Super Seventies Sales Sensations

A trio of Seventies Topps sell sheets today kids, as I'm feeling a little nostalgic for what I consider to be a decade very much unlike any other.  The last good time, in many (but not all) ways!

Anyhoo, we've seen Topps "package" promotions before but I've only covered those involving card and sticker issues.  Those were used to burn off products that weren't 't selling well or where Topps overestimated demand for ones that were. Here, given that Ring Pops and Big Mouth, both top sellers,  are in the deal, it looks like Topps was trying to piggyback Smooth 'N' Juicy, which was their tepid answer to Bubble Yum's unrelenting assault, and Sugar Free Bazooka, which was not exactly a carbon copy of the original, plus some candy items.

Much cooler all around was this as for Cherry and Grape Bazooka, which were both tasty treats I enjoyed at the time, especially the latter...

...but what caught my eye was not the dual flavor box but rather the canister in the lower right corner.  As you can see it clearly states Flavor Mates.  Well, the last time we saw examples from that brand they were a sugarless bubble gum, so did Topps just have extra canisters displays lying around because nobody liked the gum?

And speaking of things nobody liked, it's Bubble Fudge!

Let's conclude with something a little more novel, sent along some time ago by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins:

The commodity code on this pins it to 1970 and the only reason it would have the code is so Topps could track income and expenses on an aggregate basis.  The idea persisted for at least another year and then may have been curtailed as Topps reined in costs as they prepared for their March 1972 IPO. By the time they issued the Countermates (I never know if that should be one word or two, nor did Topps!) sell sheet that we kicked things off with today, I guess they started tracking things in a different way.

Brown & Blue

While I didn't bid on it, a curious piece of Topps history was hammered on eBay late last year.  Using their own employees for photo shoots was a continuing theme with Topps in the Sixties and Seventies, and some of their antics are a little humorous in retrospect.

This is an original photographic pasteup from the archives of Brown Brothers, a stock photo firm that was big for a good chunk of the Twentieth Century: 

Lelands has been auctioning off the firm's archival items on the 'Bay and also in some catalog auctions but the three notations are masking another Brown reference, namely the friendly "shopkeeper" pounding a baseball mitt, one Len Brown.  Brown was Topps New Product Director Woody Gelman's assistant at the time and he's helping the PR push for those 1963 Bazooka boxes that not only had three package design baseball cards on the revere but five All Time Greats cards within. 

These were the boxes being hawked by Len:

The reverse of the photo shows a lot of decrepit rubber cement along with a notation:

I've blown it up to make it easier to read:

I am surmising this particular piece came from Len's first wife and was in her possession as part of their divorce.  Of note are mention of three 1973-74 test issues; in order these are Deckle Baseball cards from '74, plus The Waltons and The Rookies, both TV shows of the day that Topps tried to make work as card sets in 1973.  I've covered the first two here previously but to my surprise I've never referenced The Rookies, which is one of the tougher test issues of the decade and far harder to track down than the other two, at least from what I've found.

They come from a time when Topps was trying to standardize some of their graphics:

A little text and a puzzle make up the reverse:

The example above is unusual as it's not severely miscut, since most of the set's surviving examples are found that way. In fact, many of its 44 subjects are horizontally-oriented and the cuts can be so bad that the caption is often found above the photo and not below:

Yikes!  It's truly a tough issue and finding well-cut cards is super challenging.   PSA has graded a mere 60 examples overall with nothing above a grade of 7 given. However, 44 of them are in the sole registry set, which is complete with a GPA of 6.898. By way of reference, 255 Waltons cards have been PSA slabbed (nine 9's given) and over 3,000 1974 Deckles, with seventy-six 10's granted somehow!

Tape Measure Job

I picked up an opened penny pack of circa 1950 Bazooka last month in large part due to the fact the bubble gum was still intact and not broken like one would expect after seventy five years in captivity. And yes, I know this is not normal behavior! So I thought a measured look at this prize was in order and am happy to report my findings.

