Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball!

Count Basie & Co. said it first but back when the song debuted in 1949 you either had to catch the Dodgers in action at Ebbets Field or another NL park, or find a TV in a year where only 172,000 were sold nationally, to actually see Jackie hit that ball.  As the 1950's  kicked off though, another method allowed kids to do just that.  All you needed was was a "Pocket Television Theatre" as shown here by Adam Warshaw:

This reverse is from a different flipbook but appears to be from the original issue (getting to that kids)  as, per Friend o'the Archive Tim Begley, the "How To Bunt" book was never produced:

The books were also issued with blank backs, excepting the copyright indicia. At a point after that, a mailer card was prepared with the  "How To Bunt" title excised on the checklist:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

The back of this mailer tells the tale though and you will quickly see why I am bringing this up in a Topps-centric blog:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

Yes, Topps did indeed issue a skip-numbered series of 40 Flip-O-Vision "movies" in 1949 and they have been covered here previously.  I will however, point you to the most comprehensive overview of that issue I have ever seen, over at Drew Freidman's blog.

OK then, what is going on and why are we here?  Well I'm beginning to think that, despite PR to the contrary, Topps just licensed the Flip-O-Vision name and that Flip Book "Television," Inc. a year or so later just issued their own, otherwise unrelated, flipbooks. But wait, there's definitely more-Topps originally got kick-started in the baseball card game by establishing an in-house agency called Players Enterprises in July of 1950 to sign ballplayers to a contract allowing the use of their image in connection with candy (and later, gum) products. Their first signees were inked in December of that year and they had by then bought or acquired licenses for the photgraphic images of 248 Major Leaguers from an entitity called Russell Publishing, which had one year player contracts in hand for a planned series of--wait for it--flipbooks (!) beginning in October of 1950. So in the midst of all this, Bowman issued Robinson cards in 1949 and '50 while Topps was just beginning to navigate the flipbook and baseball fields.

Jackie was, of course, a Topps subject from 1952-56 as we all very well know. So what of the fact that he had no 1951 cards available from either Topps or Bowman? It's really just inexplicable that neither company issued a card of him in 1951. The two companies had many legal issues between them of course but players with disputed contracts always seem to have appeared in at least one issuer's sets, if not both, whereas players with exclusive deals with another confectionery company or ones that had a full non-compete with a product (Stan Musial for a good many years in the 50's for example was tied up by Rawlings) did not. 

Examining things a bit more closely, the 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson wasn't issued until August of that year and with the infamous high numbers at that. So he was not even considered as a Topps subject until June of '52 after Sy Berger allegedly convinced management to issue a "second series" beyond the originally planned 310 cards. Remember, this was in a year where they were in a huge push to sell their new "Giant Size" cards and stomp all over Bowman!  When Topps ultimately decided to produce the highs in June/July of 1952, they seemingly would have known Robinson was available to them as they were clearly in tight with the Dodgers clubhouse (Ebbets Field was practically in the Shorin's familial Crown Heights backyard) for the high number cards; witness 16 of the 97 subjects therein being Bums.  

If we go back to 1949, Flip-O-Vision was issued prior to Oct. 1st (it's captured in the same-dated issue of Card Collectors Bulletin) and even had a televison ad campaign attached to it.  I suspect it was a summer product as there were movie theatre tie-ins with the FOV in in New York City via  a "Mystery Star of the Week" contest and boy, kids went to the movies in droves back then when school was out to cool off. However, Topps was blowing out overstock and returns of Flip-O-Vision by early 1950 as part of "Fun Boxes" they advertised for several months in Billboard magazine through the final week of May 1950, then abruptly dropped their ads showcasing same and started hawking Bozo gumballs in the first June issue instead.  

I suspect Flip Book "Television," Inc. and/or Sylvan had Jackie's rights locked up from May or June 1950 until May or June 1952, passing from one firm to the other it seems. The flipbooks probably did not sell well, given how scarce they are today or perhaps the promotion just ran its course. It's unclear how they were sold originally but it looks like the overstock got dumped either by or to Sylvan Sweets.

Perhaps Sylvan obtained, the Flip-O-Vision license (doubt it) or just said "screw it, let's just steal the name" (there ya go) and off they went with their own promotion, which I believe, ut cannot yet prove, included a sample pack of candy cigarettes. Robinson is a low # in 1950 Bowman to boot, so his card was issued well before June that year. The timing of the 1952 Topps highs certainly ties in to this.

