Simply Magical

This post is continuation, in a way, of the Penny Arcade series I toyed with several years back.  The premise is simple, I merely examine Topps one cent packs, preferably those already in my personal collection.  This brings us to a 3-for-1 deal today, as the "focus" (groan) is on some Magic Photo Packs.

The earliest card set put out by Topps debuted in 1948 and was successful enough to warrant a second series that came out in early 1949.  While the wrapper makes it seem like the set should be called Hocus Focus, that was actually the name of the bubble gum, while the cards got second billing as, of course, the self-developing Magic Photo. As an side, the cards came inserted between the inner and outer wraps. This surely impacted the condition of surviving examples today! You can find all sorts of prior posts I've written about the set using the Labels links. if interested.

There were two styles of penny packs used for the set, both with 1949 copyrights (and the same indicia). One has a glassine inner wrap around the gum, the other foil. I'm not sure if the yellow glassine used here was the only color used though but I've not seen another, although X-Ray Roundup employed a dark green inner wrap in 1949.

Here's the yellow:

The foil pack may have come after the glassine, I'm not really sure and the fact that two series were produced may or may not mean there's any connection:

This is the indicia; technically it's a Bubbles Inc. release: 

Note the Lord Baltimore Press logo (which appears on a couple of other similar style wrappers into some part of 1949) and also the black stamped letters and numbers.  Here:

I'm not 100% sure what that all means and every other example I've seen of the opened wrappers does not feature this. However, at a guess it's a stock identifier at the start of the paper used to print the wrappers where 10 indicates the size, MC stands for Multi Color and 32' is the length of the spooled roll.

Here's a point of sale banner for the first series, once offered by REA as part of a larger lot of related sales materials:

I can't find a color image of the first series retail box, but the Topps sell sheet, sent to me in this case by BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd, sure has a nice b&w image of it:

Compare this to the second series box in 1949, which came from another REA auction some time ago.:

It sure looks like both series were co-mingled for 1949 as there's 126 subjects in each.  Worth noting, this is the first Topps one-cent release to feature a square retail box and not be sold out of a round canister. I suspect they were reconfiguring things for the debut of Bazooka penny packs a little later in '49.  It's hard to read but the front panel says "Bubble Gum in Colors" at the bottom right. Six different colors of gum were manufactured, so that's kind of a sly move as the kiddies may have thought the images would be in color once developed. 

1955 saw Topps re-release a couple of sets in a cost cutting move as they moved in on acquiring Bowman.  One was Hocus Focus, issued in one and five cent configurations, the latter in a slightly larger card dimension than the former and with thirty less subjects.  Once again, use the Labels for more on the 1955 set, which clearly states "Hocus Focus" on the back of each card, unlike the 1948-49's. At this point in their history, Topps had stopped giving a set's bubble gum one brand name and the cards another.

The penny pack in 1955 had a white inner wrap:

These one cent 1955 packs are exceedingly difficult to find and the smaller series of 126 cards are quite tough as well (not that the cards from the series of 96 are easy). This would be the last issue from Topps that inserted a card between the two wrappers.

Yup, also Bubbles, Inc., which was originally used by Topps to create some space between their products but soon after this became their go-to persona for potentially controversial sets. It's use here was more of a throwback I think.

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.

Slide Right

An awesome product box from 1949 was recently hammered down on eBay.  This Magic Photo slide and shell went for a nice sum; deservedly so give its scarcity:

The full box (left) slid out of the green sleeve (right). This is interesting to me as it may mark the end of the little canisters Topps previously used to sell their one cent gum tabs. The product box is clearly scored to allow for that Howdy Doody looking kid's mug to be flipped up so there was no need for a canister.  I have a Tatoo canister but that issue predates Magic Photo (and indeed, is the first Topps novelty). That mascot looks a lot like Bazooka, the Atom Bubble Boy but I don't think it's an exact match.

This was clearly meant to house the  second series (along with the first-Topps ofetn reissued their first series of a set when the second came out.).  I have to say I'm a bit surprised the associated album is not mentioned on the box.

Speaking of the album:

It's not well known but there are two variants of the album. The cover is the same for each, but the second series version has a notation atop the (different) checklist on the inside and is harder to find. Here is the skinny on both:

Topps must have sold a ton of Magic Photo as the cards are pretty easy to find today. The albums? Not so much.

