A Real Rust-Up

As longtime readers of this blog know, I've been trying to document the various comics Topps included with Bazooka before Bazooka Joe became their ne plus ultra.  From roughly 1947 to 1949 Topps issued a seemingly long series of sepia five-cent comics featuring mostly funny animals and humorous characters from DC Comics. They mixed in some other, non-DC stuff during this period so things look pretty random sometimes.  The length and cast of characters for the DC series (or any pre-Joe comic for that matter) is indeterminate but seemingly extensive as they pop up more frequently (a relative term, these are hard to find) than most others of the period and new subjects often appear when this happens. 

Case in point, numbered and unnumbered DC series exist and all are from the foil-wrapper nickel rolls, which both pre-and-post date the DC's. The five cent foils ended with the second release of the Bazooka Joe's in 1954, which were duo-tone essentially, and followed on the heels of a sepia-toned Joe. Penny foils ended a little earlier, probably in late 1953 but I have not seen any sepia DC's in one-cent form (given the nature of the strips, this is not surprising) and Topps seems to have let a divergence occur between the one and five cents comics at some point during the DC run as some other issues could be found in penny and nickel pack versions. As for the five-centers, let's take a look at some of the DC's.

"Peg" no. 112. The series likely starts at #101 but that is very much unconfirmed and is also useless in determining if an even one hundred comics came before.

#115 finds "Lad and Dad" pushing a familiar Topps product in a way:

Dig that inked in July 1949 date!  "Jerry the Jitterbug" at #123 resembles, at least to me, a very milquetoast version of Harold Teen:

"Bonny" continues the fun and shows at least one subject appeared twice:

Note, however, the different style of the text at bottom as Topps used a tagline about saving Bazooka wrappers. Also, neither is numbered:

"The Dodo and the Frog" was a long running feature in some DC comic books and is my favorite of all the DC Bazooka's. It may be numbered in the lower right corner of the lower-right panel, can't quite tell:

"Chip" (two, even), "Gerry", "Rusty Rhino" and "Bronco Buster" s are all known subjects and BFF o' the Archive Jeff Shepherd; recently unearthed this beauty:

The lowest number I've seen is 107 and none have been found extending past the 120's; where and how long both the numbered and unnumbered versions come into play are open questions. I'm sure other characters exist beyond the ones above.  

These pre-Bazooka Joe sepia comics are very hard to suss out, especially the five-centers, until 1953 rolls around.

Between The Joes

Continuing on from last week's post today, which you may recall featured some recycled Magic Funny Fortunes gags that were run up the flagpole by Topps when the original Bazooka Joe's drawn by Wesley Morse were petering out in the early 80's.  Morse died in 1963 but had created so many strips for Topps in ten years time that they lasted almost another twenty after his passing!

But run out they did and Topps, between the lack of new material and a desire to get a little hipper, had to find a new artist for the strip.  They eventually chose Howard Cruse and his strips began around 1983 but before that several "feature-style" comics were launched as replacements.  One of them ripped off another old Topps issue, 1961's Crazy Cards.  Check out this Unreal People strip (courtesy of Lonnie Cummins, as are all the others shown here):

And now compare it to the original Crazy Card (by Wally Wood no less):

Same exact gag!  Not sure why the art wasn't reused, maybe Topps was trying out artists?

We also got some more ersatz Joe action with Rotten Riddles:

I'll bet that "fortune" would have been a real bummer to some 9 year old kid in 1981! The fortunes may have improved with the Dumb Jokes subset but the gags did not:

Lonnie ciphered that that particular football gag appeared in 1970's Funny L'il Joke Books and I'd wager many others in the the Dumb Jokes sequence did as well.

What I don't get though is why Topps didn't just recycle old Joes as they were waiting on Howard Cruse?  They did it in 1981 with recycled strips from 1977 according to the most fabulous bazookajoecomics.com so why not keep going?  The last "new" Bazooka Joe strips look to have been issued in 1980 so surely a reissue of older strips for another year or two would have been a cakewalk.

