The Last Pale Light In The West

Last week's peek at Hopalong Cassidy lollipops and candy promised a look at the cards released by Topps in 1950, and here we are.  It's not hard to describe the impact Hoppy had on early children's television - "massive" comes to mind quite easily - but he also had outsized influence for Topps. Their first set using a licensed character, Hopalong Cassidy sold and sold and sold,  brought a larger card size (2 1/16" x 2 5/8") and also kicked off a Topps marketing campaign dubbed "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" that would encompass eight different sets in total.  A cross-promotion with Bond Bread also saw Topps Hoppy cards included with loaves of bread.  

I've previously covered the various Hoppy packs in a post still holds up and you can click on over HERE to see them.  I will show the penny packs, as I think this was what most kids would have seen, based upon the number of surviving wrappers and packs:

You can see the "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" slogan endlessly repeating on the white wrapper as well:

The release of the set was somewhat complicated.  Topps originally prepared eight separate sub-series that used actual titles from the film depicted and contained anywhere from 21-24 "episodes" accordingly. Each was taken from the more recent Hoppy movie releases (the film release dates range from late November 1946 to July 1948) and assigned a unique color sepia overtone.  This is how the first 186 cards break down:

Numbers	Title	Color	Subset Total
1-23	Dangerous Venture	Blue	23
21-47	Borrowed Trouble	Brown	24
48-71	Hoppy’s Holiday	Pink	24
72-95	False Paradise	Light Green	24
96-117	Unexpected Guest	Black	22
118-141	Devil’s Playground	Dark Green	24
142-165	Fool’s Gold	Red	24
166-186	The Dead Don’t Dream	Purple	21

You will immediately note that there are some odd subset totals when it seems like 24 cards per title would have been the goal. This makes some sense, partially because it's neater but also because there are suggestions that the press sheets used for this size of card during this era had an array of 96. If you break the above into two groups of four, the first totals 95 cards while the second comes to 91. It's possible Topps messed up the "Dangerous Venture" subset for the first group and then had some kind of similar problem with the second but I don't believe that's the case.  Also in the mix: not enough stills were provided to them to get a nice, even 24 subjects per title, or perhaps there were not enough usable images for some. There is also the possibility titles were subbed out and replaced with newer ones as sales figures came in and that could even have included seeding of just a couple of cards from an upcoming title in with the then current titles.

Here's a look at each title:

 

The sepia tints are not all as subtle as that pale looking blue; this brown is pretty much on point:

 

Whereas pink is tending a shade toward red I'd say:  

Those are lining up a little weird, sorry.  I wanted to highlight the fact these can have odd cuts, like the one seen on "Hoppy's Holiday" in glorious pink. Some more now, light green first:

Can black really be a sepia tint?  Topps sure thought so:

Here's some dark green for ya:

The Hopalong Cassidy graphic on the series 5 and 6 cards is smaller than those from the preceding four, which makes me think that first group of four was all printed, or at least designed, together.

Moving on with red:

And a very purple purple:

The graphic regains its size for the last two series of the "low numbers" as you can see above. The highs really do have shockingly bright colors and can't be classified with the tinted cards. They have even more funky cuts sometimes than their predecessors:

Ignore the pumped up color on the last one, it's not mine and I had to nab it from eBay.

Each of the first eight titles also had a companion header card inserted into packs that was printed on foil-these are very desirable, scarce and also a condition nightmare today. While the cards are not widely graded by PSA, the foils, at least relatively speaking to the rest of the set, are. Of the 126 foils submitted to PSA, none grade higher than a 6, with the majority ranging from 1's to 4's. Here's a group shot, from an old Huggins & Scott auction:

Those are in what I would call typical condition for the foils. I wonder if Topps was playing at the "silver screen" with these?  The backs have details on the length of each "movie":

Those may have been withheld until the second batch of four titles were unleashed; it would have been odd for Topps to commit to two series before seeing how the first one sold. A late release of high numbers followed, covering two 22 card series, both in the same garish colors seen above, which look like overexposed Day-Glo and stand in stark contrast to the muted sepia tones of the first eight:

187-208	Silent Conflict	Multicolored	22
209-230	Sinister Journey	Multicolored	22

We know these came later thanks to the five cent wrapper, which is also a scarce item:

You can see the original eight subset titles listed on the nickel pack wrapper, also indicative of packaging once both series were being issued..  These were sold in panelized form, with two cards per panel, and scored, leaving little nubs behind when separated:

Again, scarce items today. Some foils were also panelized and as such, almost impossibly rare now (and show the nubs quite well in relief):

If you tote it all up, there's 230 cards plus the 8 foils. That a whole lotta Hoppy!

C'mon Get Hoppy

Some interesting doings along the old, dusty trail today cowpokes, as we take a fresh look at the wrappers from the 1950 Topps Hopalong Cassidy set.  I've covered them before, briefly, but that was a dozen years ago (yikes!) and with some newly found scans, additional details have come forth.

