Warm Thoughts On A Cold Day

Well it's about a bazillion below zero outside as I type this post here at the Main Topps Archive Research Complex and my thoughts have turned to a warmer place, namely Mexico.

Past posts here on Topps activities in Mexico have focused on the four known sets issued in 1977: US Football, Charlie's Angels, Star Wars and Six Million Dollar Man.  While the last of those carries a 1974 copyright, (and was a 1974 US issue)  I believe it to be of 1977 vintage in the Mexican market as well, or at least within a few months either way.   I've located some scans and information that build on previous posts (here and here) and it's definitely a good day to revisit Mexico.

Let's start with the '77 US Football.  A retail box was recently offered on eBay and some excellent scans were provided that yield some good manufacturing information.  The box mirrors the US issue graphically:

To avoid confusion you will see the little graphic in the upper right that states "American Football League Players". The back is a goldmine of information

As we shall see momentarily, while the non-sports sets were licensed to a Mexican manufacturer, the Football cards were a Topps de Mexico product.  Naucalpan is just northwest of Mexico City by the way. The cards look like they were "produced" there while the gum was made in Mexico City proper, at least that's what I am getting off of Google Translate.

While Football was a full release of 528 cards the Star Wars cards only number 66 blue bordered subjects. Here's a wrapper:

The manufacturing information along the left side of this wrapper (there are three variants, Darth Vader and C3PO also were used) shows Laboratorios y Agencias Unidas S.A., and their logo (which looks like a pop top from an aluminum can to my eyes) is an easy identifier.  S.A. stands for Societe Anonyme in case you were wondering, it's roughly the same as "Inc." or "PLC" and comes from the French originally.  In Mexico it's Sociedad Anónima.

Rather than borrowing his images, just go to Paul's vintage Star Wars page to look at much, much more on Mexican Star Wars, including images of the rare header card and packaging. 

Charlie's Angels  also was produced by Laboratorios y Agencias Unidas S.A, as the logo on this unopened pack indicates:

There were three cards in these packs (Star Wars had only two) and this is clearly a new series. There were four series issued in the US, with a total of 253 cards (plus 44 stickers). based upon numberings I have seen, at least three of the four series were marketed in Mexico and I suspect all four made it into the country. Star Wars and Charlie's Angels don't seem to have been issued in the loosely perforated manner that Football and Six Million Dollar Man were so I think it possible Topps de Mexico used a different printer.

Speaking of Steve Austin, Six Million Dollar Man to my mind was also a 1977 issue in Mexico as Topps presumably must have taken advantage of Mexican rebroadcasts of the show and reissued their 55 card US test issue with Spanish captions and backs:

The wrapper shows this to be a Topps de Mexico production:

"Rompecabezas" means "puzzle" in Spanish.

I'm not sure if Six Million Dollar Man was also issued in South America; apparently it was quite popular in some countries.  I am sure though that I want to explore more of Topps international issues this year.  They expanded into Canada in 1947 almost as soon as the war was over and by the end of the 1950's had a vast, it burgeoning international network established, so there's plenty to investigate.

Stay warm muchachos and muchachas!

Oh, Oh, Mexico

Hola Amigos!  Some interesting tidbits from the southern part of North America today, although they result in more questions than answers I think.

Friend o'the Archive Ken Cope contacted me to see if I knew anything about a Superman, The Movie card he acquired in a stack of Mexican issued Topps sets.  I most certainly did not, so of course I was intrigued.

Behold the card in question:

Compare that the the US issue:

What you see above is all I know about the Mexican issue.  I have to wonder if they also issued the second series, red bordered cards in Mexico.  I knnow there were at least two series of Star Wars released in Mexico. Charlie's Angels and the Six Million Dollar Man are also known to me, as is the 1977 NFL Football issue. In addition Mr. Cope advises he has a set of Mexican Planet of the Apes cards, which, presuming they are for the TV series and not the movie, would be roughly contemporary with Six Million Dollar Man, i.e from 1974-75, depending upon the vagaries of the Mexican TV schedule vs. that in the US. I've posted before about some of these other issues if you are interested.

