Asta Mysto

About four years ago I posted about some concept design cards that seem linked to the 1948/49 Topps Magic Photos set.  These were created by a firm in Chicago, known by a few different names near as I can tell, but helmed by a real outside-the-box-thinker named Sam Gold.  Sam, and later his son Gordon, were responsible for, among many, many, other things, creating many of the in-pack toy and send-away premiums found in cereal boxes across the continent (and the globe, really) from the 1940's well into the 1970's.  There's a whole book or three waiting and needing to be written about the Gold's (I am being 100% serious) but today it's just this li'l ol' blog post.

Click this link for my previous post which covered what was dubbed Quiz-o-Rama and offered by Hake's Auctions, happily won by me. This was part of the lot:

Well, Hake's recently concluded selling a similar batch, which I did not bid on, dubbed Mysto Sports Quiz, which is the focus today. Like the Quiz-O-Rama "cards" which I now think may have been earlier design models, these came with an affixed piece of special tissue paper that, when moistened and rubbed on the obverse of the card, revealed the answer, in a simple line drawing, to a question posed on the reverse. Quiz-O-Rama was bereft of any producer details, whereas Mysto was not. Here, check it out, quiz side first:

We now have a 1951 copyright by Premium Specialties, Chicago which was indeed Sam Gold's company at the time.  Here's some undeveloped frontage:

 

OK, let's face it-no kid was going to know a great polo player unless they were Richie Rich or knew someone who owned a string of poloponies. In fact, all three of these subjects would be pretty foreign to the average kid of the day, except perhaps for Jones.  Alice Marble, which is a spectacular name by the way, was an excellent tennis player and a bona fide celebrity in the pre-TV era, and who may or may not have had a very adventurous time duringWorld War 2.

However, there was at least one big sports name in the "set" and it belonged to a subject clearly missing from the Quiz-O-Rama lot I won, namely Lou Gehrig, who can be seen on the banner above.  Here is the Iron Horse:

I have to think that image could also have been the one from Quiz-O-Rama as it's a portrait from the waist vs. the very similar portrait from shoulders seen on the banner. The quiz was, well, a piece of cake for Gehrig:

Here's what the affixed tissue looked like:

Some additional concluding observations are in order:

1) Mysto was sports focused, unlike Quiz-O-Rama, which included general subjects. I'm not sure if that means anything but it could indicate Gold was pitching to a company that made a breakfast cereal resembling Wheaties. Perhaps he wanted in on the sports premium market or even Wheaties itself, which had focused heavily on professional sports and fitness almost from the time they were introduced around 1926 and debuted their motto "Breakfast of Champions" from the mid 30's in some minor league ballpark advertising.  It was then allegedly popularized thanks to Red Barber ad-libbing a commercial during the first ever televised baseball game but since there were only about 500 TV sets in use when the game was broadcast in 1939, I doubt it; my money's on relentless marketing by General Mills. It is worth noting however, the Dodgers game was shown at the New York World's Fair that day at the RCA pavilion.

2) I don't believe either Quiz-O-Rama or Mysto Sports Quiz ever made it into a cereal box or any other kind of product, and certainly not in the format where the tissue developing paper was attached to the card.

3) My earlier theory that Sam Gold may have pitched Quiz-O-Rama to Topps, or they just copped his idea, may or may not still be correct.  Instead, it may have been just the opposite, with Gold copying Topps and the Magic Photos issue. Or, perhaps he did pitch it to Topps and this was a revamped, or refined idea.

Now, let's go play a chukka or two of polo! Just need to find a horse...

Solid Gold

One of the fun parts of writing this blog is that I'm often rewarded when I keep my eyes peeled for new or unusual items related to the history of Topps.  This can be a previously known card set, some kind of mockup or in-house test or even just a fact or two I never knew about.  Recently, I acquired an item that really made me look at the early Topps sets in a different light.

If you ever pulled a prize out of a cereal box or mailed away for a premium or two, then you have brushed up against greatness. Those little items you treasured as a kid (and some of you to this day) have their origins with a company called American Advertising & Research Corporation and a man called Sam Gold.

Gold founded his firm in Chicago in the early 1920's after a stint at Whitman Publishing, where he developed children's books and hit upon a novel idea, namely that the biggest influencers among adult consumers were children. Sam's company was a "vertical and horizontal" marketing juggernaut.  Cereal box inserts and premium offers were his bread and butter and one of his projects that would be well know to readers of this blog would be the buttons included inside boxes of Kellogg's Pep cereal in the mid to late 40's.

It appears that from this world of cereal promotions, Topps first card issue, properly known as Hocus Focus but referred to in the hobby as Magic Photo to avoid mixing it up with a very similar set issued in 1955, sprung.

Faithful readers of this blog know that Topps issued their first novelty set, Tatoo, in 1948 but it was merely vegetable dye printed on a wrapper interior. Hot on its heels was Magic Photo, which was out by the summer of 1948 and saw success well into 1949.  Where Tatoo was simple, Magic Photo was complex.

The concept for Magic Photo featured, of all things, a card with a blank front. This was because a quiz on the back of the card had instructions directing the young un's to refer to the wrapper, which in turn directed them to dip the card in water and rub the front of the card against the underside of the very same wrapper, which had a developing agent baked in, to make the "magic photo" appear.

Well, given its importance as the ur Topps card set, when I saw a very interesting lot in a recent catalog auction, I pounced. There are several components to it but this draft of a promotional banner really caught my eye:

Looks familiar right?  That Lou Gehrig image is different that the one used in the issued set but it's a real link between the concept in the poster and final product.

Remember back in the day, almost everything was done by hand.  Backs first:

Note the different categories, just like Magic Photo but a bit more erudite! Shakespeare anyone?! See the "F" numbering pencilled in?   The "cards" in the lot were six in number, although I suspect that a 7th existed and was possibly the Gehrig, long ago removed and sold. The poster displays an "F8" so what indeed was no. 7?  I certainly don't have it!  Fronts now:

Like I said, erudite.  Interestingly, Natural Bridge made an appearance in both the 1949 and 1950 Topps License Plates sets.

See that glue residue atop each mockup?  It came from these:

One more shy but oh well!  The "cards" and "flappers" measure 1 7/8" x 2 1/2" which is quite a bit larger than the issued set at  7/8" x 1 7/16".  You can compare and contrast:

I'm not sure how Topps and Sam Gold got together but my guess is at one of the huge marketing conventions that were often held in Chicago in the 40's.  A particularly raucous one occurred in 1947 and maybe the Shorins saw the very banner from this lot and converted a cereal premium to an insert.