Chris Benjamin's various editions of the Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards mentions that the white one cent wrappers are easier to find that the green ones but I can't says that's supported by what's shown up over the last decade or so. Here's said wrappers in pack form, white front:

And back:

Now the otherwise identical green wrapper, once again as packed.  Obverse:

And reverse:

The "Save-Em--Trade-Em" motto was a marketing scheme conceived by Topps and it was used in advertising and on wrappers for eight different series of cards from 1950 to 1952, although it was dropped for the Giant Size cards as they had their own built in motto. These eight sets also had the distinction of being found in panel form, i.e. three or four 2 card lightly connected panels sold in each nickel pack. Here's a Hoppy five-center; I have read about green versions but only have seen yellow:

Topps got a premium offer into the mix as well!

Then there was the massive cross-promotion between Topps and Bond Bread that put Hoppy cards in bread loaves in most states east of the Mississippi. Bond also had Hoppy bread end labels that had nothing to do with Topps:

It seems like the bread campaign was a long-lasting one. Bond alone issued three 16 subject series of illustrated labels,  plus two additional ones, again with 16 subjects in each, using photographs. There were even albums to hold them:

Sunbeam Bread issued two 32 label sets of Hoppy photos on their end labels and other brands had various sets semi-sealing their loaves or adorning their packaging as he was really the first major postwar kids fad.

But I digress....

This Bond Bread penny pack is a well known one in the hobby but I'd never seen the indicia before:

As you may have suspected, with a Hoppy card inside, it was a Topps job:

That horseshoe Hoppy logo got another appearance in though. This is a hybrid wrapper that I once thought was used for packs inserted into the loaves.  It may have been used as such, perhaps in the mad rush to get the packs into the Bond loaves but if I had been paying attention twelve years ago, I would have noticed the one cent price:

Yes, it was a crossover ad - quite unusual for Topps - but this was their first character driven set, not to mention their first licensed set, so they clearly were feeling their way through the process. It's a pack scan, so no indicia but I'm sure it matches the above examples: 

The Topps fun didn't stop there though. There was candy, sold in this snazzy saddlebag:

I'm not positive but think they may have resembled Sugar Babies, based upon the shortening listed in the ingredients:

Topps still wasn't done as they sold Hoppy Wagon Wheel Pops as well:

Oddly, despite having a viable Candy Division and a dedicated plant in Chattanooga at the time, the lollys were made elsewhere for Topps:

(From Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non Sports Cards Volume 2)

Hundreds of Hoppy products flooded the shelves of America for a good two or three years as William Boyd did what he did best-licensing! Yee-haw!

BBQ Smasharoo

With a three day weekend upon us, and for no other reason than good ol' laziness, I figured a nice, easy hodgepodge post was in order as I tend to my grill and related activities. UPDATE-it's pouring out!

1950's Hopalong Cassidy was the second licensed character release from Topps and it did boffo business in the wake of William Boyd's televison repackaging of his old Hoppy movies.  The first eight episodes (subsets to you, pardner) also had an associated foil insert "title card" for each. As you can imagine, these shiny, fragile extras are super collectible and realtively scarce. None have ever graded higher than a PSA 6.  I can't find the two-card panel data but this example, in a PSA 5 slab, would be considered high end:

I like how Topps darkened the star to AND underlined the episode title:

Much like the diecut tank cards in the same era's Freedom's War set, these foil cards were printed separately and pushed into the packs.  Two-foil panels were inserted in the elongated nickel wax (actually glassine) packs of the time, so sized to allow for the two card panels, and possibly the ten cent Trading Card Guild packs that didn't have any gum included. Foil panels are rare quite rare and the singles (from penny apcks or separated) aren't too easy to find either.

Speaking of the Trading Card Guild, some of the 1957 cello packs issued by Topps had associated "TCG" graphics. At least one (second series) pack has been graded as by PSA, almost certainly the one I detailed here almost a decade ago. As always, there could be more in slabs but whether or not PSA identified the wrapper as being branded or not is an open question.  Well, here's a second series cello pack without the graphics, just to bring things full circle:

Finally, a rejection by Bazooka Joe (LOL) of a premium fulfillment request gives us some insight into how things were run in the (very much) pre-digtial age.  I'm not sure the comic goes with the envelope actually, it seems to have merely been included in a larger eBay lot.

The Magic Circle Club "comic", as above, may not be what came along with this letter:

This certificate for 250 comcis though, seems to have been the subject of the letter.  The mimeograph lines indicate it was cut from a larger sheet, so this type of premium hiccup would have been common enough to warrant a pile or two of hand-completed certificates being kept at the ready, I'm sure:

I think this is the proper catalog for the mailing though (1966):

I never actually sent in any comics to Bazooka Joe back in the day, I always ended up tossing them.  Oh, the irony!