Fortune Favors The Old...

...Old Topps novelties that is!

I am trying to solve a mystery here today, namely one involving an issue of indeterminate dating called Magic Funny Fortunes.  MFF is one of those issues where you place a piece of red cellophane over an image to see a hidden picture underneath that is usually the answer to a pun. It looks like the classic penny tattoo tabs issued by Topps in the 50's and 60's but there is no transfer feature.  I'll show the interior first, which features Jack Davis artwork.

You will note the little production rip you would see along the top is missing.  As I've seen this same image a few times and actually have another as well, I assume it's a salesman's sample (as are many similar products sans rip).  The answer is "As Window Washer" in case you were wondering.

Now here is the exterior of the wrapper:

Here is the all important indicia: 

That looks Canadian to me, which is reinforced by the Made In USA info that appears above the ingredient list:

No copyright year, which is little surprise. I have two sources for the date, one says 1961 and the other 1968. However, if we look to another set from what may be roughly the same time frame if the earlier date is correct, 1960's Football Tattoo, we may get a clue:

It's the same indicia, which may help with dating, but the Football Tattoos feature only NFL teams and US Colleges so presumably it was issued in the US as well as, and quite mysteriously, Canada. See here for a more detailed discussion of that particular point. 

The earlier Baseball Tattoo issue of 1960 made a clear distinction between US (Brooklyn is detailed on the indicia) and Canadian issues (the latter clearly says "Made in Canada" on an OPC issue) but perhaps the laws in Canada changed mid year.

Looking at Topps Hockey and CFL Wrappers of the era, which are all Canadian only (in theory), the 1960 issues have "Made & Printed in USA" on the wrapper indicia followed by "In Canada Made & distributed by O-Pee-Chee Ltd" while the 1961 issues just say "Made & Distributed in Canada". So it looks like Topps had a kind of Jekyll/Hyde thing going on 

Anyhoo...Chris Benjamin described this issue without attributing a date or country of distribution in his 4th Sport Americana Non-Sports Guide and Tucker & Simon's NSA Wrapper Guide also shows the same wrapper that I have above.  Todd Riley's www.non-sport.com site has a listing for both US and Canadian issues but the wrapper shown for each listing is the same as the one above as well. Finally, Chris Watson's Non-Sports Bible also shows the same wrapper as everyone else but has Canadian and US listings for the set (attributed to 1960).

I am going to assume, unless some other evidence turns up, that the Magic Funny Fortunes are a 1961 issue that was distributed in both the US and Canada using the same packaging. If there's more information out there, please let me know.

Northern Exposure

Put on your mittens lads, it's up to the semi-frozen north today!

I was lazily scrolling through eBay the other day, a pastime I regularly engage in and stumbled across a wondrous offering from BMW Sportscards, namely a full box of 1960 Baseball Tattoos, in O-Pee-Chee livery.  Yup, 240 penny packs of the first Topps supplemental baseball issue just lying there for 55 years.  Look at this:

Pretty cool, huh?  The blurry box flap indicia tells the story, namely that this was an issue licensed from Topps and printed in Canada:

Dig the top man!

The front panel has more of the great UPA inspired ballplayer, albeit a mere mirror image of the box top and wrapper:

The back has the ubiquitous ad for Bazooka:

Now, taking a look at all of this, I am thinking about how the closely related 1960 Football Tattoo was issued in Canada.  The football set is very, very hard to find so it's a bit difficult to suss out.  As I noted in a post some time back on the Baseball Tattoos, that set has indicia on the wrappers that detail distinct US and Canadian releases. You can clearly see the US and Canadian versions have different "made in" and "printed in" information.  Here is the US wrapper:

And the Canadian:

The football set indicates it was made in the USA and Canadian versions were made and distributed under license with Topps.  I believe that means that there is only one wrapper design and not two like with the baseball set.  You can clearly see that on the full football wrapper:

Friend o'the Archive (and provider of that Football Tattoo scan) Mike Blaisdell and I have discussed this a couple of times and he believes there is only the one version. I am convinced that if I had paid a little more attention last time out, I would have come to this correct conclusion earlier.

Two Way Player

Far less well known than the 1960 Baseball Tattoo issue, Topps also issued a football counterpart in 1960 that does not even make the pages of some major price guides.  It's been discussed here before but the length of the set was a mystery, although surmised to be 96. The way we knew this is thanks to some stellar work by Jon over at the (almost-but-hopefully-not-dormant) Fleer Sticker Project blog in detailing two 32 subject uncut sheets and the existence of poses not on those sheets. But a full checklist of all 96 subjects has never been published (until today).

Working with Friend o'the Archive Mike Blaisdell, every one of the little buggers has been now confirmed.

First though, here is a much better scan of the wrapper exterior than I have ever had before, thanks to Mike:

Mike also has a great sell sheet for the set.  Check this out:

Here are the two uncut sheets from the Fleer Sticker Project, I usually link to scans others have posted first (and if you look near the top of this post you can click through to that site) but I've mirrored the two sheets Jon posted over there to make them easier to decipher. 

Once I did that I thought it would be a good idea to start putting together a checklist based on his scans and tattoos that exist but are not on the known sheets.I got it down to four or maybe six missing subjects but it's a little tricky with the generic subjects. Mike's yeoman work on the unknown scans did the trick though.

All subjects below are identified as they would look after applied to the skin (i.e. not reversed) and verified by a scan seen by either Mike (a trustworthy lad) or yours truly.  An (H) indicates a horizontally oriented tattoo within the generic subjects, of which there are eight.  As it turns out there are 13 NFL player portraits (one player from each team), 13 NFL team logos, 47 college logos and 23 generic subjects.

