Who's Who?

Here's a peek at the Topps Art Department's responsibilities circa 1977-78 that shows just how much detail went into some of the artwork used on their display boxes. The box in question housed 1978 Baseball wax packs and you probably know it on sight:

Topps was masterful at deploying images on their display pieces that almost looked like actual players. Yes, I'm looking at you "Barely Bench", "Maybe Martinez" and "Counterfeit Carl"! (NOTE: 5/11/21: The "Barely Bench" mug belongs to Joel Shorin, per an anonymous comment just received, and I have to say it's pretty darn obvious now that I look at it again!)

The side panel was a little more generic but that batter has no clue how to lay down a bunt:

What looked like a laydown by Topps though, was actually anything but. Check out this proof of that side panel art sold via REA a while back:

"Ted" is Ted Moskowitz, the assistant art director under Ben Solomon and that is his boss's handwriting indicating "fixative" will be needed.  Fixative spray adds a protective layer to paints and inks and it looks like the rest of the box art was essentially done at this point but an annoying sheen was still present.  

The height of the original was greatly reduced in the final version above but there was certainly latitude in how much could be excised given the background striping. I'm not sure why the targets are cockeyed but imagine they've moved over the years.  The art looks like it's about ten years older than the issue date, especially compared to the box top art which certainly looks more modernized.  This almost looks like a piece created for internal mockups that eventually found its way to display boxes.

Ben Solomon essentially had his own ecosystem at Topps in terms of the art mechanicals and worked in conjunction with New Product Development (NPD) under Woody Gelman and Len Brown.  Their influence on the company's visual imprints informed about five decades worth of Topps products.

EDIT 3/28/21: A tip o'the baseball cap to Mark R. Pekrul for info on the Rivers-Morgan photo Topps hijacked for the bottom right corner of the box top and split out Joe Morgan to the upper left, making him look like a very ill Johnny Bench. Voila:

Let's Get Ready For Adventure

No, not the 1956 Gum Products set that often gets attributed to Topps (it's actually from the same manufacturer that issued the 1941 Double Play cards) but rather this rather bizarre repackaging of Ben Solomon and Woody Gelman's Triple Nickel Books, previously covered here and here.

I stumbled across an eBay listing with these quite by accident but it adds yet another layer to the rich, dense cake that was Card Collectors Company, namely the Teen-Age Adventure Library (remember, Arthur Benwood is an anagram of Ben & Woody, while Arthur may have been a nod to Arthur Shorin):

I'm not sure if these are missing covers but I don't think so. Here's how they originally looked when issued in the 50's:

And here's the indicia from the inside front cover of the original book:

Here are the backs of the Teen-Age Adventure Series pamphlets, with indicia all included, indicating they came without a true cover:

Here's a better look:

I can't swear I've seen entries in the Card Collectors Company catalogs for anything like this-they may have just advertised them in Boys Life and maybe some comic books.  I doubt many have survived given how fragile these look.

The eBay listing from seller fieryfb states:

These are another series with no connection to the Mel Lyle books. This earlier Power Boys series involves Ted and Steve Power, who are boy reporters on their fathers small town newspaper who become involved in mysteries similar to the Hardy Boys. Some of these (such as the two listed for auction) were published by The Card Collectors Company as fairly plain pamphlet like books, while some were printed by Triple Nickel Books with higher quality paper and full color covers. As far as I can tell, a total of 5 Power Boy books were actually published - the other 3 being  Riddle of the Sunken Ship, Castle of Curious Creatures, and Mystery of the Marble. There are also 2 "phantom" titles; the Mystery of the Aztec Archer and The Secret of Canyon Creek.

The Mel Lyle books referred to featured a different set of Power Boys who headlined a handful of books in the mid 60's. I'm not sure of the assertion that some of the Power Boy Titles from Triple Nickel Books were phantoms, more research is needed.

This is one of those neat little byways in the history of Topps and Woody Gelman.

Steve & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun must not have been very inquisitive.  We are rolling through our ninth year here and I still find stuff on a regular basis that I haven't seen before. Today brings a melding of the venerable, albeit erstwhile, Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO), and Soloman & Gelman, the small commercial art studio that morphed into the Creative and Art departments at Topps.

