categorizing ("Freedom's War") for the set name.  As you can see too, some thought was at least given to cross-referencing the Idea Sheets, which happen sporadically.

Next we have a 1959 Fabian sheet, also non-descript and this one clearly delineates "copyright merchandise" above the set name, if only the date was filled in here and elsewhere:

Now, take a look at this sheet for Goofy Postcards:

Clearly this one was meant to be passed around at Topps, with a basic rating system added, along with a method to track progress. Progress of "what" is an open question but these sheets look to have served multiple purposes in the Topps offices as "published" is often seen written atop them. Like all the handwriting seen here, such all-caps scrawls were Gelman's. Hold the thought that Goofy was issued about two years before Fabian was created. Here, a 1963 Monster Midgee sheet follows suit.

Now I'm wondering if Woody kept two two storage systems, a double set of books if you will.  Freedom's War was one of many sets created by Gelman when he was partnered with his bestie Ben Solomon at their mid-century art agency. They spent a little more than a decade running the agency until they came in-house at Topps. It seems possible the early Idea Sheets, without the right side graphics, were from the Solomon & Gelman days, whereas some of the later sheets after their formal hiring seem a lot more Topps-centric.  But the chronology doesn't quite mesh and, even allowing for Topps being Topps and things never perfectly aligning, it seems plausible Woody indeed kept his own set, even while creating the official ones for the company. He may also have used what was at hand at times if one variety wasn't in easy reach, but it sure seems like he had two different archives at his disposal.

I seriously doubt this can be proven one way or the other, but it does fit in with Gelman's massive, personal intake of ephemera that was stored at his home with some, eventually, moved to various commercial spaces on Long Island over close to three decades. 

Boxing Day

I'm feeling a bit lazy today and thought I would just take a look at some interesting box graphics from the early days of Topps.

Very much a design that shows how quickly Topps issued this set in the wake of the Korean War, the Freedom's War box has some fairly basic graphics that don't really represent the great artwork in this set:

The "Save 'Em Trade 'Em" slogan was used across the Topps line of cards starting in 1950, appearing on retail and advertising pieces as a unifying meme to get the kids to buy more product.  It also was coincidental, excepting the reissues of Flags of the World and License Plates in their larger size, with their issuance of two card panels in nickel glassine and ten cent cello packs and ran until the end of 1951.  Fighting Marines was the first panelized set that didn't feature this wording since the beginning of 1950 so the campaign ran for almost two years.

Much more colorful was the Bring 'Em Back Alive box, which appeared before Freedom's War:

And before that, we had Hopalong Cassidy, which actually featured a photo and was the first entertainment property licensed by Topps:

Yo-yoing into 1951 Animals of the World had some decent graphics:

The motto isn't on the box but it is on the wrapper:

Baseball Candy even got into the act, as you can see on this scan of an ad provided by Friend o'the Archive John Moran:

Ringside?  Check:

Those ad back cards replicate the box graphics, one of Topps' best efforts I think. And ewhile we are in the sporting arena, let's not forget Magic Football:

Just like Animals of the World, you have to look at the wrapper to find the motto:

Now there is an anomaly out there as well and it belongs to Ed-U-Cards.  This 1952 photo from one of their ad campaigns is very intriguing, especially since Topps produced the Lone Ranger set for them in 1950 and there is a somewhat close connection with Baseball Candy:

Those early Ed-U-Cards graphics are not as cartony as their later issues and given the wording on the retail box, I am starting to wonder just how much of a connection there was between Topps and Ed-U-Cards.  Or maybe Solomon & Gelman's art agency is the connection.

What The Hellcat?

In 1950 Topps released the first series of a set called Freedom's War and it was a big hit. An additional series followed and if it wasn't for some high profile protests in the spring of 1951, at least one more series after that would have been issued.  The saga of this set is a story for another day as it has so many anomalies and variations a detailed post or two is necessary to decode it all.

Today we are looking at tanks, specifically the M-18 Gun Motor Carriage, affectionately referred to as the"Hellcat" and which was manufactured by Buick during World War 2. Why?  Well, I'll tell you...

The first series of Freedom's War consisted of 96 cards.  These were followed by 7 special cards featuring tanks which were diecut, unlike the rest of the set. after that an additional 100 cards appeared and the set ended up with 203 cards.  That odd number has always bothered me as it does not make a whole lot of sense.

One of the tanks, #101 (our friend the "Hellcat", comes with two different colored backgrounds, one mostly orange and the other predominantly yellow.  However, if you look at these cards you will see the picture is quite different when comparing one color to the other.  Here, take a peek at the orange:

Now for yellow:

The tank is spaced differently and there is far less detail on the non-tank portions of the yellow card. There are other, more subtle differences as well if you look closely.  The back of each is identical:

Yellow seems to be a little harder to find and there is a suggestion in the hobby literature that non diecut versions of the card, unlike the other 7 tanks, do not exist.  I have no way of confirming that at present so who knows if it's true.

So what happened?  I suspect either one of three things.  The tanks were sandwiched in between both series and appear to have missed in of the print runs as well, indicating production problems affected them.  Either someone misidentified one of the M-18's in the production process and two different looks were created for the same tank or two different teams worked on the tanks and one inadvertently was assigned the same vehicle.  Instead of fixing the error, Tops went ahead and issued two different #101's as the cards were selling hot and heavy. Alternatively, a different tank could have been intended for one of the backgrounds and for unknown reasons it had to be pulled and the just subbed in what they had with the M-18 and gussied it up a little bit. By the time they would have done a correction, they were on to the next series and probably decided to scuttle the tank series so it was never fixed.

While a master set of Freedom's War would total well over 500 cards, a complete set should total, to my mind at least, 204 cards and not 203 and both versions of #101 should be included.

Penny Arcade-1950 Freedom's War

War cards were a big Topps staple in the early 1950's. World War 2 had ended a scant half a decade earlier and unbelievably yet another conflict, the Korean War, was raging. The boys in Brooklyn took advantage and issued a large set of cards called Freedom's War over a two year period from mid-1950 to mid-1952. I won't get into all the permutations here but there are card stock differences, single cards, two-card panels, three price points for packs, a series of die cut tanks that lost the cut and then were pulled completely, at least three separate printings and a bunch of other stuff I'll get into in a really long post someday.

Oh yeah, they looked really good too:



Come on, how great is that shot? The backs are typical Topps fare at the time:



These are sized at 2 1/16" 2 5/8" which was a common size in use at the time.

Today though, I want to look at the penny wrapper, which is outstanding:



Topps was likely trying to up the patriotism quotient in their battle with Bowman, a company known for its staunch pro-government stance.