Copy That

One of the things I noticed early on when diving deep into the Topps canon was that they borrowed (or perhaps were inspired by) many issues from the 1930's. One such instance even stretches back to the early 1920's. I'm  not sure if it had to do with Woody Gelman's all seeing eye (he would have been too old to be a kid collector in the 1930's), Sy Berger's childhood memories (he would have been the perfect age or maybe just past it) or maybe the four Shorin boys' own kids but somebody at Topps was clearly influenced by the gum sets of the Depression.  I thought I would look at a few today.

One of the earliest Topps sets to crib an earlier one was 1948-49 Magic Photo.  Patterned after a number of self-developing issues of the 1920's and 30's, a couple of series of circa 1921 strip cards seems to be the earliest of these:

(Legendary Auctions)

(The Trading Card Database)

Magic Photo of course was a major early Topps release:

It was followed in 1955 by Hocus Focus:

I am struggling to find the link or a scan but there was an obscure 1930's set Called Hokus Fokus, if I recall correctly, that operated under the same principle of wetting the blank surface, rubbing against a piece of paper with a developing chemical and then exposing to sunlight.

Another series, American Chicle's Thrilling Stories (R25) was a small pulp booklet with a colorful, sensational cover:

(Legendary Auctions)

While R25 sported text stories, other similar issues from the 1930's did not and featured traditonal comic art. Topps seized upon these for a couple of jokey issues in 1967 and 1970 respectively:

Of a slightly sturdier construction, Goudey came out with some flip movies of baseball players in 1937 and '38; other companies issued similar fare as well in this time frame:

Topps of course came out with Flip-o-vision in 1949:

(Heritage Auctions)

The 1930's also gave us 4 on 1 Exhibits (1929-38) and 1935 Goudey Baseball:

While 1969 gave us Topps Mini Stickers (a.k.a. 4 in 1's) and Football Stickers:

There are other issues as well this can be done with.  I'll dig out a few more and maybe some of my faithful readers have a few doppelgangers of their own to share.

Extremely Focused

A series of posts here a while on the 1948/49 Magic Photos provided a glimpse not only at the cards and packaging of this landmark early Topps set but also the albums that could be ordered to house the cards.  Prior to the introduction of clear sheeting in the mid 1970's, hobby supplies usually consisted of some sort of thick papered album and the use of slitted corners or, less elegantly, postage stamp corners. To house the two, 126 card series of Magic Photos, Topps created two very similar albums.  I'll direct you here for the cover shot and some background materail as I am on about the interior checklist pages today.

The first series checklist, shown in blurry fashion previously, can be seen better in this scan, recently purloined from eBay:

While both album covers are the same, as is this page (the first thing seen when opening the album) in both editions, Topps added a checklist to the back of the album for the second series.  I've included a bit of the back cover, so you can see:

I am not certain what appears on the back page of the first series album-anyone out there in Archives-land have an idea?  I like the ad to sell another album by the way.  Our wee consumer back in '49 was making some very good progress on the set!

New Developments

Well a new year brings a look back at an old one. Yes, it's 1949 all over again and I have to confess it is becoming my favorite year of study when it comes to Topps. Actually, there is a wee bit of 1948 involved too I think.

Friend o'the Archive Al Richter has sent a few photocopies along detailing the five cent Magic Photos Pack and it's contents. We've already seen the panel of six magic photos that came in the pack but I've never had color scans of the packaging and contents, so here goes.

The front of the wrapper essentially replicates the penny pack graphics:



As we know, the term "color" referred to the gum and not the cards! The back is all kinds of wonderful:



You have an ad for the album, a nice Bubbles Inc. reference showing a scarce Manhattan mailing address on a Topps product (not unheard of but unusual and short-lived, especially this one) and a nice 1948 Copyright. Magic Photos were, as all of us Archivists here know, the subject of a November 1948 Topps price list and while a product's copyright date can precede the actual issuance of same by a year, or sometimes two, I think, with about 90% certainty) we are looking at a 1948 date for the first series of Magic Photos, which could mean they were indeed the first Topps cards.

The instruction card reveals what could be considered an alternate name for the set, Quiz Cards:



the back is standard gray cardboard:



The Mystery Paper looks more like a slab of gum but it's the final step in the developing process so it ain't chewable bub:



I am truly sorry I cannot show the different colored slabs of gum, perhaps some day......