I've written previously about Triple Nickel Books, a line of paperbacks put out in the 1950's by Ben Solomon and Woody Gelman. These 15 cent softcover stories seem to follow two lines of characters: historical ones like Davy Crockett and Wild Bill Hickok, and 'tween adventurers/sleuths such as Barbie Lane or the Power Boys.

The Power Boys seem to be the most popular part of the series, which ran to about fifteen books overall, near as I can tell, and the Power Boys were the subject of at least eight of them.  Here's a representative cover:

The author is Arthur Benwood, which is an amalgam of Ben and Woody's first names.  It's not clear if they wrote the Power Boys stories or were just being clever with the pseudonym.  Like any serious line of books aimed at the youth of the country, an advertising and marketing campaign had to be developed. One approach taken by the Triple Nickelers was to use the back of 1950's Exhibit cards. Check out this Walt Dropo, provided by Friend o' the Archive Glen over at Net54:

Isn't that something?!  You can see the Mystery of Marlow Mansion title in the ad to boot. Compare to the back cover of a standard Triple Nickel (yet again referring to the title above):

It's worth noting that while a later series of hardcover books also known as The Power Boys, published in the mid 1960's, was unrelated to the previous incarnation, the father of the latter brood was called Thomas, so maybe the author (Mel Lyle) took inspiration from the past in a way.

A Stan Musial Exhibit with Triple Nickel advertising also is known; the ad back is rare even among the universe of scarcity that defines Exhibit backs of the era.

Rubbing Three Nickels Together

One of the things I can't get a firm grip on is when Ben Solomon, longtime Topps Art Director, and Woody Gelman, their longtime Creative Director, joined the company. Both men had worked together since the late 1930's, when Ben was an animator at Fleischer Studios and Woody an aspiring assistant.  After their stint at Fleischer's, where Ben made his mark directing Popeye shorts, the immediate postwar years found them in an art agency named, prosaically enough, Solomon & Gelman.

(courtesy Jerry Beck)

Here they did high quality work in the decade before photography took over the advertising world and their work on a campaign for Popsicles got the attention of Topps President Joseph Shorin around 1950-51.  After doing some work for Topps, Shorin allegedly told the two that unless they came to work for him, he would give all his work to another agency.

I think Woody came into the fold first; he worked with Sy Berger (at Sy's apartment) in late 1951 on the iconic 1952 Topps set, which was critical to the firm's future and I have seen references he was working in their offices by 1953.  Ben however, is harder to trace and may not have been full time at Topps until the early 1960's.  It's also possible Solomon & Gelman was brought in house and allowed to retain some autonomy so long as their work did not interfere with their jobs at Topps.

The firm may have been active as late as 1965 but one thing is certain, the produced a series of fifteen cent soft covers for "young adults" called Triple Nickel Books in 1955, a line that was active for three or four years. It would appear their timing was excellent as the first two Triple Nickels featured Davy Crockett.  Here is the cover of the second one:

That approved reading logo is a bit frightening and likely was due to the imposition of the Comics Code Authority in 1954-55; many publishers would have to adapt due to the changes occurring in what could be sold to America's youth following a series of Congressional hearings.  The CCC gave us Mad Magazine but in reality was just a bunch of hooey that disrupted many livelihoods.

Here is what it looked like inside, typical 50's sub-teen fare really:

The inside front cover is where we get the publishing details, which I will blow up for easy reading:

We also get a bonus as the the artist's name is shown below the Davy Crockett illo: Mort Leav. I am thinking, looking at that b&w Davy Crockett illustration and comparing it to the cover painting, which it looks like he did as well, that Leav or someone else at S&G, did some work for Topps in the 1950's.  Look at this Round-Up card compared to the next Triple Nickel Book cover of Wild Bill Hickok:

Nat Wilson may have been a pen name for Ben & Woody; I'm not 100% sure of that but another author in the series, Arthur Benwood, has a name that is clearly derived from an amalgram of Ben and Woody's first names.

