Blown To Bits

Something different to chew on today campers! Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins unearthed an  interesting bit o'Bazooka history last month over at eBay.  The item in question is not something I had really seen before and was known as Bazooka Bits:

I would have been all over these as a kid, since I loved little Chiclets style gum!  

The sale of tiny candy coated bits at Topps date back to the very early 1950's, when they introduced a product called Block Busters that was eventually discontinued, with their remaining supply boxed up along with a neat Topps Baseball Button in 1956:

If you look at the pack illustration, you can see the little gum bits are quite colorful:

That is a bit more modern version of Bazooka Joe adorning the pack than was gracing the comics at the time, as Joe's principal artist, Wesley Morse, had passed away several years prior to these being offered.  The commodity code indicates 1970, and while I thought 1980 was also possible when I first saw these scans, they definitely date to '70, for a simple reason I will get into shortly. Before we go there however, I think that version of Joe might have been done by the same artist who created this puzzle for the 1972 Big Bazooka Cards but I'm not 100% convinced:

That awesome piece of uncut goodness can be found, with a  LOT more Bazooka related stuff, over at the Bazooka Joe Comics site.

The bottom indicia is unexciting:

So how do we know it's 1970 and not 1980?  Because Topps was burning off excess stock in their 1972 Hallowe'en offerings:

(courtesy collectingcandy.com)

So did the product just not sell or did the folks over at Warner-Lambert (who had acquired original manufacturer American Chicle in 1962) that sold Chiclets intervene somehow due to their packaging?  Topps had tangled with them before (and resoundingly lost), so it's possible to my mind as this is a rare bit o'bubblegum history!

The Bits persisted for a couple more years, rebranded as Presto and Gumniks:

I never saw any of those either as a kid and I was on the lookout for this stuff! Our local ice cream truck carried a wide line of Topps products but not these.  They still look pretty tasty to me!

(UPDATE 7/18/22 - Friend o'the Archive Mark Newgarden advises these were spotted on Staten Island around the time of the original retail issue.)

Boo!!!!!

Well kids, I didn't think I would be able to pull off a Hallowe'en themed post this year but a fortuitous eBay listing (and win!) has come to the rescue. And it features something I never really knew existed.

Topps began Hallowe'en themed sales programs very early in the classic Bazooka era (1947 until 1982, when Bazooka Joe and the Gang got a makeover) and as we have seen, issued a product called Trick or Treat Gum around 1950.  I've seen only a few of their Hallowe'en brochures over the years but a couple feature somewhat klunky "loot bags" that I always assumed were just appropriately themed bags of bubblegum tabs that could be dumped into an existing retail display.  It never occurred to me that these bags, generally filled with 100 or so pieces of Bazooka, were meant to be purchased whole with the contents being handed out by mom while junior grabbed the bag while trick or treating.

This is a prime example of such an offering:

Looks like a paper mask came along for the ride!  The bag itself is the size of a large lunch bag, so I doubt the average kid back in the day would want to deal with something so small. The dating is a little tricky but not too daunting. 

This is a better look at the bag detail:

Prior to the middle of 1958 that upper left corner of the wrapper said "The Atom" before it was changed to "Topps". So it's from 1958 or later.  How much later is a little hard to say without a brochure from the right year but if you look at the graphics there is no little symbol showing Bazooka as a registered trademark after the "a" on the front but it's there on the bottom-whether it means anything having it and not having it on the same item I can't quite say right now and they may have just mixed and matched for years. They were also using full color graphics on the loot bags by 1965, so it's no later than 1964.

The bottom of the bag also has a couple of clues:

"Young America's Favorite" was in use still in 1963 (and possibly '64 but I can't find wrapper scans from that year), tho' I can't quite figure when they stopped using the Parents Magazine seal.  So no help really from the bottom, at least without further research. 

So right now I have a possible range from 1958-64. I'll have to keep digging.

There was no help from the inside by the way:

Oh yeah, I found this next one in some weird Pinterest eBay aggregation.  I think it's from 1949 as Al Capp was doing work for them at the time, or so I believe.  Plus, the Twin Chews (penny tabs) had only debuted that year and the Circus-like lettering at the top fits that year as well:

That is one outstanding piece of Topps history, I'd love to find one of the point of sale posters someday!

Spooktacular Fun!

