Silly Is As Silly Does

Topps earnestly began making sure the bedroom walls, books, school lockers, etc. - let alone almost uncountable "unapproved" areas of houses and various institutions - of young America (and Canada) could be festooned with smart-alecky stickers starting in 1965. It didn't take long for them to master the sarcastic and snarky style that had been steadily dripping into the zeitgeist via MAD magazine over the past decade or so and they unleashed Silly Stickers onto an unsuspecting populace that very same year. This colorful 55 subject set used a tiny misdirect to land each of its gags.

Here's some typical examples:

So your friends would have to really lean in close to see what you had stickered!

This one contemplates Irwin Corey perhaps:

There were some travel-themed ones as well:

Chris Benjamin had mentioned in his Sport-Americana Non-Sports Guides that the 1967 Funny Travel Posters set used images from Silly Stickers but that's incorrect.  Topps did use similar themes and locales for the poster set but none were direct lifts.

The pressure-stock backs can be found in either white:

Or tan:

I find this interesting as the ur-Wacky Packages set in 1967 required the stickers to be moistened. Maybe there was a cost issue with those?

There are also two types of wax wrapper for the set.  One can be found with a line indicating Bubble Gum could be found within:

While the other has no such line, although Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins advises these seem to have held the sticky stuff:

I am getting a distinct Bobby Hill vibe from that kid!

The retail box is a hoot and it sure seems like you can see gum in the "no gum" packs here, even with no indication of such on the flap:

Silly Stickers are a fun little set from the Topps classic era that can be found with relative ease. . 

Funny You Should Mention That

Topps was really cranking out great illustrated sets in the mid to late 60's, many featuring underground comix artists and a fair number of MAD Magazine contributors to boot. The effort and detail that went into these issues, especially the larger sized ones, is truly amazing.  One of the best is their 24 count Funny Travel Posters set from 1967.

The set, of course, was printed on poster stock, with each subject measuring 9 3/4" x 18 1/2". The stock is the type used by Topps in their standalone poster issues and not the cheap, recycled stock they used for their inserts.

The wrapper can be readily found these days:

You can even find a box with a little hunting:

The box bottom has the ubiquitous commodity code, which started showing up in earnest by late 1966 on most Topps products:

The posters, designed of course to be hung on walls, are harder to find than the wrappers but they are out there.  A full set was recently offered on eBay and I thought it would be nice to show a visual checklist as so many of the larger-sized Topps sets are hard to scan or otherwise reproduce.

That artwork is insanely well done for a set that retailed for $1.20 a box!

There is a great display of the Sing-Sing artwork (by Wally Wood) over at the Artwork Archive,  go check the site out as it's loaded with goodies, but in the meantime:

There is some commonality of themes with the 1965 Silly Stickers, which had 55 subjects, a good number of which also had a travel related gag, but Chris Benjamin's take that the posters borrowed artwork from the stickers is incorrect:

You can see though that the gimmick on the stickers was the use of a tiny word to change the meaning of the gag.

Ya gotta hand it to Topps, they really would go all out for their posters and similarly sized sets.