Here are some other exciting books in the series, from an ad on the inside back cover:

And what 50's moralizing would be complete without a panel of experts giving approval:

Topps would issue two fan magazines in 1965 that took some inspiration from Triple Nickel Books but I think the series ended in 1957.  Ben & Woody however, had greater days ahead at Topps.

The Wisdom Of Solomon

There were some super sweet Topps related items up for bid in the just concluded Legendary Auction for September 2014.  Over a dozen lots featuring Match Print photos taken by William Jacobellis have turned up and while only a scant few feature Topps images, they come with an added bonus, namely the scrawled approval of Ben Solomon, who was Woody Gelman's ad agency partner and at some point became the Topps Art Director.

The Match Prints are from the 1954 and 1956 sets.  Here is Larry Doby's, featuring both the main photo (with classic Yankee Stadium centerfield background) and the inset:

You can clearly see the "Ben Sol" OK on the reverse of each.  Pretty neat!

Here is the finished product:

Topps clearly was concerned with quality control and appears to be avoiding the use of wire photos to create their cards. Someone did a real nice job colorizing the main photo as well; art was a true art form in the 50's!

On a related note, I have not yet been able to figure out when Ben Solomon went to work for Topps as an employee.  While his Solomon & Gelman partner Woody worked on the 1952 Topps baseball set and is said to have joined the firm around that time (late 1951), I am not so sure.  Solomon & Gelman lived on until at least 1957 --and possibly even as late as 1962-- from what I have been able to find and they may have been taken in house by Topps before finally hiring on at some point.

I do note Jacobellis had an address fairly close to Solomon & Gelman's (230 W 41 St at one time before they moved three or four blocks north). There were probably dozens of commercial photographers in Manhattan at that time.  I wonder if this guy was one of them?

Here is a Net54 thread on Jacobellis and some other vintage era photographers that is well worth a look.

Say U.N.C.L.E.

As revealed in our November 6th episode, in 1965 Topps briefly flirted with a magazine series for kids under the rubric of Topps Fan Magazines. The first of these featured Soupy Sales and if you click back on the link in the first sentence and scroll a bit you will see a copy of his issue, which is #1 in the run.  I wasn't able to secure a mag of ol' Soup but I did purchase a copy of the second (and last) issue featuring that hit TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

U.N.C.L.E. was a kludgy acronym for United Nations Command for Law and Enforcement in case you were wondering and the show premiered in the fall of 1964 in the explosive wake of the James Bond action thrillers. The first inside page is where all the action is as far as I'm concerned though:

The content is clearly written for boys about 10-12 years old, which is no surprise.  But take a look at that indicia:

Len Brown was Woody Gelman's Creative Editor at Topps in the 1960's and his name on this thing is no surprise but Robert Shorin and Barbara Gelman also appeared as the writers for the Soupy Sales Wonder Book also discussed here in the November 6th post (same click back as before in the first sentence above. The Wonder Book was put out by Grosset & Dunlap whereas this this magazine clearly has Topps provenance, although the "Topps C.G." moniker is clever at hiding their true name.

It would seem Topps and/or possibly Solomon & Gelman's art agency put together the Wonder Book for Grosset and Dunlap as we have previously disclosed Robert Shorin was the son of Topps co-founder Abram Shorin and Barbara Gelman was Woody Gelman's daughter. Woody appears of course, as does Topps Art director Ben Solomon.


The interior of the magazine has at least one shot that also appeared on a card (and likely more but I do not have a set handy to examine in detail):

That's a match to card # 7 in the 55 card series:

Len Brown revealed in an interview some years back that the Topps Fan Magazines made a profit but not enough of one to warrant continuation of the series.  The two extant issues are a true curiosity in the world of Topps in the mid-60's.

Me Tarzan

Sixty years ago a 3-D craze was weeping the nation.  Movies, mostly of the "B" (or lower) variety were manipulated to allow patrons to watch with special glasses to give a feeling of depth, while the occasional surprise, such as a snake suddenly rearing forth into the audience's field of vision, would make everybody jump. Topps took advantage of this pop culture fad by releasing a set in 1953 called Tarzan & The She Devil.