Two other features were mixed in during this period. Little Creeps, which seems like it was a standalone set from Hallowe'en a couple of years prior, may not have been issued that way and instead may have just been mixed in with some of these.  Or it was a reissue; I'm trying to figure that one out still.

Then there were also strips of Knock-Knocks:

There was a lot of artwork created for these interlocking issues, 218 including a kind of reissue of 52 of them! They span the 1981-82 period "Between the Joes" quite nicely but also served to give notice things were changing. There's a mix of types within each release, which look to have occurred every 4-6 months or so based upon the volume of comics.

There are 3 comic and 10 comic valuations but it's not even as there's far more 10's; I'm not sure which was first but these seem to follow a different kind of numbering and release scheme than the vintage strips did. 

On a semi-related note I got a ten pack of Bazooka in my stocking this year and am happy to confirm Joe lives!

I went to bazookajoe.com to see what was linked and was met with a choice between two paths, one for kids and one for "adults".  I chose the latter (the former looks like it was designed for five year olds) and that s what I have put as the click through link-check it out!

No Cards Just Gum...No Gum Just Cards

More catching up today lids as the new "deets" arriving at the Main Topps Archives Research Center continue unabated! As you may surmise from this post's title, this will be a far ranging piece today.

Friend o'the Archive Jason Rhodes has sent along a pair and a half of goodies, first up, a very old and wonderfully preserved Bazooka nickel roll wrapper with a "ride-along" bonus thrown in by the seller:

Nice freebie on that tray card Jason! I believe that "Award of Merit" wrapper debuted in mid-1949, replacing a Parents Magazine Seal,which could help date the World Famous Stamps Tray Card but that style may have persisted into 1952-53.

The reverse has a Peg comic, also possible from 1949-53 per my extant notes so a DC Comics/Topps timeline narrowing needs to be carried out!

Mr. Rhodes though was not even close to done as he alerted me to this lot over at The Sports Auction Co.  Check this bad boy out:

That is the first time I have seen a case for the Trading Card Guild Rak Paks, although I have seen the 1962 Civil War News raks before. That seems like a very small case for the Topps non-confectionery operation and I suspect it's more of a box component with several in a master case. CWN has been the subject of several finds over the years; it is quite abundant in nice shape as a result.

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd sent along a scan from an auction he ran on eBay with a 1970 Bazooka Twin-Pack (spoiler alert, I won the auction) that seems to be a successor to the 1969 Twin-Pack recently featured here:

As you can see, that's from a file book and it turns out it was sold by (and from, of course) the Topps Vault.  Seemingly, the confectionery only items were filed in a different manner than Woody Gelman's "Big Idea" sample card filing and reference system. My notion that the 1969 Twin-Pack wrapper was the latest sepia issue is therefore incorrect but both years' offerings are rare birds and the comics appear to be part of the same sequence as the 1969 wrapper ensconced #10 and here we have jumped to #17 a year later.

The distribution in packs of the 1973 Baseball Blue Team Checklists has been speculated upon in various forums and 10 cent wax is known to some as "being blue" on occasion, as this old Huggins & Scott description shows:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or so the poem goes....and "all 660" packs seem to hold the key to the blue checklists, which is eminently logical.

Here's the back of those packs, note the commodity code has a stock number of 401, which is correct for 1973:

However, a recent eBay auction revealed the bottom of the "blue checklist" wax box and there is a little twist-check out the commodity code, which is in red for some odd reason.

A 451 stock number is showing but what of those packs I pictured above? Compare to a "regular" 1973 10 cent wax box:

Black code there, as was usually the case and the same with the 401, which matches the wax packs. It makes sense the team checklists came in the "all 660" boxes and I suspect the red coding is related to that (and the little pop up tab on the front of the box). At first I thought it related to a long form, slap-dash test within the regular distribution since 1974's 15 cent long form test had a black commodity code, but Bill Haber explained it all (and then some) in the March 1973 issue of The Ballcard Collector revealing it was planned and rolled out from the get-go:

The cut down to 660 from 787 was assuredly due to the Topps IPO in March 1972 and the planning for 1973 Baseball would have commenced during the dog days of the '72 season. I do wonder though, if the renegotiated MLBPA CBA following the 1972 strike had anything to do with this, maybe with the union desiring to shuffle more revenue to more established major league players.