Mexican, Venezuelan and other issues south of the US border are poorly documented and checklisted. I assume there are, in addition to the Topps issues described above, many others from additional manufacturers. I am aware of an Argentinian card guide but beyond that, can't swear there are any others specific to North America (outside of the US or Canada), Central or South America. And North America would include Cuba, which has issued many interesting sets over the decades.

Back to my original thought-if you have any information on this Man of Steel from Mexico (or the Apes), let me know!

Superhombre

A few months ago Friend o'the Archive Jason Rhodes sent along some intriguing scans from a Mexican licensed set of comics that feature images taken from the 1966 Superman In The Jungle release. SITJ is one of the more legendary U.S. test issues unleashed by Topps, fueled by both the superhero connection and extreme scarcity. The PSA registry count is quite low, with 120 total subjects graded, of which 110 are proofs, and where I assume the latter are all blank-backed.  It's not quite as bad as those figures indicate as a number of off-register and/or hand crudely hand cut "finished" examples have survived that don't really merit being slabbed, but the rarity of these is up there. 

Here is the U.S. version, in the aforementioned hand cut shape.

The reverse features a well done design IMO:

The set saw a full UK retail release, seemingly in 1968, licensed by A&BC, which is easily found and well-known to collectors. However, as it turns out a Mexican set, shrunk down to comic size - and presumably minus some subjects - was also issued by Topps of Mexico. The wrapper is fantastic:

These were Bazooka penny tab-sized but they are quite a departure from Bazooka Joe, no?

Here's an A&BC card (no. 17) titled "Escape By X-Ray":

You can see the A&BC indicia has replaced that of T.C.G. but other than that and some color variance, the backs are the same as the US test version (the back illustrations change around card-by-card in both sets):

And here is the corresponding comic strip from Mexico:

It lacks the vivid colors of the card set but for a wax comic it looks pretty sweet.  The translation of the bottom text, according to Google, reads "The man of steel had an idea, he used a burst of x-rays and the beast escaped scared." Did you know that "panther" in Spanish is "pantera"? Well, it was news to the folks as Para Topps Mexico!

Here's a couple more for your viewing pleasure, nos. 20 and 32, respectively:

Jason unearthed fourteen subjects: 2,5,7,8,15,16,17,20,30,31,32,33,39,40. 

The Bazooka one cent comic set counts from 1966-68 were 42 (14x3) in all years. I'm not sure that it's safe to assume a similar number of subjects here but the known SITJ comics count suggests the possibility. 

A Zest for Cleanliness

In the 1970's Topps was trying to expand their offerings into the Spanish speaking community, both here in the lower 48 and Mexico. Having issued (licensed) versions of their regular baseball sets sporadically in Venezuela over a dozen years or so starting in 1959, Topps worked on marketing in Mexico in the mid 70's, resulting in three hybrid sets being distributed. I discussed these three sets here a little while back. The time frame on the three Mexican sets seems to be centered on 1977. After that eventful year, Topps took a different approach in 1978 and concentrated efforts on a Procter & Gamble promotion for Zest Soap.

Featuring five well known Hispanic players, this small set was issued in cello packs via a mail-in promotion (they were not available with the product, as I once thought). (UPDATE (/5/23: As per this post over at www.postwarcards.com, it seems they were indeed available in retail packs of soap). Four of the five players had poses identical to their regular 1978 Topps card. One other, Willie Montanez, had been moved in a four team trade prior to the 1978 season and ended up with the Mets. Originally he was with the Braves so far as Topps was concerned:





The back of his regular issue card is useful for comparison purposes, as we shall see below since all five players in the Zest set had bilingual card backs and lost the trivia quiz on back in order to show the MLB logos.








You can see the different front used for Montanez:





The centering and miscutting issues plague the regular issue baseball cards as well in 1978.

The was a very interesting thread on the Collectors Universe boards last year concerning these cards and Perry Andrews (that's his watermark below on the scans, btw) actually had scans of the mail in card for the set:



The last post in the CU thread gives some nice background on the marketing of the set.

