Parade Of The Horribles

Further to a very old post here, I've found some additional information regarding the very strange and Topps affliated 1967 Rubber Uglies "set".  These little blighters were loosely associated with the 1965 Ugly Stickers set but were soft, rubbery, icky looking monsters and not made of cardboard.  I thought they had been sold in vending capsules (and very well may have) but it looks like you could buy them right out of the box:

That's a whole lotta Ugly! Except not enough as it seems full set is 32 in number (unconfirmed but likely).

It turns out that box artwork was done by Wally Wood, so maybe not so ugly after all: 

These are still a bit mysterious and there are a zillion knockoffs that were sold over the years but these are the real ("Topps", sorta) deal. I'm not real clear on whether or not this was a quasi-licensed set (wink-wink) or a total bootleg job but the Wood and Norman Saunders connections gives them an air of legitimacy.

My 2009 post mentioned a 1970's resale in blister packs, well here is an example, from the Norman Saunders site:

I like how the three in the pack form a kind of choreographed scene!

Fugly Stickers

Mile High's recently concluded catalog auction featured a "sticky" lot featuring a black process proof sheet for the 1965 Topps Ugly Stickers. What I find interesting is that this is a 198 subject sheet, not the usual 132 or smaller sheet normally seen. The array is 22 x 9:

A spin through Chris Watson's Non-Sports Bible shows that 40 subjects each have 4 different names assigned to them but four have only a single name.  The single names (Doc, Granny, Tommy, Charlie) are not short printed, they just don't have any variation. The do however, share black backgrounds so it must have been too much trouble to change the names on those four.

Here's a couple of examples from one of the "Quads"-note the numbering:

Here's a "Single":

22 subjects are overprinted and you can see that the last 11 slots across the two top rows on the right half of the sheet (counting from the 12th column) repeat an extra time as do the top and bottom rows of the leftmost eleven. This means each half sheet is 99 stickers. I suspect this is due to the print shop setup for pressure sensitive stock at the time.

The back shows this is not a cardboard sheet; it looks like an acetate overlay to me.

It's a pretty neat item on its own but I like how it helps suss out the mysteries of the set.

See you in 2018-Happy New Year!

21 Club

In 1968 Topps issued a new style of Tattoo product called 21 Tattoos.  Instead of the old penny pack Tattoos, which offered a slab of gum and a single tat on the inside of the product wrapper, 21 Tattoos offered exactly what it said, on a large, folded sheet, all for a nickel.  With some modifications that eventually resulted in more of an accordion design, this style of tattoo would become the default from 1968 through the mid 70's and has been revived periodically since. 1971 Baseball Tattoos would be a great example of how Topps ended up designing their tattoos products in this accordion style.

After a year or so,  Topps also started charging ten cents for their tatoo products but in 1968 your nickel got  you this, as a recent eBay auction shows:

There are 16 sheets in the set (it you're keeping score at home that's 336 tattoos).  Panel 8, which I found yonks ago at a site labeled "Sportoys 2002" holds an expensive little surprise as the Sultan of Swat makes an appearance in the upper left corner:

Anyone notice the reprint of Atlas from the 1948's Tatoo set? It's on the left side above the Zeppelin and below the Babe.  Here is the primordial version from '48:

The bottom right corner holds an image from 1965's Ugly Stickers. The first sheet shown above also has similar cribs although it is a USA sheet while the Babe above is of Canadian origin as I don't have a scan of the American version.

Wacky-packages.net even has an example of a pack:

I'm not sure if this was for the product test or the name changed prior to testing but at one point the set was going to be called 21 Skin Pix. I presume someone let the Topps brass in on the joke at some point on that title! Here is the original artwork for same (for sale on eBay at this moment actually):

I'm not sure how well 21 Tattoos sold but in 1971 Topps upped the ante:

You can clearly see the same graphics were used for the front of the 24 Tattoos wrapper. In fact, the right side panel uses graphics first introduced in the 1949 Tatoo set (1948's had text instructions)-click back and see for yourself.

This particular set was more of a foreign affair as the indicia shows:

Yes, that says "UK and Ireland" and the distribution on this set was not done by Topp's traditional UK partner A&BC but rather Trebor Ltd.  Here, Nigel's Webspace has a couple of more bits on Trebor (use "find" in your browser to see).

24 Tattoos was also issued in 1983, probably with some new tatoos. No word on a Babe Ruth in '71 but I'd wager there was.