The first packs of one cent Bazooka came out in the late summer/early fall of 1949 and included two series of comics: Spalding Sports Show and Historical Almanac.  These came in a foil wrapper that's pretty close to the one I am diving into here but has clear differences marking it as the ur-penny pack of Bazooka. Based upon the sheer amount of known subjects (over 120 at last count), Historical Almanac seems to have run for some time, whereas Willard Mullin's SSS was a licensing deal that looks to have concluded after its first run. My theory is that Historical Almanac was then printed along with a set of comics called either Sports Oddities and/or Know Your Sports, noting the former of those titles was bestowed by the American Card Catalog. Whatever you call it, these comics had the look of Spalding Sports Show to a degree but with no Willard Mullin art.  This came foil-wrapped like so in penny form:

I note that the white background behind "young America's favorite" was added after the debut run of Bazooka; if that motto is just printed on plain foil with no background it's from the first run 1949 packs, at least that's how I view it: This wrapper measures 2" x 2 13/16" if you're scoring at home.  Since there's no titles on the one cent version of the comics called Know Your Sports in nickel form, this may be a Sports Oddities example in terms of nomenclature but it's hard to tell as these are scarce little suckers overall and there could also be two very similar sets, or one with different styles:

That RBI mark has long since fallen BTW, and is currently held by Fernando Tatis who clocked two grand slams in one inning in 1999! Fred Merkle was the first to notch the feat in 1911, followed by Bob Johnson in 1937 before Tom McBride did it in 1945.  It was again reached in late 1950 and then several times thereafter until Tatis slugged his way to immortality.

The Bazooka proper came loosely protected (lengthwise it seems) in this little advert glassine strip, measuring 1 1/8" x 2 7/8":

The bubble gum resembled the Topps Gum of the era, which Bazooka was rapidly forcing out of the limelight:

7/8" x 1 3/8" on that gum tab folks, plus it's 3/16" high, but note it was a double stack, so 3/8" high as packed as these two long-fused pieces show:

None of the production marks or packaging rips known with Topps Gum and pretty much every small tattoo issue from the company through the 1970's can be seen, so it's pretty clear Bazooka had a discrete production line.

I really dig the pre-Bazooka Joe comics and little inserts Topps marketed as they tried to find their way with what was once the world's most famous bubble gum.  Hopefully more foil-wrapped items turn up every now and then for further examination!

A Krinkle In Time

Topps did some interesting cross-marketing over the years, which was often quite innovative, such as when they contracted with the Barker Greeting Card Company of Cincinnati to affix their penny packs of Varsity, Hocus Focus (which today we call Magic Photo) and the like to Christmas and Birthday cards in the late 1940's. You could also look to the Doeskin Tissues tie-in with Wings and Rails & Sails or the Red Ball Jets packs that contained even more of the fabulously over-produced Wings cards. However, on occasion Topps allowed for some cross-marketing the other way, i.e. with an outside product getting inside a pack of Topps or Bazooka. One very early example of this was a circa 1951 tie-in with Post Cereal's Krinkles.

I'm reasonably sure this image, provided by BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd, came inside a pack of Topps cards, as opposed to a nickel roll of bubble gum but don't quote me on that:

You may recognize St. Paul as a Topps premium fulfillment provider address from around 1965 to 1973 or so; it was a third party concern though, Topps had no ownership. It sure seems possible the same firm handled these little gadget-y premiums. 

That murky little illustration of the cereal box was pretty spot-on:

(Courtesy Mr, Breakfast)

Krinkles were soon to be called Sugar Rice Krinkles and would feature Krinkles the Clown as their somewhat terrifying mascot by 1955. Here, check it out:

They debuted however, likely in a test scenario, in 1949 or 1950. The Post's box above is from 1951 and the "candy kiss" was originally provided by a combination of sugar and honey-wheeeeeee!!

The premiums tying-in with Bazooka were space-age themed. These are the flying saucer ring components, which also did double duty as a Captain Video premium from Power House candy bars. Note one of the discs (the lighter one I'd wager) is likely the glow-in-the dark one, as advertised:

Each disc was a whopping two inches in diameter! 

The Viking rockets were little bit more colorful and came via the Jack Garvin Company in Providence:

That launching base was 1 1/8 inches in diameter and the white rocket glowed in the dark. This is confirmed by a separate premium offer sheet for these, perhaps from an old comic book or magazine:

All those premium images were nicked from Hake's Auctions by the way, man that rocket must have been about the size of a golf tee!

The End Of Topps (Not-So-Slight Return)

Well, the inevitable happened the other day as Michael Eisner's Tornante Company and his partners, Madison Dearborn, sold off the last remaining bit of Topps Chewing Gum, or more properly these days, The Topps Company. It wasn't really the end of the company founded as a partnership by the Shorin Family in 1938, which to my mind occurred when Eisner's group and Madison Dearborn bought out, quite acrimoniously it seems, the remaining Shorin's (and a host of other stockholders) for $385.4 Million on March 6, 2007, bit it certainly put a final cap on the era of the founders.