Centering issues aside, it's a compact, affordable set even though it is not really known in the mainstream. Ten bucks will likely get you a full set still wrapped in cello if you look hard enough.

We Belong To The World

Some partial scans are better than others. Friend o'the Archive Peter Fishman unearthed this little beauty from his own archives recently and it's worth a look I think:

The dating is said to be 1956 and it's from a publication called The Candy Buyer's Directory, although I think the dating could be a smidge too late. I'll revisit momentarily.

Three things jump out at me with this ad. The first is the very clear message that Topps was an international concern.  Indeed, beyond their North American activities (Canada and Mexico came along quite early) they were making inroads in Europe, South America and even the Middle East (Israel was getting Topps products by the end of the 40's) and were looking well beyond those areas as well.

Second is the obvious promtional nature of the advert.  Topps was well-versed in cross promotion by the mid 1950's and would continue as the decades progressed.

Third, there is no mention of Bazooka, which is a little odd.  Clor-Aid Gum though is clearly on display and that leads me to our little dating conundrum. On March 4, 1954 The U.S. Second Circuit's Court of Appeals ruled that Topps was prohibited from using the Clor-Aid name as it infringed upon American Chicle's Clorets brand name and packaging.  The year before Topps had previously lost to that firm in marketing Topps Gum in a package that was to close to that of Chiclets:

Pretty darn close to a Chiclets package for sure!

With that, I think this ad is from early 1954, and also as below.

Present are a number of 1953-4 issues; putting aside the perennial Baseball, we have Wings, which was marketed in 1952-53,  World on Wheels (1953-54), Tatoo (a 1953 reissue), the 1953 version of License Plates, Who-Z-At Star (also 1953), Scoop (1953-54 but late 1953 and early 1954) and Tarzan, which was somewhere in the 1952-54 continuum (precisely where in those years is a bit of a mystery still for the two sets issued under this title but one seems almost certain to have been from 1953). Then we have the head-scratching World Coins which premiered in 1949 as a penny tab product and was reimagined as Play Coins of the World in 1950. Perhaps the international appeal of the original title was behind it's prominence, or maybe Topps had extra coins still to puch out the door.

Clor-Aid may have been intended to capitalize not just on the American market but also in French-speaking areas (France and Switzerland) as the court noted it sounds the same as Clorets in that tongue. But Topps got sued by American Chicle in 1953 for repackaging the re-imagined Topps Gum (again, they had previously tried to glom onto the Chiclets brand with packaging that was ruled too close for comfort) and while they were found to have copied the packaging, a trademark infringement suit failed.  American Chicle then appealed, leading to the March 4th judgement by the same judge that dinged them on the Chiclets affair. So it was an odd choice I think to use in in this ad.

We know Wings, which intriguingly had a Spanish Langauge version issued in Mexico (and possibly parts of South America) saw a tie-in with Doeskin Tissues and also with a brand of sneakers called Red Ball Jets in 1955, so maybe the ad was designed to burn off excess stock after all (and perhaps the ad resulted in those tie-ins!).  Maybe even an excess of chlorophyll gum nuggets found their way into some promotional scheme somewhere. 

Oh, Mexico

In 1977 Topps hatched a plan to print and sell football cards in Mexico. This is not surprising as Topps tapped into the Venezuelan market in the late 1950's with their baseball cards and also produced some other Latin American themed sets in the early 70's.

The entire '77 football set of 528 cards was printed, mostly in Spanish and sold in five different and very colorful wrappers. I snagged this scan from Ebay the other day:



One of the players pictured is that fulminating football felon, OJ Simpson.

Unlike their American counterparts, the Mexican cards were loosely perforated. You can see the nubs in this scan:



I like the fact a German born soccer player is featured on a Mexican adaptation of an American card! The back is not quite all in Spanish as the yearly totals have retained their Anglicized team names:



Topps also produced a Mexican version of the scarce Six Million Dollar Man set, I just can't get a handle on how tough it is to find. It's a fairly tough set in the US (test issue only) and the Mexican version seems much harder to find than these football cards but it seems like these can be bought at a reasonable price. I stole this from Ebay after I made the original post:



The best part of the whole thing is the title in Spanish: El Hombre Nuclear! How great is that?! There may have been inserts included in the packs as well, I am not certain about that though.