Well Hallowe'en is once again just around the corner and lo and behold something themed to the day before Samhain (which no one ever talks about) has just come across my bow.  I missed out on the auction of this great piece but a very early Topps sales brochure just sold on eBay:

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Those are some serious Leave It To Beaver graphics! I kid, I kid, this is a great brochure actually. For me, one of the best things about it is I've found another piece to add to the Master Topps type list: Trick or Treat Bubble Gum! There's little pictures and games on the interior so it counts: 

Now the sweetest thing of all is the fact I can date the brochure and also show what is likely the second earliest Topps Fun Pack. Take a gander at this, one of the most amazing things I have seen in relation to Topps:

This puts the brochure at 1950 to my mind as all the tiny little Topps card sets issued with penny gum tabs came out in 1949.  In additon License Plates (Stop &Go) and Varsity would still have been active retail products in the fall of that year. In fact, Varsity may not even have been out by the this brochure was created  Some of that gum must have been quite stale!  An earlier bulk pack was offered in the Spring of 1950 with similar items but also included five cent packs and wholesaled for a whopping 94 cents a pop. It also looks like Topps was pushing the Fun Pack idea based on past success with the format. These were just under 15 cents each (or 16 cents farther afield). This is really something as we have another distribution method for the 1949 Felt Backs (Varsity Gum).

Topps Hallowe'en products are on my radar for sure, more to come as I develop things!

Black And White Alright

A couple of posts ago I dissected a 1965 Topps Halloween catalog, which was chock full of vintage goodies, mostly Bazooka related.  Today I have a 1967 Halloween Catalog, which looks like a partial and is in black and white but it's OK because there is a BIG surprise within.

This is identified as page 1 but I'm not so sure about that:

Keep an eye on those Fun Packs....

Next up are some boxes of Bazooka:

That sure is an interesting box of goodies at the upper right.....

100 cards, half of which look like 1967 baseball and the other half 1966 Batman's (Riddler Backs and one of the illustrated sets), both likely in cello wrapping.  It's quite interesting they were already selling off their overstock on the current year's baseball cards at a time when the high numbers were still being sold at retail.

I have never seen one of these in the wild; it would be a sight to behold if one surfaces, wouldn't it?!

The Devil Made Them Do It

I am a few months early (or late, depending on your perspective) but have had some really nice color scans sitting on my hard drive for a bit from a 1965 Topps Hallowe'en marketing brochure forever and figured today was the day.  I think these were provided by BBF O'the Archive (that's Best Bubblegum Friend) Jeff Shepherd but I usually tag his stuff and the scans are decidedly untagged.

Page one shows your typical, idealized Topps Topps consumer, the latest in a lengthy string of freckle-faced kids that went back to the 40's:

He;'s got quite the haul there!  The Bozo gumballs are interesting to me as I think they had just re-entered the US product line at this time, having been exiled to Canada for a bit (I could be wrong about that though, perhaps they were still sold in the US since their introduction in 1949).

Page 2 brings us Bazooka, Bazooka and more Bazooka:

I don't know why there were such minute differences in the counts.  20 pieces of bubble gum vs. 25 or 100 vs. 110 in the larger size seems like like splitting hairs.

More hair splitting but these are Hallowe'en themed packages now. I guess Topps just had a price point for every conceivable market; they had just eliminated penny packs earlier in the year after 17 years years of faithful service carving out market share vs. profit.

I can't quite make out the logo on the gumball pack at top left but it may be generic. Ten party bags included, woo-hoo!  Those Fun Packs look familiar and could have held any number of goodies.  I think the 1965-ish Flash Gordon cards were dated based upon this catalog since they came in these style packs but Topps may have used the design for a couple of years hence.  We have Bazooka and Bozo at the bottom:

I believe this is page five but I could be wrong.  This was either a folding brochure or I am missing a couple of pages.  Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, I guess:

Sweet displays; I suspect not too many of these survived:

The highly professional look of this brochure was typical for Topps.  They would send these to their jobbers (wholesalers) and direct retail accounts (larger chains like Woolworth's and Rexall Drugs) and there were probably five or six such brochures produced every year, in additional to all the salesman samples, promotional items and the like.  

It was all good business despite the obvious expense.  In 1961, the last year I can find a documented record for, Topps had total sales of $13,500,000 and Bazooka accounted for over half of that at $7,700,000.  Topps also sold $3,475,000 worth of baseball cards in '61 and they were actually down slightly from 1960 thanks to Fleer ramping up their card production.  That means everything else they sold, which would primarily have been Football, a little bit of Hockey, some Non Sports cards and whatever else they had their fingers into, amounted to $2,325,000.