March Mix

Some more odds and sods today kids, showcasing some rarely seen, albeit not particularly valuable, Topps items.

Let's commence with a double of a triple!  After Topps bough Bowman out in early 1956, they continued issuing Blony bubble gum (and probably some other legacy confectionery products) in to 60's and even tried to revive it in the 70's. At a guess it was probably intended for sale mostly in the Philadelphia area and suburbs, maybe down into the Chesapeake, and likely encompassing old, defensive Bowman jobber territory.  Blony was wrapped with Archie comics for a few years in the mid to late 50's and this example is a prime one:

Mirthful comic aside, the real star here is the offer for Triple Nickel Books, which were a Woody Gelman and Ben Solomon production.  Talk about your cross promotion!

An old series of threads on Valentines Day issues showed a single example of the 1962 Valentine Stickers Topps produced for this once annual offering in 1962.  A recent eBay auction, which I happily won, provides visuals for three more stickers, plus a peek at the reverse.  These are very, very hard to find, no doubt partly due to the stickers being used for their intended purposes, namely being peeled off and applied to a plain sheet of paper for a low cost "card". However, they are so much harder to find than just about any other sticker issue from the 60's, I have to think they were not widely distributed and suspect Topps may have pawned off one of their Funny Valentine issues from years prior as well in '62. I hesitate to call my look at these a Visual Checklist since only four color shots are known to me (there is a B&W example of a fifth sticker in the Sport-Americana Non-Sports Guides as well). You can go over to Todd Riley's http://non-sport.com/ and find examples of all of 44 them I believe, as I'm not copying images out to populate a checklist.

Here are the three:

The backs are tan, which is expected but nice to actually see:

1967 Giant Plaks box flat anyone?

That's the ten cent version that held packs with two plaks of the thinner variety (vs. the thicker ones sold in five cent packs) and it's a set not a lot of people really follow, but at the bottom right of this proof box slick is a very interesting stamp:

As documented a while back, Chromographic Press was another Topps printer, but it was family owned (by P. Peter Shorin) and I believe it printed mostly oddball issues, a moniker the Giant Plaks richly deserve but this is a mere box flat, so who knows if I'm right. It was shut down prior to the original Topps IPO in 1972 and probably was started up in the early 60's.

See ya in April!

A Real Knife Time

You may have noticed I'm wading into Bazooka territorial waters with increasing frequency these days; it's certainly true and I'm even diving into the Blony tidal pool where I can. This has been prompted by a mini wave of uncut material from the 1950's surfacing along with some random single pieces and lots coming up for auction and a barrage of incoming scans from BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd.  In short, I have not seen this much comical activity since the last time I saw Dave Attell and Lewis Black perform together (with Mitch Hedberg and Mike Birbiglia supporting no less-true story).

First up is our old pal Buzzy.  This particular Bazooka comic, featuring the namesake character, saw at least two if not three distinct printings around 1953-54 as these scans from Shep show:

The top two are essentially the same but the first is waxed while the second is not.  The unwaxed comics are out there in significant enough numbers that they appear not to be print freaks but rather a separate run.  Maybe the unwaxed versions were sold in the party boxes of Bazooka?

The bottom Buzzy is clearly from a second print run as the font for the Fortune is different and the premium offer has had an expiration date added.  Here are closeups of these areas of interest from the top and bottom comics:

The life of the premium offers is generally 15-18 months, so the undated varieties are likely from 1953 and sold into 1954 while the dated versions are from 1954-55 and contemporary with the first Bazooka Joe and Henry comics, last seen here. The knife also became "free" as it aged! I realize only about six dozen people on the whole planet care about this all but these are clues to the dating of these comics, which are scarce.

Next, more pre-Joe:

Well, looks like the undated comics had a nice little secret code kit that ran its course and a quick substitution was made.  Since Buzzy had the knife in color and Honey Bun didn't, it suggests the color separations were not prepared for the goggles and knife due to rushed production and only the line art was used to print these. The font changes we saw with the Buzzy comic above also come through on both of these. I wonder if Topps thought their market was skewing very young at the time due to the mostly non-textual nature of these strips?

More New York News Syndicate goodness.  The lack of text continues with Little Brother Hugo; no real insights from these but I just like showing them:

I like the 22 and 24 karat rings!  The Bazooka Double Feature Comics get a little more texty:

Now, take a gander at these 1957 Blony comics featuring Archie characters:

That top left one looks like it has a familiar premium offer, no?  I like how they never even bothered to prepare color separations for the knife but changed the text from the Bazooka version!  Maybe this means the comics were printed in more than one location?  I really don't know but color and no-color versions of the knife offer occurring over a 3 or 4 year period does seem to point at something like that.

I'll post more findings here as things turn up.

Blony At The Malt Shop?

After Bazooka Joe, the next most iconic character Topps memorialized in comic form would have to be Archie Andrews (with apologies to Henry).  As a result of their early 1956 acquisition of Bowman, Topps inherited the Blony bubble gum brand. Blony had been a major brand for Bowman and must have had its adherents for Topps to keep it around.  Instead of cross promoting Bazooka Joe And His Gang, Topps went with two series of Archie And His Pals comics instead in 1957-58.

I only own one of these (1 '57) and they are far, far less abundant than Bazooka Joe's of the period:

That comic measures 2 13/16" x 3 5/8", it's a big boy!  The code reads 1A-57-25.  Here's another, just on eBay (which I missed), same series but #38:

I would surmise then that there are 42 in the series, that being a common number for the Bazooka Joe runs. Betty also got some face time and I'm sure Veronica, Jughead and mean ol' Reggie did too:

She's also a '57 but I can't make out the number.  I believe the below style was from '58 as it is slightly smaller (not mine, from eBay) but am not 100% sure as I can't make out any code:

A nice foldup Bazooka-Blony premium catalog also came out around this time.  This one from the 'bay  is red but I have a blue one as well. It's definitely from 1958 or later as "The Atom" is no longer on the Bazooka tab.  The blue catalog seems to be a year older than this one as a different Blony design was used. Here's red, then an extract of my blue:

This blue version extract does not mention Blony in the text above the gum tab illustrations.  Weird.

A code (which I can't decipher) has been added as well. BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd is not positive the striped Blony wrapper was marketed.  I wonder instead if the flavored Blony tabs used it and the regular version kept the rainbow version seen on the red catalog.

Here's more detail from the red version.  Archie looks like a real geek:

Archie comics were advertised on at least one 1957 Topps wrapper, this one housed Isolation Booth, despite the Gee Whiz Quiz moniker::

Blony was always the poor cousin to Bazooka but it lived on at least until the 1970's, sometimes tweaked into a twist wrap, sometimes not. Later comics actually appeared on the outside of the Blony wrapper but that's a tale for another day.