That 2007 deal was nudged by an activist investor group called Pembridge Capital, which held seats on the Topps board. Despite some drama that included arch rival Upper Deck making a game attempt to swoop in, the original deal went through, ex-CEO Arthur Shorin sold his 2.7 Million shares at $9.75 a pop (for a pretty tasty haul of $22.425 Million), and Michael Eisner took over at Topps. Nice work if you can get it!

So today I thought I'd take a look at some key Topps business activity today both before and after things got Mickey-Moused.

Founded as a partnership between the four Shorin brothers (and probably their silent-partner father Morris), Topps began doing business in December of 1938 with a sole product called Topps Gum, which sold for a penny. They endured the shortages and privations of World War 2 by selling this one product and some ration and shortage induced low-sugar candy bars, then came up with all-time winner Bazooka bubble gum in the late summer of 1947, a vital catalyst for their growth. 

Introducing baseball cards of a sort in 1951 in the bizarre set dubbed Baseball Candy, which despite getting Topps royally sued and cease-and-desisted, led them to double down and come out with the now classic 1952 Baseball set, which helped build their profits and signaled the start of an as-yet uninterrupted-run of annual issues covering the game of sphere and ash. This led to a very litigious four-year period before Topps ended up purchasing their biggest rival, Bowman, in February 1956 when the parent company of that venerable Philadelphia firm (Connelly Containers) elected to pursue other, and quite lucrative, business opportunities.

Topps weathered challenges thereafter from Fleer, the Federal Trade Commission, the Major League Baseball Players Association and other, smaller antagonists before floating an IPO of 435,000 shares of common stock in March of 1972, which saw the company listed on the American Stock Exchange, initially valued at $17.50 per share, or $7,612,500. There were also apparently a gaggle of preferred voting shares that I'm still trying, somewhat listlessly, to untangle that allowed the Shorin's and their various in-laws and allies to essentially retain full control of the company. (UPDATE 4/12/24: I just found an article indicating only 25% of the company was being listed, so the valuation was $30,450,000).

I think this specimen shows how the issued stock certificates looked in 1972 as dot-matrix computer printing and boxed CUSIP numbers were in use by then but this version is from 1978 so I can't be sure:

The AMEX ticker symbol was TOPPSG. 

In 1975 Fleer sued them in an action that led to the 1981 expansion of the baseball card market and ultimately rocket-fueled the growth of of the hobby. In 1983 the Topps board agreed to a leveraged buyout by an investor group headed by Forstmann Little. This deal closed in early 1984 and 3.6 Million shares of Topps common stock were gobbled up at $26.25 per share, valuing the now-private company at roughly $94.5 Million.

In May 1987 a NASDAQ IPO saw Topps issue 1.7 Million shares (described as 31% of "itself" amusingly enough) and be rebranded as The Topps Company, Inc. The $13 stock price meant a total valuation of around $71.29 Million, which seems like a bit of a devaluation (hard to tell with this stuff, there's so many loopholes and ins-and-outs). I ended up with a share of same in 1994 thanks to an old buddy named Dale Beaumont:

This bubbled along, despite the inevitable ups-and-downs of the stock market, quite nicely overall until Mr. Eisner and Madison Dearborn came along with their $385.4 Million in 2007 and took the company private once again, with the Shorin's and friends no longer directly involved once the deal closed, although some family and insiders fulfilled (very brief) consulting roles with the new ownership group. 

Eisner though, kept the company fairly intact in spirit and fact after the purchase and then tried to sell the whole magilla for $1.3 Billion in 2021 after his plans for expansion ran up against Madison Dearborn's preference to control costs and merely ride profits forward. That deal - which seemingly turned into a disaster when Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association decided to let their licensing with Topps expire eleven days before the close of the deal and instead go with Fanatics -  would have seen a hedge fund called Mudrick Capital take control.  Mudrick planned to merge with Topps, while Eisner planned to roll his 46 Million shares (worth $800 Million plus kids!) into the new company, which was intended to operate as a SPAC, while Madison Dearborn cashed out entirely. The stock symbol would have been: TOPP

There was a lot of boo-hooing in the press about how he got snookered and was no longer a force in the business world (and in fairness, no one at Topps seemed to catch on that MLB/MLBPA and Fanatics were in their own talks) but in the end Eisner seems like he ended up doing OK. Fanatics bought the Topps brand, assets and licenses in either very late December 2021 or very early January 2022 for $500 Million or so (the exact figure seems to be slightly less than that round number) while Eisner and Madison Dearborn held onto Bazooka Candy Brands and a gift card services unit called TDS, which stood for Topps Digital Services.  

