Gee Whiz Kids

My rule of thumb putting together my collection of Topps type cards has always been that anything I have on my wantlist appeared in a retail pack or store setting at some point. I exclude standalone candy and gum products for the most part unless they are pretty early (nothing really after the mid 50's) and my interest in Bazooka comics peters out by the mid 60's. I collect some proof items (examples of Bewitched, Bonanza for instance) but they are not part of the core mission.  Those two are in the price guides generally--and are thought of by many as being part of the "Topps experience"-- but there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make the grade or just wasn't known about when the formative guides were published in the 80's and early 90's.  This puts some things into WTF territory!

Take a look at this grouping below:

The little piece of cardboard in the upper left measures 1" x 1 3/4", so you can get a feel for the other items in that scan, which I will address individually.

The cardboard piece is the biggest head-scratcher in this group. I got it from Bob Marcy's amazing non-sports notebooks at the 2015 National, although Bob was not in attendance at the time. He had it with the 1949 X-Ray Roundup cards in a binder and given his depth of knowledge on all things non-sports, that's how I have categorized it.  However, it's slightly bigger than the cards proper and the jagged short edge is interesting.  I am thinking it's related somehow to the vending boxes for this set but I'm really not too sure.

This bad boy seems related to X-Ray Roundup as well. It's 1 1/16" tall and as you can maybe see, is folded in a bit.  I am loathe to unfurl it given its fragility and it seems a little too wide for the set but right now that's the attribution.

This one's easier and belongs to the classic 1952 Look 'N' See set.

Last up, 1957 Isolation Booth as near as I can tell although there's a few later candidates:

Unopened packs likely yielded all the red cello viewers but it's pretty amazing these have survived. Topps would issue sets needing viewers into the 60's; I think they are pretty groovy!.

Two Of A Kind

Hof on the heels of our last adventure, I thought I would take a look at two more subjects that spanned 15 years between Topps sets. While I can't come up with a subject like Captain Kidd, whose image from an 1888 tobacco set was carried through in multiple instances by Topps well into the Summer of Love, a couple of other subjects were reused between Look 'N' See in 1952 and Who Am I? in 1967.

First up, we have the sage and smart Albert Einstein.  Take a gander at this 1952 Look 'N' See card; it's particularly well executed:

I love the outer space background on that one! Compare that to his 1967 Who Am I? card, which I will first show with its coating intact:

That's actually a pretty crude rendition but it shows how the original source was still used by Topps.

Queen Elizabeth II fared a bit better over the years.  In 1952, recently coronated, she looked like a million  pounds sterling:

In 1967 she still looked just as young as evidenced by this appearance on a three card panel:

She certainly fared better than Churchill in '67 as he looks like a hungover Jonathan Winters, no? Hard to believe she is still queen but it's true!

Just Kidd-ing

As I was preparing the previous post here at the ol' Archives, concerning the copying of certain 19th Century artwork by Topps, particularly Indian Chiefs and Pirates, I decided not to use Captain Kidd in the comparison. However, as I was looking at the various examples of his cards, I noticed something neat.

Take a look at this N19 of Kidd, which I cribbed from Cardboard Junkie:

Now, we know form our previous post that the images from this set were used by Topps for X-Ray Roundup in 1949:

I have to say the image of the Captain hanging from the gallows is quite picturesque.....




OK so continuing on, there is a Captain Kidd card in 1952's Look 'N' See set:  

Wow-it's almost an exact match to the one from '49 but on closer inspection it's redrawn.  






Now let's look at Scoop, from 1954:

Arrggghhhh!  


I thought the chain was broken but then I looked at the flipside:

Those sneaky so-and-so's just copied the Look 'N' See picture-the background is an exact match! 




Now at this point you would think Topps was done with the captain, but n-o-o--o-o-o-o-o-o-o, he makes yet another appearance 13 years later in 1967's Who Am I?:

Sheesh!

This is actually bad news-now I will have to do a comparison not only of the 1888 Pirates of the Spanish Main set with X-Ray Roundup but of Look 'N' See to Scoop and on to Who Am I? as there are numerous subjects shared by all these sets.  Sigh.....

(Apologies again for the vertical spacing. Something strange is happening with Blogger and I can't figure out how to fix it.)