Boxes, Topses And Rockses

A little miscellaneous action today campers! I've got a handful of unrelated scans piled up here at the Topps Archive Research Complex so why not show 'em off for an end of summer post.

I've shown the little nickel box the 1956 Topps Baseball Buttons were sold in a few times here but not the retail box, which is also a thing of beauty:

Smilin' Ted!

Here's more of an oblique look:

And because I like to show as much detail as possible, here is the underbelly:

With some recent focus here on the 1960 Baseball Tattoo set, this box and sleeve combo seems appropriate to highlight:

Here's the bottoms, with the order reversed from the above image:

Was that sleeve designed to allow for Canadian sales? I lament that a lot of the current certification of boxes can hide good information like this beneath the COA. Also, get of my lawn!

Finally, some Rocks O' Gum for your viewing pleasure.  Here's how the little tub looked back in 1971:

The Caveman theme is pretty sweet and quite expressive but that guy is no Fred Flintstone as he seems pretty happy to be cracking rocks:

As seen previously with their other similar confections sold in tubs, Topps actually used Dixie Cups:

Inside, the gum was exactly as described:

Hopefully they did not live up to their name when chewed!  I love the attention to detail, it almost looks like you could break a tooth on those rocks.

Flip Your Lids

I've mentioned an uptick in uncut Topps material hitting the auction circuit of late, much of it of the test variety. Today's treat features the 1970 Topps Baseball Stars Candy set, which marks their initial attempt to market a tub full of small confections with a lid featuring a collectible novelty on the underside. Memory Lane recently offered this piece, which may have been first hammered in 1992 at Christie's, then locked up in a collection since:

I've covered the set in some detail previously (you can click on the label at right to see) and it's nice to see this sheet surface. The idea of filling the little tubs with candy soon morphed into cramming them full of bubble gum, which suggests to me the candy may not have tested all too well. These next-phase products featured various fruit-flavored Rocks o' Gum and Gum Berries which began rolling out the following year, with humorous illustrations adorning the lid bottoms:

Rocks o' Gum may have been based upon an even earlier version of the product but that's something uncovered by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins and he's still on the trail.

From rocks to berries (well, grapes):

And purple (1971) to red (1972):

I believe all these related sets used the same illustrations, so Topps was playing around with the gum format a bit. Here's another: 

This of course, all culminated in the 1973 Baseball Stars Bubble Gum issue, which was apparently redesigned from a proof-only set started a year earlier.  Here's how "1972" (as its often referred to) displayed to the world.  This version seems to be part of a design phase where Topps tweaked some of the colors:

(UPDATE 6/22/25:To clarify, these are generally referred to in the hobby 1972's but they are early phase 1973's). A handful of these have been found in "rounded" form but they mostly come squared off:

This transitioned to the final 1973 release, where some green stars turned red::

It was a long road but they finally got there:

So many twists and turns for sets that never really sold all that well!

Berry Bad

So I've quite inadvertently compounded a longstanding mystery, thanks to a couple of wayward scans I stumbled upon back in April on eBay.  Perhaps only the nerdiest among us recall my posts concerning 1971 Topps Rocks O'Gum and 1972 Topps Grape Gum Berries way back in 2017. There were also Raspberry Gum Berries offered, which I've not touched upon (until now). 

Well one of the perplexing things about the colorful set of 55 humorous lids that were used, so I thought, to top off the little Dixie Cup that held these three related products was that the Rocks O'Gum lids often showed up in years past as complete sets and pretty much mint ones at that, while the Grape and Raspberry lids are very hard to find. In fact, I still need an example of the Grape lid and since my want list for Topps type cards is pretty much down to the scarcest of subjects, I have to think I'll be looking for awhile. 

Some Rocks O'Gum lids do show signs of use but the majority of examples I've seen and owned over the years never topped a container, such as this one featuring Topps Creative Director Woody Gelman:

Not an exact likeness LOL. The outside has the ingredients and some added flair:

Rob Lifson unearthed a sell sheet some time back, it's pretty groovy:

You get a very good idea of the packaging from the sheet but for reasons we'll get to in a minute, I don't think the gum looked like actual little berries. First though, two more fruity lids, Raspberry first:

This too has the cartoon underside:

And while I only have a topside scan featuring a proof, I'm sure the Grape version also sports a cartoon underneath:

You will note both of these flavor variants come with the ingredients prominently displayed.  Which makes these next two scans quite perplexing:

OK, there is a clear plastic lid sitting on top, which thinking about it, is not all that odd.  Then there is this image:

I doubt it was placed over a cardboard lid as it contains the ingredients, just as they do. Which begs the question then: what are we looking at?  Is it a test or a redesign?  I lean toward the former and tend to reject the latter but as it turns out, Topps supposedly stopped making the little gum nuggets that came in these containers in 1974 due to their shape and a rather far-out development, so there could be more to the story on the clear lid. (Same day update-there is, Mark Newgarden recalls seeing the clear lid version around the Topps offices in the 80's and it indeed seems like it could have been a "reboot" test.)