You know those giant racks of gift cards you see at the supermarket?  TDS provide the processing backbone for them! Topps seems to have acquired that firm, originally called GMG Lifestyle Entertainment, then based in Minneapolis, sometime during the reign of Eisner (and possibly as early as 2007) but specifics are a little hard to find due to this all being in the realm of private equity. I suspect the original GMG involvement was to help Topps manage all of their redemption and loyalty programs.

Bazooka Candy Brands, despite the fading market share of its namesake bubble gum, still manufactures, among a myriad of other confections, Ring Pops, which sell gloriously year-after-sticky-fingered-year. That remnant of the business was sold to Apax Partners for a reported $700 Million in October 2023. Then early 2024 saw the sale of TDS to Ziff-Davis for a rumored $170 Million, formally ending the Eisner era at Topps.

If you are tallying all that at home, it adds up to around $1.37 Billion, essentially what the 2021 sale to Mudrick Capital was to gross. I dunno, maybe this Eisner guy is pretty good at business after all!

Oh, Fudge!

Gary Gerani has spent over half a century entertaining people.  He's a well-known screenwriter in La La Land, an author and, to the point here, has created and/or contributed to hundreds of trading card and sticker sets.  This envious career arc essentially started at Topps way back in 1972 when he joined the New Product Department under the tutelage of Len Brown and Woody Gelman. He's now started to write a series of books that will take a decade-by-decade look at his trading card endeavors and his first volume tackles the Seventies in highly amusing fashion.

So I was in the middle of reading his enjoyably flippant book, which is titled The Card King Chronicles Vol. 1, when I happened upon a couple of paragraphs about a 1975 product called Bubble Fudge. It tickled a vague memory of seeing such a thing back in my reckless youth, although I'm pretty sure I never tried it, generally preferring my chocolate, then and now, in bar or better yet, ice cream form (chocolate chip to be exact). A little digging turned up a production piece for the outer wrapper and it is clearly part of the Super Bazooka line of softer gums Topps was somewhat urgently manufacturing at the time: 

That line was started by Topps to counter the very real threat of Bubble Yum, which had been introduced by Life Savers earlier that year and was laying waste to Bazooka's market share. Super Bazooka launched with a product called Smooooth N' Juicy and Topps kept coming up with new twists for the line, one of which was Bubble Fudge.  Five pieces look to have come overwrapped in that pack, as I found this out there in the wilds of  Pinterest:

That's clearly a promo shot but I can't say it made the product look appetizing. As it turns out, that image was either used in or created for a 1979 commercial for the product, starring Johnny Bench. Despite the misgivings of Mr. Gerani, it seems like the flavor was around for a few years and it may still exist overseas.

At the same time I was looking up Bubble Fudge, I found an eBay auction with a piece of Hot Bazooka, which, as it turns out, is a rare item.  Alas, I was too late but did get a couple of images:

I could not discern the last digit of the commodity code but a little goggling revealed this was a 1973 product. Jason Liebig, no surprise, over at his wonderful Collecting Candy blog has all the fiery details on this product. Now, I need to go find me a Hot Bazooka wrapper....

Banners Day

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd auctioned off a couple of old Bazooka Point of Sale banners recently and while I didn't bid, thanks to the overflowing archives here, they were two things of beauty to be sure.

First up, for the Fall 1949 launch of the penny packs of Bazooka ("tabs" in the confectioner's parlance), Topps created a wonderful banner with the original Bazooka Joe shown, as he often was, blowing a bubble containing the pack.  Given the year and the fact there was a contest to win a pocket knife, it was most likely run by Sy Berger, who was in charge of such things back then.  10,000 knives was likely a number they knew would never be reached as 100 comics was a whole lotta gum packs.

Topps used these knives for premiums over many years and they resemble (or more likely, are) the ones used by the U.S. Military during the war and issued for many years after with bespoke nameplates; the Boy Scouts were one such organization that did that..  Berger had connections for surplus goods, so this all ties in nicely with what I know about such things.

The banner is a beauty:

Jumping forward ten years, 1959 brought a really colorful banner detailing the premium pennants Bazooka was pushing at the time (and for another ten years at least).  Five Bazooka wrappers was a much more manageable amount than the 100 required a decade earlier:

That September 15, 1959 deadline makes me think this banner debuted when the 1959 Major League season opened in April.  Why Blony didn't get more than a passing mention in the copy is beyond me,

Mail in offers were useful for Topps as they could do market research based upon the origins of the redemption requests.  With a product launch in 1949 and the two big league west coast team moves very recent in memory - and notions of expansion more than hot rumors in 1959 - these were both marketing and sales tools.

