Get In The Groove

Further to some recent posts on the 1966 Topps Wacky Labels, a tough test set if there ever was one, Friend o'the Archive Jason Rhodes has sent along a well formed observation on a related set, namely 1969 Topps Groovy Stick Ons. Jason notes that, in true Topps tradition, subjects of the former set popped up in the latter three years later.

Groovy Stick Ons (GSO) were a fairly well distributed set I think.  While they were, of course, stickers--which led to pure destruction of the set back in the day, they seem to be somewhat available today and, unlike Wacky Labels, a full checklist is know, albeit one that is maddeningly imprecise, especially for those of us trying to tie the two sets together.

The basics on GSO are few but with a small twist. The product (72 in number, with multiple "apply moisture" stickers on each) first appeared in a five cent format in 1969:

Looks like it was a summer issue as the Duryea address appears-Topps switched from Brooklyn to Duryea for most wrapper indicia in mid-1969. However, there is also a ten cent variety,as this pack from Komodo Cards shows:

You can't see it but the commodity code is: 444-96-01-9 so it's also a 1969 issue. Topps was transitioning most products to 10 cents by the middle of 1969 but it's rare that a product had two price points in one year while in the otherwise same packaging.

The set looks like this:

You can see how the long, rectangular stickers look just like Wacky Labels! It's looks possible too that some of the smaller or odd-sized stickers reuse Wacky Labels themes. Jason's thought is that the GSO labels might yield the full Wacky Labels checklist, which is woefully incomplete, but it looks to me like there would be too many subjects given almost every number has at least one sticker that could be from that earlier set.

Now the other big problem is that the checklists for GSO all go by the first given name on each large sticker, so there's no extant list of all stickers out there.  Something to ponder, unless someone out there has a full checklist.  Anybody? Bueller?

Wackadoodle Too

Well, well...hot on the heels of last week's post about the 1966 Topps Wacky Labels Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins sent along scans of five more subjects.  I'm still hoping more come in from other sources but this is a massive increase in the known checklist. There's hints in Lonnie's scans too as to why the set may be so scarce. Here goes!

This one is a little snarky but ultimately I think it's pretty tame:

This one however, may have caused some parental consternation:

Too far?  Very possibly.  Meanwhile:

OK, here's another problematic label for the mid 60's adult:

If Junior slapped one of these somewhere around the house or on a school book, I can see a complaint being made to Topps. Execs were sensitive to such things and it would be quite possible to my mind they would have stopped the set in its tracks in that scenario.  It would certainly explain how scarce these things are.

There are more benign entries though:

More of these are known and I'm trying to get the appropriate scans.  I can't say if more than one of any subject is out there though.  The ones above look like there's no perforations, but Lonnie points the bottom edges indeed have perfs-tabs would have been below those edges but it's strange there's no side nubs. Maybe they were just printed in a long roll. It looks like two distinct styles exist: either humorous or deceptive, the latter using a word or phrase in tiny letters to drive the joke home.

Hopefully more to come on these.

Wackadoodle

I had a rare bird fly into coop the other day, namely a 1966 Topps Wacky Label, one of the rarest issues of the 1960's.  In Chris Benjamin's The Sport Americana Price Guide to The Non-Sports Cards Number 4, he had identified one lonely label and an associated wrapper. In the years since a small handful of wrappers have surfaced and, if my count is correct, a total of two more Wacky Labels have popped since.

Benjamin's sole subject was illustrated in the book identified as "Earn Extra Cash...Blackmail Your Friends".  I can now add:

You will note the bottom is perforated.  That's because a small tab was originally there (shown by Benjamin), which also held the small black bar used by the cutting machine.  The top of mine isn't perfed though, it likely was in the topmost row of the printed sheet. The back is gummed, whereas Benjamin incorrectly had it as a peel off. It measures 2 9/16" x 1 1/8" without the tab.

The third positively identified subject unrelated to the small find (see below)  is not yet known to me.

An old Topps Vault auction yielded a wrapper:

And Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins sent along a nice box proof scan:

That's it!  I'm aware of a small find of a dozen or so Wacky Labels at some point in the past and am hoping to get details on the subjects involved but a lot more information is needed on this obscure and rare set!