The stock number middle digit changed as well on that "all 660" box and 451 is not a number Topps trotted out often (the stock numbers would cycle through on roughly a two year basis most of the time). What does it all mean?  Maybe someday all will be revealed as more information is developed on Topps packaging ideosyncracies.

And to top it off, eBay recently had the almost unknown 1973 Team Checklist premium sheet, which went for a song (and which I missed seeing-rats!):

There were still interesting things happening as the 70's wore on!

Pre-Morseful

A  brace of early Topps wrapper and Bazooka comic uncut sheets popped up unexpectedly last fall, originating from the printer, although via a third party that did not know the name of the firm-drats!  They have scattered a bit to the wind, some to places unknown and some known-one even landed here at the Main Topps Archives Research Complex. As such, a review of some of the more interesting pieces can be conducted.

The most compelling ones featured uncut one cent comics, some are pre-Bazooka Joe, others have the ubiquitous, eye-patched mascot of Topps featured.  The earliest of these looks to be in the 1953-54 range and the entire collection of sheets, numbering a half dozen or so, date from this time through about 1957.  This one, alas, did not make it here and ended up somewhere I do not have access to unfortunately.

The sheets all appear to be missing the final wax coating and are a bit fragile but they are not falling apart, like I've seen some old paper items do. You can see how the outer and inner wrappers were sliced and diced from the same sheet.

Excluding the very tippy-top row, which is almost all cut off, I've started my matrix at the first full (sorta) row, which I am calling "A".  The rows with black bars atop each comic all contain Double Feature Comics and they repeat every third row, so C, F, I, and L are all Double Features. Topps also did this a half decade later with Bazooka Joe's (not Double Features but black barred comics). The pattern then picks up at A again.  There are 7 columns with edges on either side looking straight cut so there are 84 unique comics to the set.  56 singles and 28 Double Features.  I believe these date from late 1953 into early 1954 and are the last series printed without any Bazooka Joes. (UPDATE 4/17/24-these may be the "next to last" series before Bazooka Joe but it's not clear.)

Ten different strips are represented, two of which are only found on the Double Features.  I'm not able to provide a full subject list yet--working on that--but the counts are as follows:

Buzzy - 8
Cousin Juniper - 5
Crax & Jax - 10
Double Feature - 28 (more on these below)
Gerald - 11
Honey Bun - 14
J.B. - 4
Little Brother Hugo - 4

The Double Features (DF) break down like so:

Cousin Juniper - 10
Crax & Jax - 7
Gerald - 1
Jinglet - 15 (DF only)
J.B.  - 4
Odd But True - 19 (DF only)

All comics were provided by the N.Y. News Syndicate Inc. Here are examples of each (sorry for the bad scans on Buzzy and Cousin Juniper):

Some of the jokes would have "worked" no matter what strip they were in, don't you think? And isn't it interesting how long those felt baseball patches have been around?

Next time out we'll take a peek at a very interesting sheet of Bazooka Joe and his Gang!

You Never Had It So Good

Sometimes you never realize what came before something iconic.  Take Bazooka Joe for instance; foisted upon an unsuspecting world in 1954, he ushered forth a never ending stream of bad puns and corny jokes all the while tempting us with premium offers and offering us our fortune in one simple line.  But before there was Joe, there was a long trail of lesser strips.  I'm slowly unraveling the various pre-Joe strips with the massive help of BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd (who is helping along a Bazooka Joe book due out next year) and there will be much ado about these at a later date but for now, take a gander at this early 50's production:

Licensed from DC Comics, this type of strip makes you realize how good the bubblegum was, since I have to think most kids who opened up their foil wrapped chews to find that square jawed lunk staring at them would have given up buying the product if it was not "Young America's Favorite"!