NFL PLAYER TATTOOS

Walt Anderson (actually Bill Anderson)

Chuck Bednarik

Jimmy Brown

Rick Casares

Howard Cassady

Bobby Joe Conrad

Frank Gifford

Paul Hornung

Bobby Layne

Ray Mathews

Y.A. Tittle

Johnny Unitas

Bill Wade 

NFL TEAM LOGOS

Baltimore Colts

Chicago Bears

Cleveland Browns

Dallas Cowboys

Detroit Lions

Green Bay Packers 

Los Angeles Rams

New York Giants

Philadelphia Eagles

Pittsburgh Steelers

St. Louis Cardinals

San Francisco 49'ers

Washington Redskins

COLLEGE TEAM LOGOS

Air Force Academy

Army

Baylor 

Boston College Eagles

California

Columbia

Dartmouth 

Duke

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa Hawkeyes

Kentucky 

L.S.U.

Maryland

Michigan

Michigan State 

Minnesota Golden Gophers

Mississippi Rebels

Navy

Nebraska 

Northwestern

Notre Dame

Oklahoma 

Oregon Ducks

Oregon State

Penn Quakers

Penn State

Pittsburgh Panthers

Princeton

Purdue Boilermakers

Rice Owls

Rutgers Scarlet Knights

South Carolina Gamecocks

So. Cal

S.M.U. Mustangs

Stanford

Syracuse

Temple

Tennessee

Texas

T.C.U.

U.C.L.A.

Virginia Cavaliers

Washington Huskies

Washington State Cougars

Wisconsin Badgers

Wyoming

GENERIC SUBJECTS

Blocker on one knee facing right, yellow helmet, red shirt, green pants (H)

Lateral, both players red helmet, yellow uniform (H)

Player arguing with Referee, player is tall and in green uniform, ref has red shirt & green pants

Player leaping with hands up, green shirt, #41, yellow pants

Player on one knee, all yellow uniform, #52

Player portrait, #25, TOUGH! in red letters

Punter, #16, in follow through, Defender nearby, punter red shirt, yellow pants and helmet, Defender white uniform #22

Punter or Receiver, yellow shirt #11, red pants

Quarterback about to throw, red helmet, green shirt, #15, yellow pants

Quarterback about to throw, red helmet, green shirt, red pants, #45

Quarterback about to throw, yellow uniform, red helmet, #62

Receiver about to catch ball, yellow helmet, green shirt, red pants

Receiver and Defender going for ball, player on left blue shirt, #40, green pants, player on right red shirt, #15

Referee running with whistle in mouth, yellow striped shirt, red pants and hat

Runner with ball, red helmet, red shirt, green pants

Runner with no ball, green shirt,#8, green pants & helmet, red square on bottom half

Runner with no ball, green uniform, yellow helmet, white square on bottom half

Tackler in yellow uniform with red helmet bringing down receiver with green uniform & red helmet (H)

Tackler grabbing receiver's shirt, tackler yellow helmet & pants, green shirt, receiver green helmet & pants, yellow shirt, red rectangle on bottom half (H)

Tackler in green shirt, red pants, yellow helmet causing receiver in red shirt, white pants & green helmet to fumble (H)

Tackler missing Receiver with ball, tackler red uniform, receiver yellow uniform (H)

Three Players Running,  green, yellow & red (H)

Two Players diving for loose ball, lowest player has yellow shirt & red pants, highest player has red shirt (H)

I also had an O-Pee-Chee version listed on my master checklist but am now convinced it's the same as the US one; in true Topps fashion the wrapper also lists information for Canadian sale.

          

Tattoo Redo

Just got an e-mail from Jon over at the Fleer Sticker Project, the long-running comprehensive blog of Fleer oddities and the inspiration for my twice-weekly ruminations here. Jon was able to identify some additional poses in the 1960 Topps Football Tattoos that I wrote on a little while back. One was right under my nose actually (Colts), on a four tattoo strip I included as a scan originally:



Jon has a lot of other cool scans and makes a compelling argument the football set count could be 96, which would match the number in the corresponding Baseball Tattoos from the same year. I won't rehash it here as his post is well worth a read (or two) and even better he has uncovered two proof sheet scans that have some unlisted poses and subjects but also show groupings of 32 tattoos per sheet. I think the 96 set count is likely but as with anything Topps, not with 100% conficence until the third proof sheet is found.

I say this because in the 1964 Baseball Tattoos there only 79 subjects are known (or at least checklisted), including four variations and the tatoos are the same size as those from 1960 and no changes have been noted to the checklist in years. 96 slots does not always equal 96 poses with Topps but Jon's argument is sound and I suspect he is correct.

Tattoo Beat

Didn't think I would be able to post anything on tattoos again any time soon but a bunch of Ebay auctions featuring some very distressed 1960 OPC Football Tattoos has changed things. In addition to the 1960 Baseball Tattoos Topps/OPC issued a companion set featuring NFL players and logos of pro and college teams, together with the usual generic tattoos.

There are only ten known NFL players in the Topps set: Walt Anderson, Jimmy Brown, Rick Casares, Howard Cassady, Frank Gifford, Paul Hornung, Bobby Layne, Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas and Bill Wade.

Logos and generic plays dominate but to what degree it is hard to say as a complete checklist of this set is elusive. At least 76 tattoos are known but only ten logos from the NFL have been identified, when 13 teams plied the gridiron that season so the checklists that are out there may be incomplete.

Forgive the rough scans but these show some OPC tattoos; Topps had their own set that would have been identical save for the small line of type identifying the manufacturer and country of origin:



Fortunately a better scan exists of an unopened pack:



It looks like Elroy Jetson, no? Wonder if the cartoon stole the look? Here is a player tattoo:



And wonder of wonders, a strip of four:



These are far harder to find that the Baseball version and any additions to the set count in the Beckett Football Guide are welcomed.