A Mexican Star Wars set was also sold, comprised of 66 blue bordered cards which I presume mirror the first US series. They look like this, also a swipe from the 'bay :



The football cards have their own peculiarities and while you can find many of the cards with relative ease, some are short printed and there are other problems that render some cards difficult to find in high grade or with proper centering.

There is a fabulous website covering the Mexican Football cards in detail. You can visit it here, tell 'em the Topps Archives sent ya!

(Updated Jan. 17, 2009-some text changed and scans added of Six Million Dollar Man and Star Wars cards)

Down Mexico Way

Yonks ago I featured an obscure set of snap-together plastic molded cars marketed by Topps with an even more obscure set of cards. Issued in 1970, Mini Model Cars was a set manufactured elsewhere and, as it turns out, not necessarily for Topps.  

Here is my own Mini Model Car:

And here is one described as a Mexican cereal in-pack premium:

It's clearly from the same mold and the "22" hood stamp matches; mine may be missing one little piece, or not (hard to tell as it looks undisturbed).  Here's another, different model from the world of cereal:

I've seen some in pastel colors but I think they are modern repros.

Well some recent Facebook posts and eBay auctions may have possibly uncovered who produced these - an outfit called Tinykins.  Tinykins was a Marx Toys brand in the 1960's that was the Funko of its day in a way, issuing sets like this one featuring the Flintstones and other Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, which I found over at the Hanna-Barberawiki site:

Yeah, you want that bad, I know I do!

But I'm not sure it's the same brand used for the cards but some auction listings reference Tinykins Formula One racers and some also mention 1971 as the year of issue.  I'd feel better if I could find a cereal box image advertising them but some cars are offered by sellers in Mexico.  However, it's very much worth noting Quaker Oats bought Marx Toys in 1972. For now, this is where things stand.

She Who Hesitates Is Lost

Stumbled across another Topps Mexican issue from 1977 on Ebay and decided to steal a couple of scans. Devoted readers will recall the Archive took a vacation in Mexico this past January and looked at three sets issued south of the border circa 1977.

Well, there is a fourth and it's Charlie's Angels:



I believe that caption translates to Kelly hesitates. Given that this is card #154, the Mexican version must have had some life to it as in the US release this was well within the 3rd series (of 4).

You could assemble a puzzle with the backs...



...but wouldn't you rather look at the fronts?

Alas

One of the reasons Topps became such a dominant company was their international marketing plan. The strategy was a smart one and is most often associated with their operations in Canada where they started pushing their gum products as early as 1947.  Another outpost was England, where they purchase an interest in A&BC in 1958 and of course there was Venezuela, where baseball cards, usually the first couple of US series, were sold with Spanish backs  printed especially for (and in) that country.  But their first specific Spanish language set was issued in 1952 and took direct aim at the Mexican market.

Wings was a highly successful, multi-series issue that followed the landmark 1952 Baseball cards in both size (Giant) and appeal (massive).  The series was marketed well into 1953 and consists of 200 brightly colored cards of various aircraft.  The Shorin's, used to doing business in Central and South America for many years while in the tobacco trade, turned to Mexico during World War 2 to import raw materials to continue manufacturing Topps Gum.  It seems likely their familiarity with the area led to a full release of all 200 Wings cards Spanish backs.

Here is one card, in all its defaced glory:

The front is identical to the US issue but the back is not, although the graphics are the same:

Here is a US back for comparison:

The indicia at the bottom and the number & title block wording remains in English but the rest of the card has been translated to Spanish.  The entire 200 card series was transformed this way, although at one point it was thought only the first 100 cards had been produced and the backs of the second series had only been proofed but that is clearly not the case.  You can find blank fronts of the last 100 cards though.

The set in Spanish is becoming easier to find of late and if so inclined, could be assembled with a little effort.  Their efforts south of the border would take a few years to find consistency but Topps was clearly thinking big in 1952.