Paper Works

I love stumbling across various bits of Topps ephemera on my computer (or should I say cloud?). You can sometimes get a sense of how the company was promoting certain brands or distributing products.  

Here's three different bits o'paper from a long time ago, recently rediscovered and sent to me by Jeff Shepherd. First up is an order form for a trade association that managed shipments for The National Association of Variety Stores.  This is quite similar in nature to a form used by the  Consolidated Merchants Syndicate.

So 2,880 pieces (tabs in the vernacular) of Bazooka was $16.32 east of the Rockies and $17.28 out west, as long as you bought two cases minimum.  Pricing seems to be the same as wholesale for the time so the cost to a trade association was the same as that offered to any other jobber or wholesaler buyer.  NAVS  members each had their own exclusive territory, although non-members could have as many stores as they wanted of course. I wish the rest of the form was visible!

Speaking of jobbers, Ventura County Tobacco Co. appears to be one; note the pricing for 1957 Football matches the Bazooka pricing above for the west coast (60% of retail).  Bazooka proper was the same price from two years earlier to boot:

The handwritten calculations indicate the jobber was working out the "2% net" prompt payment discount.

Finally, we get what looks like an "extension bonus" payment to Frank Howard. He seems to have preferred cash to merch!

Stamping and mutilation (what, no folding?)-that's a long way from snapping two images on your phone to deposit a check!

Fields Of Screams

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd was nice enough to loan me some old tobacco journals a little while ago to pick through for Topps-related content and they did not disappoint. While I continue to search in vain for any American Leaf Tobacco Company ads (some mags were from the 30's), Bazooka and its early ad partners certainly were present and accounted for. I've included one a little further below I think many of you will like.

Topps took advantage of radio in advertising Topps Gum (which had a jingle I'm still searching for) and also Bazooka on the Abbott & Costello Show. I've shown this original piece before but it gives you the setup perfectly:

 A&C had been on NBC Radio for a five year run before switching over to ABC in the fall of 1947.  A couple of months later they launched a Saturday morning show for the smaller fry and that is where Topps parked their radio ads for Bazooka.  Topps Gum was marketed to adults and would have been hawked on the traditional, evening show. 

Both of their ABC shows are described in the references I have as "sustaining", which means they had no national sponsor but instead relied upon a little meager, often  local "spot" advertising or merely network promos to remain on the air.  Sustaining shows did not necesarily have long lifespans but the "plug" for Bazooka seems to indicate the Abbott & Costello Show had some national revenue generated via Topps buying "spot" advertising. Given that they aired their last children's episode on March 26, 1949, this ad from the April 2, 1949 edition of "The Tobacco Leaf" Topps must have been in at the kill:

A&C's evening show only lasted about ten weeks after the Saturday show aired its final episode and television was about to change everybody's lives whether they liked it or not. I actually have a transcription disc of one Abbott & Costello radio show with a Bazooka plug but have no way to play it as it requires a special turntable that plays "inside-out" and no audio files have yet turned up on YouTube or the Internet Archive but I keep digging.

Topps was about to come around on the idea you could have multiple price points on a confectionery products but at the time the above ad ran, the penny Bazooka tabs we all knew and loved were not yet in the market.  That referenced DC advertising campaign was also widespread and lasted slightly over two years, running from mid-1948 to mid-1950.  These two ads were running in a couple of dozen DC titles at the same time the above one appeared:

Yes, 1,800 colleges to choose from, meaning those pennants were printed on demand!

Abbott & Costello continued to make movies and of course had a syndicated TV show for two seasons running from 1952-54. Their best known routine is obviously "Who's on First?" but that's been played to death and I find this clip from the telly a lot funnier personally:

"Good night to everybody and good night Paterson, New Jersey!"

Letters Imperfect

Some correspondence from Topps has presented itself of late on eBay and what better thing to do than cadge some scans and share the results here?!

First up we get a dunning letter from Joel Shorin, son of Topps executive Phil Shorin and who would one day run the company himself:

Messinger's Variety Store (or more properly 5¢ to $1.00) was a mainstay for a very long time on Glasgow Street in Clyde, New York where Scottish influence once held considerable sway, so much so that the town was named for the river in Scotland.  It served the small town on the former Erie Canal about ten miles south of Lake Ontario from 1936 to 2001, or in other initials from mid-FDR to early-W, which is about 65 years if you're counting.  Clyde itself prospered as a stop along the canal, which opened in 1825, but its population has hovered around 2,300 souls for quite a while it seems. Clearly a letter mailed there without a street address would make it to Messinger's without much fuss in 1948 (and probably 1998!).  

