Can't Beat The Real Thing

Yonks ago, or more precisely three years past, I posted on some military themed Bazooka boxes.  Late 50's or early 60's issues all, these were somewhat desultory box backs that are inconsistently checklisted, like many Bazooka issues.  Now John Shupak, who runs a fantastic aviation themed site called skytamer.com has put out a call for a couple of missing birds.

The set, as you might recall, has seven subjects and five are known and checklisted.  However, Nos. 4 and 7 are not and John is looking for any checklist help or scans  You can link to his trading card page here to see what he has on this and many other airplane sets. If you can help him our with his gaps, drop him a line.

I showed # 6 last time I posted on these but a couple more just sold on eBay and I can bring you #2:

and #5:

Bazooka issues of this era are not all that well known and examples such as the above airplanes are not always considered to be actual cards so they get caught in no man's land when it comes to reference material.

I also plan to dig into the Bazooka sets this year so anyone out there who has oddball or unknown information about their non-baseball and football issues from the 1950's to the 70's is urged to get in touch.

Dan Calandriello has some additional Bazooka scans over at the Net54 gallery if you are Ba-curious.

Some other Bazooka box bottoms are very strange, to say the least:

Having A Party

Before Topps issued their 1959 Bazooka baseball and football box back cards (referred to in the hobby as package design, or PD cards) they came out with a couple of very primitive cutout sets on the backs of their larger, 25 piece boxes.  An important part of Topps' marketing and sales strategy, the 25 piece "party box"  is thought to have debuted circa 1955-56.An early box back, thought to be the first of three issues featuring irregular looking cutouts, i.e. not cards, is entitled American Defenders, and featured three cutouts per box:















The bazooka is a nice touch!  I am not positive as to set length, possibly it was four panels, as one for each branch of the service would be appropriate.  The cardboard looks to be of the older style Topps used in the mid 50's and I would think this set could have been on the very first party boxes as Topps was very much attuned to providing value for money as part of their marketing.

The next package design set was probably Real Flying Models of U.S. Airforce Planes:



Dating of this set of seven looks be be 1957-58.  Topps would return over and over again to assemble-it-yourself airplanes in the ensuing decades.  This set, unlike the previous, actually has an ACC number, which is R707-3.  Burdick, instead of grouping cards by manufacturer, would often have headings for an issuer's thematically linked cards, such as airplanes and that is where this set is pegged.

We are left with one more similar set, probably issued after the baseball and football cards of 1959, featuring six Models of U.S. Space Missiles.


I would guess early 60's for this set, although a Jupiter rocket carried aloft a satellite for the first time in January 1958 and it's possible this set is from that year.  Dating of these issues is difficult as there are incomplete checklists known (at least to me) which makes it hard to determine what year a particular piece of hardware was first made.

You can view examples from each set here at Dan Calandriello's great online gallery.  Thanks to Jeff Shepherd for the scans above.