Jackie was a star on the field and a celebrity off, so it makes sense that he could have signed an exclusive deal with another company that wasn't Topps or Bowman, almost certainly for more than he could extract from either of them.  Therefore, it would seemingly explain his absence from the two major BB card sets of 1951 in a hugely competitive marketing and sales space. Seriously, why would he not have a 1951 Topps or Bowman card otherwise?

Double Flip

Well I don't want to be a frontrunner against my own update for 1949's Flip-O-Vision, slated for an upcoming issue of The Wrapper but a couple of things have transpired that lent insight into this obscure (and tough!) issue.  I'll leave the big update for the world of print media and instead concentrate on the little one, namely that if you own Production No 17, you probably only have one of the two versions that were issued.

Roddy McDowall, or Corenlius to you all, is the star of # 17 (and the "star of Allied Artists' "Tuna Clipper") but his Flip-o-Vision Production was titled either "Dollar Scholar" or "Look Mom, No Teeth":

I assume the interior did not match one of the titles so hence the change.  It's the only duplicate title I have seen so far in this set although more are rumored.  Many thanks to Claude Emond for pointing this out and kudos to Dan Caladriello for the top scan (from the Net54 Vintage NS Gallery).

Once The Wrapper article publishes, I'll update the other information here.

Window Treatment

The advertising materials used by Topps in the early days of card and novelty production were quite varied.  Television was not yet entrenched in homes when the first Topps sets started coming out in 1948, so radio and print ads were really the two biggest methods available. Topps would provide their jobbers with advertising materials to be passed on to the retailers to help sell product and the earliest example I can find comes from 1949-a window display for Flip-O-Vision:

There are some big stars used to entice the kiddies to spend their nickels: The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are still well-known today and Burns & Allen, Johnny Weismuller and Margaret O'Brien would not be far behind.  Kay Kyser though, the bespectacled middle aged gentleman above Harpo and Chico, would not be a name known to many.  Kyser was a bandleader in the swing era who had a TV show that was enjoying some popularity in 1949 but just a year after this set came out, he walked away, never to return.  He eventually ended up becoming President of the Worldwide Church of Christian Science.

Four years later Topps had taken the muted tones of 1949 and turned them into the bright colors of 1953:

Color movies had started to appear more frequently by 1950 so bold colors were showing up more and more in Topps packaging and ads.  This took another 22 years to reach its logical conclusion, when the crazy quilt 1975 Baseball window display was unleashed on an unsuspecting public:

The Topps Sports Club has been covered here previously but the use of the window display to push yet another Topps product is a little brash, no?

Flipped Off

Back to 1949 today again kids-I want to take an introductory look at an obscure Topps product called Flip-o-vision. Clearly named after a newfangled machine called television, the Topps version was a flipbook of 30 thin "pages" that the purchaser had to bind together with a rubber band to flip through.  They were sold in an elongated five cent pack that held 10 three scene panels and some gum.

There was no corresponding penny pack as one would have held a mighty short movie.  Also, following what I presume to be slow sales of their five cent Magic Photo/Hocus Focus packs earlier in the year, Topps reverted to briefly selling different products in their penny and nickel packs when Flip-o-Vision was issued in the summer of '49; they would return to penny and nickel price points for the same product again in early 1950, probably after seeing that one and five cent versions of Bazooka did not dampen sales when marketed together. 

I lied before, it's actually, it's really 29 scenes and a cover panel that make up each "movie", as this excerpt from Woody Gelman's ideas book shows with Dick Tracy giving us a look at a panel as well, courtesy of Heritage Auctions:

Here is another shot from from Heritage:

That's Chico Marx and Marilyn Monroe by the way.  That shot really gives you a good idea of how choppy the movie would be!  Here's a back shot of one scene, just so you can see what it looks like:

And here is a better look at a front, showing the old font used with Topps Gum in the "Topps Production" line:  

It says # 20 and a checklist of 49 subjects (all actors and actresses, not movie titles) was advertised on a wax paper insert that presumably was in each pack, making it the first Topps Checklist ever issued. Some on the original list are thought to have never been issued or pulled very early in the run.  The common wisdom is that they were pulled due to copyright issues or complaints by the actors depicted but no one really seems to know.  The current checklist is thought to number 51 according to Chris Watson in the Non-Sports Bible but Chris Benjamin has written in his Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards that #60 is known, and that number is not shown as a known movie in the NSB so there could be at least 52 subjects out there.  It's possible of course that there are 60 of these little buggers out there but they are not widely collected and like so many of the pre-Hopalong Cassidy Topps sets, not a whole lot is known or written about them.

