All Ears

Yonks ago I posted a pretty fuzzy image of a strange and virtually unknown Bazooka box back set called Toppscience.  Recently a series of eBay auctions and an extended plumbing of the depths of my hard drive offered a better look at the issue and I'm here to share the results:

We already knew there were 24 "experiments" in the series and this is the third one (aka the hard drive image):

A desalinization project?  Sign me up! Note too the Parents Magazine seal of approval for the gum. 

Here is number 7:

What I like about these newly hammered pieces is that they can now be dated, as the commodity code has come in with far more resolution than I had previously. It ends in a 7, indicating a concept year (and likely retail year) of 1967.  It's even clearer in this image of number 19, which reveals 1-197-36-01-7 as the full code:

Number 21 was the example I shared previously but this is a better image for sure:

Side panel action below! I'm sure the ability to make chemical magic at home sounded enticing; here's the offer:

Invisible ink is one thing but I'm not sure I'd want to slug down some homebrew cola!

These came on the back of the box used by Bazooka for several years, with these two fresh-faced tykes grinning madly at your mom in the grocery store:

Twenty four subjects is a lot for a Bazooka issue.  If you count the three card panels of baseball cards issued from 1960-71 as being singular items, they maxed out with sixteen of them in 1971. 

I'm guessing they Toppscience subjects were adapted or licensed from an existing book of chemistry for kids and also wondering if they were pulled quickly due to the nature of some experiments.  Just in the examples above we have nails, metal wire and a potential garotte (!) being needed to run the experiments, which was just the type of thing to scare hysterical moms into cowing a jittery Topps into cancelling a set back in the Sixies. Toppscience is a tough set to collect, or even find examples from, which is understandable in the general sense and if Topps did indeed yank it, then the scarcity of extant examples is more easily explained.

UPDATE 7/31/24: Consistent with an anonymous comment about this post, Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins has provided details on box variants.  In addition to the 20 count boxes described above, 25 count boxes were also issued in 1967 (1-190-38-0X-7 commodity codes, likely with three revisions, hence the "X".) 1967 also saw a 90count Hallowe'en Bonus Box (the code there was 1-135-01-7) .The Topps reissued Toppscience in 1969 with a  code of 1-190-38-01-9. Whew!

The Mild Ones

Bazooka was the main Topps bubble gum brand for decades but that didn't stop them from experimenting with some different confections from time to time while still selling oodles of Young America's Favorite. Blony (Bowman's bubble gum flagship at the time of absorption by Topps in 1956) was pretty much the stalwart #2 brand and Bozo gumballs seemingly went off to Canada after going gangbusters in the late 1940's. Topps most famously put baseball cards on the backs of Bazooka boxes for more than a decade but would muck around with other stuff as well, trying to move more and more of the pink stuff. I though we would take a hop, skip and a jump and look at some different things, bubble-gum-wise today.

1968 brought the world (or at least a small part of it) the Wild Animal Surprise Box, a more personal sized box of bubble gum:

Said to measure 2 1/2" x 4 inches by a recent seller, there only a little more than a half ounce of gum inside but I'm not sure what the surprise was. I make the height to be about 3/4".

That gorilla looks a lot more enticing than your standard Bazooka box, since the latter was aimed at moms in the supermarket and not a kiddie consumer. When baseball season waned, Topps would put some odd things on the backs of the Bazooka party boxes.  This Toppscience panel dates from 1966-69 (Update 6/30/24: it's from 1967):

 I'm all for science but..... NERD!!!!  The dating can be derived from the curved Topps logo on the back and the Brooklyn address on the side flap.  Remember I posted a guide to dating Topps items a while back...

Of course nothing beats the 1971 O-Pee-Chee Bazooka boxes with hockey cards on the back, courtesy of Bobby Burrell:

Those are miniature versions of the '71 hockey cards, blank backed, of course. Super rare and often counterfeited, the Orr card is one of hockey's most sought after collectibles. That little logo on the bottom right flap must be the printer: