A Real Knife Time

You may have noticed I'm wading into Bazooka territorial waters with increasing frequency these days; it's certainly true and I'm even diving into the Blony tidal pool where I can. This has been prompted by a mini wave of uncut material from the 1950's surfacing along with some random single pieces and lots coming up for auction and a barrage of incoming scans from BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd.  In short, I have not seen this much comical activity since the last time I saw Dave Attell and Lewis Black perform together (with Mitch Hedberg and Mike Birbiglia supporting no less-true story).

First up is our old pal Buzzy.  This particular Bazooka comic, featuring the namesake character, saw at least two if not three distinct printings around 1953-54 as these scans from Shep show:

The top two are essentially the same but the first is waxed while the second is not.  The unwaxed comics are out there in significant enough numbers that they appear not to be print freaks but rather a separate run.  Maybe the unwaxed versions were sold in the party boxes of Bazooka?

The bottom Buzzy is clearly from a second print run as the font for the Fortune is different and the premium offer has had an expiration date added.  Here are closeups of these areas of interest from the top and bottom comics:

The life of the premium offers is generally 15-18 months, so the undated varieties are likely from 1953 and sold into 1954 while the dated versions are from 1954-55 and contemporary with the first Bazooka Joe and Henry comics, last seen here. The knife also became "free" as it aged! I realize only about six dozen people on the whole planet care about this all but these are clues to the dating of these comics, which are scarce.

Next, more pre-Joe:

Well, looks like the undated comics had a nice little secret code kit that ran its course and a quick substitution was made.  Since Buzzy had the knife in color and Honey Bun didn't, it suggests the color separations were not prepared for the goggles and knife due to rushed production and only the line art was used to print these. The font changes we saw with the Buzzy comic above also come through on both of these. I wonder if Topps thought their market was skewing very young at the time due to the mostly non-textual nature of these strips?

More New York News Syndicate goodness.  The lack of text continues with Little Brother Hugo; no real insights from these but I just like showing them:

I like the 22 and 24 karat rings!  The Bazooka Double Feature Comics get a little more texty:

Now, take a gander at these 1957 Blony comics featuring Archie characters:

That top left one looks like it has a familiar premium offer, no?  I like how they never even bothered to prepare color separations for the knife but changed the text from the Bazooka version!  Maybe this means the comics were printed in more than one location?  I really don't know but color and no-color versions of the knife offer occurring over a 3 or 4 year period does seem to point at something like that.

I'll post more findings here as things turn up.

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!

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!