Topps had high hopes for the set, which was tied in to a promotion with some New York City movies houses but the it must have sold poorly as it was being liquidated as overstock by the spring of 1950.  However, there is some tantalizing, albeit tenuous evidence that these little flip books led to the 1951 and 1952 baseball sets.  That is a story for another day though and one that will have to keep for a while.  In the meantime, go here for an interesting read on all types of flipbooks.

Dollar Store

It should be no surprise to the intrepid readers of this blog that a time machine with the controls set to the late 40's and early 50's would be the number one item on my science fiction wish list of impossible gadgets. You see, the plan would be to find and purchase a large quantity 1940's U.S. Currency, go back in time and then buy up all sorts of goodies that would be mailed to my childhood home (purchased in 1956) with a note to my dad saying "do not open until Christmas 2010". Pops is a good guy and fellow collector (of toys and trains mostly, not cards) and he would definitely squirrel away such care packages as instructed.

Failing that, I'd like to find a wormhole to 1950 mail ninety-two cents to Topps for what looks to be the first Fun Pack:



That ad is from the April 29, 1950 issue of The Billboard, which as we all know used to cover all sorts of amusements and vending concerns in unbelievable detail until it went mostly music only in 1961.

While Topps indicates 6 different types of Novelty packs were available, they only list five in the ad: Flip-o-Vision, Pixie, Golden Coin, Varsity and Tatoo. The sixth could have been either Hocus Focus (the Magic Photo pack, not the later issue) or Stop 'N Go license plates. Another nickel pack like the Flip-o-Vision or Golden Coin is also a possibility. It was probably left open-ended so whatever return from the distributors was occurring at the time could be included.

The ad reappeared in the May 27 issue so Topps clearly had some overstock to move. While that fact and the ad itself are noteworthy, what's even more interesting to me is that every novelty issue described in the ad is known to definitively pre-date 1950 with one exception: Varsity, which contained the small Felt Back Football cards.

The Felt Backs have been the subject of past scrutiny via articles in hobby publications over the years, there being two distinct schools of thought. The first is that they were issued in 1949 and then reissued the following year. The second is that they are a 1950 only issue. Even Topps is at odds with itself on this; Sy Berger was in the 1949 camp while the corporate office in the early 1990's was in the 1950 only camp.

I think this ad eliminates the possibility of option #2 as it would not have allowed enough time for returns of the set to flow back to Topps. I also doubt they would have sold football cards in the early months of 1950 as they really would only be attractive in the fall. The wrapper carries a 1949 copyright by the way, which is meaningless as Topps sometimes copyrighted things a year or two before issuing a set.

Tatoo is another issue that may be dated incorrectly as some veterans think it was a 1948 issue, although it seems pretty clear from reading Chris Benjamin's guides that is came out in 1949. This ad does not give any further insight into that but it gives a pretty good look at what didn't sell through for Topps in '49.

Flip-o-Vision, which was a gimmick set of flip movies, had been beset with various licensing issues and may have been intentionally pulled from the market to avoid litigation. The Golden Coin set was probably just a poor seller as the coins are not around in any quantity today. Tatoo may have been overproduced as it seems to have sold well enough to be reissued and expanded in 1953 while Pixie, which held X-Ray Round-Up cards, was probably severely overproduced even after selling quite well. Likely a second run was printed after the first one sold like gangbusters. Multiple vending bricks of X-Ray Round-Up have been found after the fact so there was a bunch of unsold product out there for sure.

That leaves Varsity and with Bowman and Leaf having the NFL locked up in 1948/49 in a supposed deal that gave the former the 1948 season and the latter the '49, Topps was left with the less appealing college football market.

Given the scarcity today of the felt backs, it would seem even this attempt at an aboriginal fun pack met with limited success. I'd guess the remainder of the products intended to populate the unsold 100 count sample boxes were ultimately destroyed, possibly dumped in 1960 along with the 1952 baseball high numbers by Sy Berger himself.

Happy New Year folks!