The glasses were quite tiny:

Based upon the movie of the same name, the card fronts in this 60 card set were not viewable unless you had a pair of 3-D glasses:

While not a high demand set, finding cards in top shape is tough due to full belled borders on the front and the back:

Intriguingly, Legendary Auctions just had a lot with the original artwork for this card and it's quite impressive:

Take a look at the delicate wash-work in the background!

It took four layers, created as acetate overlays, to build up the card image before it could go into production.   You can see the depth this added quite easily. Topps enlisted Joe Kubert, the now famous comic book artist, recently deceased, to construct the set.  Kubert was involved with the first 3-D comic book as well and certainly would have been known to Ben Solomon and Woody Gelman, whose art  firm acted as intermediary for the set, despite their both being Topps employees at the time. Kubert was still dabbling in 3-D art as late as 2011, a year before his death. (Update 7/18/23-It's not necessarily Kubert artwork).

Another set, called Tarzan's Savage Fury, came out after this one and did not sell  as well.  The format was exactly the same, Topps just changed the colors of the cards a little.  A tealish green on the front:

Orange on the back:

An alternate set of glasses is out there, almost certainly an O-Pee-Chee product.  Look how the font is different and the country of manufacture is shown:

There have been finds of these cards, especially in penny packs.  Glasses came one per nickel pack; I believe they were also packed loose in the one cent boxes.  Tarzan means "white skin" by the way.

Ben Meaning To Fix This

With all the attention I give to Woody Gelman here, I sometimes feel like his old art agency partner Ben Solomon gets short shrift.  One of the reasons is that there is far less out there, info-wise, on Ben than Woody.  I am working on correcting that but I still don't have a lot of details on Mr. Solomon; in fact I'm not even sure when he joined Topps.  It may have been as late as 1964 or as early as the mid 50's.  I do believe he came over after Woody (who in turn, I think, was still a Solomon & Gelman partner when he went to work for and at Topps in 1952-53).

Ben Solomon was the Art Director for Topps in it's go-go days and had final approval over all artwork from many of their sets and products.  I will turn up more on him but for now here is a small picture, courtesy of his daughter, Lois Grabash, of the man who launched a thousand sets (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a little!):

I am welcoming any and all information any of you out there may have on Ben while I dig into his past.  I do know he encountered Woody when they were both animators in the 1930's and that he directed about a dozen cartoons for Fleischer Brothers and Famous Studios.

Production Error

Well campers, sometimes things are not as they seem. A few clicks ago guesses were made as to the identity of Woody Gelman on a 1970 Topps vanity issue. Well, it was all so horribly wrong!

First of all, it turns out Woody Gelman, while he may have been the Art Director at one time, was head of the Product Development Dept. and not the Art Dept. when these cards were made and was for the Non-Sports side of things. The Art Department was a separate group that worked under Ben Solomon and toiled on the baseball sets (and presumably other sports as well). Mr. Solomon was responsible for final proofing and packaging of cards.

Second, that means Woody is not depicted on the Art Dept. card. Well, rats!

Third, we do have some detail on two denizens of the Art Dept. Here is a numbered scan:



The prior guess was that #9 was Woody Gelman. Not so, obviously and he remains a mystery. Ben Solomon is #12 according to his daughter and # 3 might be a fellow named Ted Moskowitz, who like Mr. Solomon looks to have been an animator before he came to Topps. If anyone has other ideas or some guesses as to who's who, let me know.

As it turns out, the Product Development and Art Departments remained behind in Brooklyn after the move of production facilities to Duryea in 1965. There were clear reasons for Topps to do so, both from a talent persepctive (starving artists did not live in Duryea, PA in the numbers needed by Topps) and business one (connections to Major League Baseball and presumably other sports leagues, Wall St., media and ad outlets).

I am starting to find a connection between the worlds of animation, golden age comics, MAD magazine, underground comics and Topps that all comes to a nexus at the behest of one man: Woody Gelman. More to come on this as the picture develops.