What happened was their Block Buster, Bazooka Bits, Presto and Gumniks brands also deployed candy-coated gum in this small shape (the latter brand was key to developments) and, I am not making this up, Topps succumbed to a concerned mother in Florida, who complained that her kids, who were carrying the little gum nuggets around in a medicine bottle, were treating them like drugs. Furthermore, pharmacists had told her that the gum resembled brightly colored amphetamines and barbiturates!  Putting aside the mom of the year that let the kids put the gum in used pill bottles in the first place, this seems really, really dumb and also really, really staged. But I digress.

Remember Gumniks?  The colors, man...

Anyway, here's the lowdown from the Orlando Sentinel, February 8, 1974.  Oddly her name is not Karen, although I express no surprise this happened in Florida:

No matter, a Topps spokesman at the time indicated they would change their little bits o'gum into something closer to a jellybean but acknowledged that it was "almost impossible to make candy that doesn't in some form or other represent a pharmaceutical." 

This pressure campaign may explain why the Grape and Raspberry lids are so hard to find and possibly too the use of a clear plastic lid as Topps, being Topps, would have almost certainly sold off any remaining "drug gum" still in their warehouse. But maybe they decided to show what was in the container before killing the brand. Or maybe it was already dead as I suspect these...

...were just repurposed Grape Gum Berries they were possibly burning off as well.  Aye, more mysteries!

A Variety Of Unconnected Items

More mix 'n match today kids!  I continue to plumb the depths of my hard drive and the wilds of eBay and cool stuff continues to emerge!

First, we stop in Philadelphia, where Bowman, like their eventual purchaser Topps, offered premiums in exchange via a magically derived formula of wrappers, comics and cash.  This 1949 Baseball card had a premium offer for a baseball ring:

The ring is a tough item but here it is in all its 15 cent glory (hat tip to Dan Barcomb for this elusive image):

Football and Basketball rings also were produced but they are nowhere near as nice as the Baseball version. 

My recent post on the 1957 Popeye Tattoos lamented that only partial remnants of a display box had been sighted by yours truly. Well Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins came up with a full box flat and it is glorious.  No additonal helpful information resided on the bottom though, rats!

How about a 1959 Funny Valentines saleman sample, with sweet Jack Davis artwork?

Dig that shot of Frankie on the reverse!

Finally, we time trip to 1971, when Rocks O' Gum hit the candy stands. I can't ever recall seeing this product in a store but its offspring Gum Berries persisted into at least the mid 1970's so it must have had some success.  Here's a Topps reference copy (yes, they folded the larger sheets and filed them away):

Note the handwritten note along the bottom left side regarding the varnish to be used for the retail box and a date of April 29, 1971 signifying some step anywhere from final art approval to filing away something likely not to be seen again for many years:

Man, that's a great graphic!  Bam!

Berry Good

Well kids, I am back from The National in Chicago and while I have a couple of blog-worthy items obtained at said show, I'll be posting about them shortly.  Today I want to take a look at a 1972 issue called Gum Berries.

Usually identified as a 1971 issue as they replicate that year's artwork from Rocks O' Gum, previously covered here, we'll see momentarily Gum Berries came out in 1972.

55 lids make up a set and here is a scan, courtesy of Gina at Net54, of a lid proof:

Here are a few proofs from eBay:

A box flat just sold cheap on Ebay as well:

If you look at the manufacturing information planned for the bottom of the box, you can see this was a 1972 production:

There is a 1974 Topps product catalog that shows a raspberry version of Gum Berries so I think it's possible the 72 version was a test of sorts and reused the Rocks O' Gum artwork as it was handy and of the proper configuration. Topps tested all sorts of products and materials, not just trading cards, and it appears it took them a few years to be happy with their "rocks".

Gum Berries are harder to find than Rocks O'Gum, which are among the most common of Topps issues.  I suspect there was a massive find of the latter at some point as you could buy sets in groups of 9, all in plastic sheets (55 sheets with nine examples of the same card in each) at one point on eBay for a song. 

Lidsville

Last fall I posted on the early 70's Topps Candy Lids. Nothing has changed since then except I found a few old scans stashed away in the dark recesses of my hard drive. So I figured, what they hey I'll be lazy and show 'em as we wind down the dog days...

Oxymoronically, here's a black & white of color separation proof of the 1970 Willie Davis lid, front and back:



Never willing to waste a concept, Topps released a comic-themed set called Rocks O' Gum in 1971:



My favorite part of the Rocks set is that there is a Woody Gelman reference on one of the lids:



Poor Woody!