Freshman Orientation

The early days of Topps continue to bring surprises. Their first really wide-release, multiple series cards were issued in late 1948 into 1949 and included the 252 card strong Magic Photos, a set oft-blogged about in these parts. These "wet and develop" cards were issued in two 126 card series and deemed worthy of two separate albums, so the set was obviously a stellar seller for Topps. One way we know this is that we can determine at least two, possibly even three print runs for the first series, which if you are up on your sub-setting skills, you would know has eight distinct sub-series, alphabetically identified from A-H.

It has been known for some time that the boxing subset of 24 and some of the wrestling subset of 25 have two different backs. The regularly accepted Magic Photos back has directions on developing the card. Here is a Primo Carnera reverse that shows this:



However, an alternate version exists as well:



As you can plainly see, the instruction to SEE DIRECTIONS INSIDE WRAP is gone and the card and series numbering has been moved to the bottom of the card from the left side.

The fronts look identical, so far as I can see-"Directions" version first, then the alternate wording without:



All of the above scans are courtesy of Rhett Yeakley by the way. Rhett sent along other scans as well which show the more sepia leaning photos are distributed among both backs, so no help there in terms of possible reasons for alternate printings. It does look like however, that the font on the back of the cards without instruction is slightly finer and clearer than the one used on the SEE DIRECTIONS backs.

Well, Stars of Stage and Screen also have the alternate back:



and same holds true for not only the boxers but apparently all of the first series of 126 cards. Look at these mixed series of back scans from Ebay, American Dogs (Series G first, then the full Series F Stars of Stage and Screen:





Both types are presented and may have resided in the same scrap book.

I am still searching for alternate backs in the second series, which runs from J-T subset-wise (no "I" series was printed). Also, there do not seem to be nearly as many second series cards and grouping are not sighted nearly as often. The second series album, which features the same cover as the one from series one, is also harder to find than the first. But wait, there's more!

One of the boxing cards, Jack Johnson, exists with two different obverses, a normal white border and an esoteric gray border. Here, look:



I am not aware of any other gray borders in the set, so it's a headscratcher; possibly this was the result of a liberal application of developer but there is allegedly a lone front variation with the boxers so this could very well be it. The back of the white bordered card has the standard FOR DIRECTIONS back but I do not know the back of the gray border, although it is described by the seller as part of the Magic Photos set, so it must have one of the two know backs as he was heavily trumpeting the gray bordered front and would, IMHO, certainly have mentioned a strange back.

But wait, there;s STILL more!

Second series cards can be found with perforations:



but I have yet to see perforations on a first series card. Look at the group scans above, no perforations anywhere. Now second series cards are known in panel form:



You can see score lines on this panel, which is second series in flavor and would have come in the uber-scarce 5 card pack (or wrapper), click and scroll to see one. The perforations would have been from panelized cards,although I have to confess I thought the panels were scored and not perforated.

First series cards often seem to have either chipped front borders or super straight edges on their long sides. I have hear rumors of cards with rounded (at the factory) edges; if they exist I suspect they are from the first series.

It look like each series would have gone through two printings at least, with a possible third one to explain the gray border Jack Johnson:

Series 1 SEE DIRECTIONS INSIDE WRAP
Series 1 No Instructions
Series 1 Gray bordered Jack Johnson?
Series 2 Unperforated
Series 2 Perforated

You could order 20 cards direct from Topps for a dime and one Bazooka wrapper and while I have shown this 1949 comic book ad before, it bears repeating here:



Cards from both 126 card series are listed in the ad.

Here is a look at a penny wrapper from 1948 which seems to be the year of copyright:



The fulfillment address was in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, just south of midtown and the fact it was not in Brooklyn supports, at least to my mind, the theory vending boxes were utilized. 1949 is seemingly the year of issue according to standard hobby wisdom but I am not so certain that is correct, look at the November 1948 date on this sell sheet to see what I mean:



Yikes! The cards look ready in November '48 and really the photo must have been shot earlier than that. Perhaps the 1948 and 1949 versions differ, explaining the variations above. Still, it would seem the backs without instructions were either pulled from vending boxes or sold where instructions were posted elsewhere, like on a gumball machine. It's even possible the "No Instruction" backs were sold with the pictures already developed.

The again, perhaps not! I am hoping there is more information out there on these cards; they get more mysterious as each year passes. Would I be shocked to see rule breakers? No sir, I would not!