For the record, here's what the outer wrapper looked like:

Comic Relief

Up until they switched over fully to wax wrappers in the 1956-57 time frame (and sporadically thereafter) Topps used to insert a premium offer and comic in their gum card packs.  These inserts mostly appeared in five cent packs but in earlier times could occasionally be found in the penny versions. Many of the early wrappers were made of glassine, which is similar to wax paper it that it preserves and contains air and liquids such as grease but is not as durable.  Glassine is also subject to staining, making it less than ideal for selling things such as baseball cards and gum.  So an inner layer to assist the outer layer makes sense if you are selling gum cards. It makes even more sense to use it to sell some stuff.

Topps would use one-panels for the comics, as opposed to the panel by panel action of their earlier strips and of course Bazooka Joe.  Here is one called Li'l Pat:

Sometimes the insert was blank and I'm not sure if that was just due to ink running out on a run or cost saving measures.  Earlier penny wraps were really just premium offers but interesting nonetheless:

The best of the bunch though is one shown here previously that features Roy Campanella and has Roogie himself endorsing Bazooka in way of a movie starring some Brooklyn Dodgers called Roogie's Bump.  The Bazooka Joe Comic is pretty  nice too!

Pennant Feverish-Part 2

If I may put the cart before the horse, it is time to look at the antecedents of the 1959 Baseball Pennant premiums. Believe it or not, the first year Topps offered a pennant premium was in 1949 and it was college football teams, not professional baseball squads:



Those inserts would come with the early Bazooka penny pieces before comics really caught on. I do not have any scans of these yet but suspect some will show up someday. By the way, all of the Bazooka comic scans today are from Jeff Shepherd's bag of tricks, as are the date identifications ff same. I suspect some form of the football pennant inserts existed for years afterward.

In 1952 Topps made a baseball pennant premium part of the wrapper design for both the first 310 cards:



And the High Numbers:




Betcha did't know they had their own wrapper, eh? Well, I didn't either until I stumbled upon that scan. As a side note to a side note, it is believed by yours truly that the '52 high numbers were only issued in nickel packs. I'll get to the top premium offer in a minute but the bottom one shows the baseball pennants offer:



The pennants seem to follow the design of the earlier College Football version, with just lettering and no logos. That Chicago and New York teaming would live on for many more years, as we shall see.

We are ranging a bit far afield here but the logos however, were also available via the premium offer at the top of the wrapper for five inch felt emblems and predate by four years the accepted 1956 issue date covered here. Not sure if they match the 1956's identically but check it out:



1953 came and there were no pennant premiums (or emblems) offered on the baseball wrappers, so it was back to the bubble gum set:



Buzzy was about the last character to appear on the comics before Bazooka Joe & His Gang became ubiquitous. The pennants are still nondescript, from the looks of things but Chicago and New York continue to be displayed (the Giants and not the Yankees this time out).

However, in 1954 the stars aligned and we not only get a nascent Bazooka Joe but also a merger between the emblems and pennants of yore:



I have not tracked the emblems as closely as the pennants and am not sure if they were still offered as premiums or if they were not reintroduced until 1956. Anyway.....

1957 brought a redesigned comic (matching somewhat the scroll work on the retailer certificates of the time) but the same old Chicago/NY axis:



1959 was a three-fer as Bazooka had the pennants on the comics:



And Topps had 'em on the baseball wrappers:



And in the packs:



Tying back to Part 1, in 1968 they were also advertised as a premium on the comics:



Yes, same old New York and Chicago tandem! It was still going strong in 1971:



But by 1979 things were moribund in New York:



Pennant premium offers on the comics extend to at least 1983 and may still be offered today for all I know. Along with the felt emblems and a few other items, it is safe to say there is a gap in the information on these premiums. This is partly due to their confusing and longstanding issuance and partly due to Bazooka being considered as lesser when compared to the Topps brand, even though they are all one and the same!