Anaglyph You A Headache

One of the more forgettable fads in the 1950's was 3-D.  A craze developed around this gimmick that went from movies, to comic books to trading cards in short order following the release of a movie in Late 1952 called Bwana Devil.

B Movie fare for sure but it was off to the races in Hollywood and 1953 saw several major motion pictures premiere using one of two different processes, both of which required the viewer to don a pair of cheap cardboard glasses to experience the 3-D effects promised in the posters and adverts of the day.

Topps issued two 3-D sets, both featuring Tarzan, who was featured on the silver screen in Tarzan And The She Devil, released on June 15, 1953, albeit in standard black and white.

Topps took this movie and had a 60 card set made up in 3-D.  A proof panel surfaced recently and the dating is interesting as you can see it's stamped September 15, 1953. So it took Topps three months to bring the set to fruition.

The set sold well and it was followed by Tarzan's Savage Fury, which used scenes from a 1952 movie and given the dating of the proof above, looks to have been issued in 1954.

View some of the cards below, just make sure you have the red and blue version of the glasses!

Boarding Process

A trove of Topps Presentation Boards was auctioned on eBay a couple of months ago and it was, to put it mildly, a diverse lot.  These do pop up from time to time but this batch was particularly large and also had a geographic reference to its location in Honesdale, PA (in an attic, no less), which is about 40 miles from where the Topps plant was in Duryea.

I'm not sure about the process of presenting with these boards-it seems likely they were meant for Topps brass in Brooklyn, but most seem to originate near Duryea so I could have that backwards.  Or they just ended up in Duryea for storage and went home with people at various points in time.  This latest batch looks to cover a period beginning in the mid 70's and running into the mid 80's.

Here's the full Monty-you can plainly  see the wide range of products and years:

Let's start with the baseball proposals.  The first is, without a doubt, what evolved into the 1974 Baseball Stamps issue.  It looks to me like the stamps (or stickers, depending) were already designed and the presentation was to nail down the album concept:

The stamps would ultimately be issued in a 2 x 6 array and the albums ended up being shrunk down from the proposal, which went as big as looseleaf pages.  We know Topps had been working since 1970 on a full size sticker release and it looks like the 74's got pretty close to realizing that concept.  What's unfortunate is that the stamp set seems like it failed-stamps were dumped or had issues in production and the albums were not produced in quantities to match.  In fact, the 1974 Baseball Stamp Albums are pretty tough to find these days while the stamp sheets are a breeze.

Meanwhile, we see an intriguing Hit to Win mockup that closely resembles the (different) contest cards inserted in the 1980 and 1981 Baseball packs.

Check out the Guidry mockup-Did Topps intended for the cards to also include a player insert or have a two sided insert?  Seems like the Guidry part of the pitch came very late.  Or maybe it was intended to show some detail from the Baseball Guidebook offered as a prize for hitting (scratching off) a single in the game.  Either way it's a neat, unique Yankees piece. Never seen the guidebook?  Here ya go:

This concept seems a bit mundane:

More intriguing, although out of my wheelhouse in terms of scope (I tend to end things here at 1980 so don't profess much knowledge beyond that year) and subject (Smurfs? No....) but the gum sure resembles some old Topps product like Rock's O' Gum.

To me though, the most interesting proposal had to do with a 3-D set:

Those are the fronts of two 1953-54 Topps Tarzan cards being used to show a new concept-check out the artwork for the proposed 3-D glasses:

That very much looks like Jack Kirby's work, or heavily inspired by it. Joe Kubert actually did the line art for the Tarzan sets (note-under investigation, see comments) so if it is by Kirby, it's a nice tie-in of two legendary comic book artists. Can anyone ID the superhero? He looks like a Marvel product of the times but my comic book knowledge is pretty much kaput these days. The original title is no longer with the board so it's anybody's guess what the product was supposed to be I guess.

Decades after they were created, the boards show the creativity and thought processes that went into designing and issuing a set of cards or inserts in the pre-digital design days.

Me Tarzan

Sixty years ago a 3-D craze was weeping the nation.  Movies, mostly of the "B" (or lower) variety were manipulated to allow patrons to watch with special glasses to give a feeling of depth, while the occasional surprise, such as a snake suddenly rearing forth into the audience's field of vision, would make everybody jump. Topps took advantage of this pop culture fad by releasing a set in 1953 called Tarzan & The She Devil.

The glasses were quite tiny:

Based upon the movie of the same name, the card fronts in this 60 card set were not viewable unless you had a pair of 3-D glasses:

While not a high demand set, finding cards in top shape is tough due to full belled borders on the front and the back:

Intriguingly, Legendary Auctions just had a lot with the original artwork for this card and it's quite impressive:

Take a look at the delicate wash-work in the background!

It took four layers, created as acetate overlays, to build up the card image before it could go into production.   You can see the depth this added quite easily. Topps enlisted Joe Kubert, the now famous comic book artist, recently deceased, to construct the set.  Kubert was involved with the first 3-D comic book as well and certainly would have been known to Ben Solomon and Woody Gelman, whose art  firm acted as intermediary for the set, despite their both being Topps employees at the time. Kubert was still dabbling in 3-D art as late as 2011, a year before his death. (Update 7/18/23-It's not necessarily Kubert artwork).

Another set, called Tarzan's Savage Fury, came out after this one and did not sell  as well.  The format was exactly the same, Topps just changed the colors of the cards a little.  A tealish green on the front:

Orange on the back:

An alternate set of glasses is out there, almost certainly an O-Pee-Chee product.  Look how the font is different and the country of manufacture is shown:

There have been finds of these cards, especially in penny packs.  Glasses came one per nickel pack; I believe they were also packed loose in the one cent boxes.  Tarzan means "white skin" by the way.