No Blony

A good four years ago I took a look at an extremely obscure Bowman baseball comic called Roger the Rookie Dodger. Other then two sightings in some old REA auctions, one of which was all the way back in March of 1992, and comments from one or two long time collectors, the set of ten comics has been consigned to the dustbin of history.  It doesn't appear in any guides, there's no articles about the set that I can find and all the known copies were sourced from the archive of George Moll, the advertising executive whose agency handled most of Bowman's artwork.

The scans in my earlier post were grainy, so details were understandably scarce. Well, a serendipitous message from BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd pointed me to one to a recent eBay action and I pounced immediately. Once I had it in in hand, the haze cleared and in addition to a gloriously large and colorful piece for my collection, some new information has emerged about young Roger and his learning curve.  Here then,  is this rather amazing comic:

First things first; this does not look like an issued piece, despite some folds. In fact, it does not appear the set was ever sold to the public based on the old REA descriptions and what I'm peeping here. In addition, I've yet to find anyone that's heard of the companion series featuring the Yankees. The timing seems pinned to Spring Training in 1948, which was the first year Bowman produced baseball cards, although they did so before the war as Gum, Inc. I wonder then, if this was intended to get a Bowman brand out to the baseball card and bubble gum buying public ahead of the inaugural set in cardboard livery. It was certainly an attention grabber; the colors are vivid and the whole wrapper measures 8 x 12.5 inches.  Once cut the comic would have been a whopping 8 x 9.25 inches; King Size Blony would have been a massive piece o' bubble gum!

You may notice there was a tie-in with Argosy, which was a magazine aimed at men that was primarily centered on outdoor activities and sports, kind of a cleaned-up "sweaty" pulp. I found a cheap copy of the March 1948 number online, which contains a long article about the whole contest:

I'll append the article at the end of this post, so as not to clog things up too much. There were some newspaper ads as well, published right around the start of spring training (the third week of February), which to me firmly puts the hoped for release date ahead of the first pitch of the regular season, which in 1948 occured on April 19th.

The ads were fairly mundane but help with the timeline; I'm not sure how widespread they were as these were the only two I could find: one from Iowa and another from in Tennessee, although I didn't put more than ten minutes into the task:

Whatever scotched the release of the ten Roger comics and the promised Yankees series is not something I've been able to determine from the Argosy article, which makes no mention of Bowman or Blony.

I'm not sure if they tucked a contest entry form in the March issue as the copy I bought had none, but it certainly appeared in the April issue.  I don't have this one but you can see it was included inside:

I promised you the March article and here it is. Check out the Sports Briefs on the last page, there's a pretty cool (and unrelated) surprise there!

This has me thinking a series covering the various Bowman products I haven't really looked at yet might be fun. We'll get to the cards in a Philadelphia minute, i.e. a few posts down the road, I'd first like to examine what Bowman came up with before that, which was plain ol' chewing gum.

Roger That!

I'm on a bit of a Bowman kick of late and it seems to be centered upon unissued items.  Of particular noteworthy item is what's described as a 1948 proof issue that was meant for a five or possibly ten cent piece of Blony bubble gum featuring a comic strip called Roger The Rookie Dodger. As near as I can tell, the first indication this set ever existed was when a sample proof wrapper popped up for the first time in a now thirty year old REA auction:

Here is a blowup of the blurb:

Leo Durocher and, as it turned out, his coaching staff (Jake Pitler, Ray Blades and Clyde Sukeforth). plus some players, would present tips for the younger ballplaying crowd to enjoy as they chewed away on potentially monstrous piece of bubble gum dubbed King Size Blony. As you can see Pee Wee Reese was also helping demonstrate the nuances of playing shortstop, although Durocher was no slouch at the position.  Indeed, he was Brooklyn's starter at the position in 1938 and 1939, before it was claimed by Reese!

The wrappers, which are flat as they were never folded, measure around 7" x 12" and would seem to have been intended as a loud retort to Bazooka's five cent roll, which had launched nationally during the summer of 1947.  The sheer size has me leaning toward a ten cent chew as that's a massive amount of real estate for a nickel gum wrapper.

However, the choice of Durocher was a curious one as he was coming off a year's suspension from Major League Baseball and whether or not that had an impact, the set never saw the light of day.  The REA description also indicates a planned series of Yankees-oriented comic instruction was being planned and it would be very interesting to know what they planned to dub it.   Presumably it would have been presented by the Bombers manager in 1948, Bucky Harris, and his coaching staff, which included Charlie Dressen, who later went on to manage in Brooklyn. 

The 1992 example is almost impossible to make out but thankfully a larger stash of a complete set of 10 was consigned to REA for their Spring 2014 auction: 

The originally auctioned single wrapper matches the one at the bottom left of the frame (and the one at left, below) but more than one example of it exists as the 2014 description seems to paint it as not being in a flattened, or proof, state. The proof wrappers (and the wrinkly single) don't seem to have been part of the Topps purchase of Bowman in early 1956 but rather are described as coming from the archives of George Moll, whose agency prepared Bowman's many sets over the years.

Too bad these never saw the light of day, they look fairly appealing and while the artwork appears a bit basic, they are colorful and there is a multiple Hall of Famer lineup; presumably other Dodgers players were used as demonstrators (it's not possible to tell from the scans) and their roster was well stocked in terms of Cooperstown enshrinees, so more HOF power seems quite likely.

As for the presenters (I think it says "Spring Training Staff" actually) and their cards from the years before 1948, Durocher of course is pictured on numerous cards from both his playing and managing days and Blades made a few sets as well.  Pitler and Sukeforth had some appearances in picture packs and the like but none of the four were in the 1948 Bowman Baseball issue.

What could have been.....