Donald and Messinger his wife Thelma also had a variety store outpost in Williamson, New York until about 1974.  Here's a peek at the Clyde store's counter and candy racks from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle on July 4, 1994:

The Messingers promptly paid up by the way, Thelma must have been in charge of the books:

If the invoice for the order was sent on September 9th, Topps must have been very much on top of their receivables!  Check out this sweet Topps bank deposit stamp on the back of the the check:

Many old checks in the years before electronic clearinghouses would admonish people not to fold, spindle or mutilate them. Perhaps one reason for this was due to the hole-stamped method of noting the check had been cleared and cashed.

Things were far more relaxed ten years later when this little gem was sent out:

That's actually the Topps letterhead, circa (early) '58.  I say "early" 1958 as "The Atom" on the front of each Bazooka penny tab was replaced by "Topps" mid-year.  Blony was the province of Archie comics, to wit: 

Yes, this rode along with a 1958 Topps Baseball Team Emblem premium! I covered those in February of 2010 and if you click through, you will see at least one 1958 pack insert promoting those had the new Bazooka gum tabs with "Topps" now prominent; perhaps as a preview or (more likely) already rolling out as Topps used up a supply of out-of-date letterhead.

Topps helpfully noted  on the flipside of this letter that several premiums could be yours for enough comics and/or change:

Those were pretty hefty buy-ins for the time and this seems like a direct marketing and audience survey form post-MLB stabbing westward as it took only a mere wrapper and SASE to get the original felt emblem premium.  They may have been burning off excessive stock of some premium items as well.

Is it just me or is e-mail just not as fun as postal letters?

We're Having A Party...Everybody's Chewing

Friend o' Archive Lonnie Cummins sent along an interesting Bazooka related series of scans a few weeks ago.  I can't say I've seen these before and we are both trying to determine the source, although I have a thought on that, as you will see.

Need an idea for a  kid's birthday party?  Let Topps help!

There were many similar guides back then from what I remember of it (I was born in 1961). Moms were always trying out new tips from Parents or Good Housekeeping to keep us wee ones entertained for a couple of hours before we had cake and punch and went bonkers from all the sugar.

Given the Parents magazine seal of approval on the brochure, I have to think there was an ad somewhere in the magazine where the brochure could be ordered.  I suspect it came with a couple of pieces of Bazooka as well but obviously that is conjecture.  

The relationship between Topps and Parents went back almost to the beginnings of the Bazooka brand as The Parents Magazine Seal of Approval appeared on very early nickel rolls in the late 40's (Bazooka was introduced in 1947).

Dig that centerpiece!

We can easily date the brochure to 1964 as the original mailing envelope survived:

I tried finding some fall issues of Parents from 1964 online but failed miserably. I do hope the Pfannenstiel's kid had a good time at their bash!

Bonus Bazooka Blast!

It's a grab bag of Bazooka this week kids!  Here's some Bazooka eye candy I think you will all enjoy.

Wesley Morse drew Bazooka Joe comics for Topps for less than a decade (1954 debut) and then they figured out how to stretch is work even more after he died in 1963-his drawings ran until 1982!  It looks like he did some other work for Topps as well, take a gander at the line work and style on this envelope:

(courtesy Jeff Shepherd)

I'm not positive but I think the 2 cents US postage metered rate ended sometime in 1958, so this looks like a mid 50's envelope.  That traffic cop looks just like an amalgamation of Sarge and Herman from Bazooka Joe,  doesn't it?

I recently found a true date attribution for the Bazooka U.S. Presidents package design set.  It was described in Woody Gelman's Card Collector as a 1962 issue and I think in the few guides that covered it over the years but it's from 1960. That makes total sense given it was a presidential election year.

In 1969 Topps experimented with a foil Bazooka wrapper on what may have been a test of a nickel roll twin-pack (dig the markdown from Grant's), harkening back to the product launch in 1947:

I have no idea why they did this, nor why they brought back the sepia comics of yore:

Finally, on the heels of last week's waxy insert post, I thought I'd revisit this 1973 Bazooka comic inserts showing how Topps would sometimes gyp the kids with an ad instead of Bazooka Joe and His Gang:

Stay safe out there folks!