Simply Magical

This post is continuation, in a way, of the Penny Arcade series I toyed with several years back.  The premise is simple, I merely examine Topps one cent packs, preferably those already in my personal collection.  This brings us to a 3-for-1 deal today, as the "focus" (groan) is on some Magic Photo Packs.

The earliest card set put out by Topps debuted in 1948 and was successful enough to warrant a second series that came out in early 1949.  While the wrapper makes it seem like the set should be called Hocus Focus, that was actually the name of the bubble gum, while the cards got second billing as, of course, the self-developing Magic Photo. As an side, the cards came inserted between the inner and outer wraps. This surely impacted the condition of surviving examples today! You can find all sorts of prior posts I've written about the set using the Labels links. if interested.

There were two styles of penny packs used for the set, both with 1949 copyrights (and the same indicia). One has a glassine inner wrap around the gum, the other foil. I'm not sure if the yellow glassine used here was the only color used though but I've not seen another, although X-Ray Roundup employed a dark green inner wrap in 1949.

Here's the yellow:

The foil pack may have come after the glassine, I'm not really sure and the fact that two series were produced may or may not mean there's any connection:

This is the indicia; technically it's a Bubbles Inc. release: 

Note the Lord Baltimore Press logo (which appears on a couple of other similar style wrappers into some part of 1949) and also the black stamped letters and numbers.  Here:

I'm not 100% sure what that all means and every other example I've seen of the opened wrappers does not feature this. However, at a guess it's a stock identifier at the start of the paper used to print the wrappers where 10 indicates the size, MC stands for Multi Color and 32' is the length of the spooled roll.

Here's a point of sale banner for the first series, once offered by REA as part of a larger lot of related sales materials:

I can't find a color image of the first series retail box, but the Topps sell sheet, sent to me in this case by BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd, sure has a nice b&w image of it:

Compare this to the second series box in 1949, which came from another REA auction some time ago.:

It sure looks like both series were co-mingled for 1949 as there's 126 subjects in each.  Worth noting, this is the first Topps one-cent release to feature a square retail box and not be sold out of a round canister. I suspect they were reconfiguring things for the debut of Bazooka penny packs a little later in '49.  It's hard to read but the front panel says "Bubble Gum in Colors" at the bottom right. Six different colors of gum were manufactured, so that's kind of a sly move as the kiddies may have thought the images would be in color once developed. 

1955 saw Topps re-release a couple of sets in a cost cutting move as they moved in on acquiring Bowman.  One was Hocus Focus, issued in one and five cent configurations, the latter in a slightly larger card dimension than the former and with thirty less subjects.  Once again, use the Labels for more on the 1955 set, which clearly states "Hocus Focus" on the back of each card, unlike the 1948-49's. At this point in their history, Topps had stopped giving a set's bubble gum one brand name and the cards another.

The penny pack in 1955 had a white inner wrap:

These one cent 1955 packs are exceedingly difficult to find and the smaller series of 126 cards are quite tough as well (not that the cards from the series of 96 are easy). This would be the last issue from Topps that inserted a card between the two wrappers.

Yup, also Bubbles, Inc., which was originally used by Topps to create some space between their products but soon after this became their go-to persona for potentially controversial sets. It's use here was more of a throwback I think.

C'mon Get Hoppy

Some interesting doings along the old, dusty trail today cowpokes, as we take a fresh look at the wrappers from the 1950 Topps Hopalong Cassidy set.  I've covered them before, briefly, but that was a dozen years ago (yikes!) and with some newly found scans, additional details have come forth.

Chris Benjamin's various editions of the Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards mentions that the white one cent wrappers are easier to find that the green ones but I can't says that's supported by what's shown up over the last decade or so. Here's said wrappers in pack form, white front:

And back:

Now the otherwise identical green wrapper, once again as packed.  Obverse:

And reverse:

The "Save-Em--Trade-Em" motto was a marketing scheme conceived by Topps and it was used in advertising and on wrappers for eight different series of cards from 1950 to 1952, although it was dropped for the Giant Size cards as they had their own built in motto. These eight sets also had the distinction of being found in panel form, i.e. three or four 2 card lightly connected panels sold in each nickel pack. Here's a Hoppy five-center; I have read about green versions but only have seen yellow:

Topps got a premium offer into the mix as well!

Then there was the massive cross-promotion between Topps and Bond Bread that put Hoppy cards in bread loaves in most states east of the Mississippi. Bond also had Hoppy bread end labels that had nothing to do with Topps:

It seems like the bread campaign was a long-lasting one. Bond alone issued three 16 subject series of illustrated labels,  plus two additional ones, again with 16 subjects in each, using photographs. There were even albums to hold them:

Sunbeam Bread issued two 32 label sets of Hoppy photos on their end labels and other brands had various sets semi-sealing their loaves or adorning their packaging as he was really the first major postwar kids fad.

But I digress....

This Bond Bread penny pack is a well known one in the hobby but I'd never seen the indicia before:

As you may have suspected, with a Hoppy card inside, it was a Topps job:

That horseshoe Hoppy logo got another appearance in though. This is a hybrid wrapper that I once thought was used for packs inserted into the loaves.  It may have been used as such, perhaps in the mad rush to get the packs into the Bond loaves but if I had been paying attention twelve years ago, I would have noticed the one cent price:

Yes, it was a crossover ad - quite unusual for Topps - but this was their first character driven set, not to mention their first licensed set, so they clearly were feeling their way through the process. It's a pack scan, so no indicia but I'm sure it matches the above examples: 

The Topps fun didn't stop there though. There was candy, sold in this snazzy saddlebag:

I'm not positive but think they may have resembled Sugar Babies, based upon the shortening listed in the ingredients:

Topps still wasn't done as they sold Hoppy Wagon Wheel Pops as well:

Oddly, despite having a viable Candy Division and a dedicated plant in Chattanooga at the time, the lollys were made elsewhere for Topps:

(From Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non Sports Cards Volume 2)

Hundreds of Hoppy products flooded the shelves of America for a good two or three years as William Boyd did what he did best-licensing! Yee-haw!

Dive Right In

Time traveling back to the early days of TV today kids as we take look at Milton Berle, or more specifically, at an obscure Bowman novelty associated with him.

Berle got his start in vaudeville at a very young age and progressed through nightclubs and some forgettable movies in the early 1930's before parlaying a regular slot on the Rudy Vallee radio show into his own program in 1947.  A year later he got his break in televison on Texaco Star Theatre, where was named the permanent host in the fall of 1948, earning the well-deserved sobriquet Mr. Televison.  By 1952 he was the biggest TV star in the land and Bowman capitalized:

Uncle Miltie had artwork (fairly good in execution but occasionally crude in depiction) and a short joke printed on the inside of the white wrapper. Some jokes are not politically correct, which is no surprise as that's how things were back then and for several decades thereafter.

Jeff Allender's wonderful House of Checklists, lists 34 jokes (click through to his site for details) but I've found seven more, as noted below.  The set is obscure and examples are very hard to impossible to track down. I think the pack shown is one of only two known to exist and it would have sold for a penny at the time of issue.

Berle's show was on NBC and Bowman had a relationship with the broadcaster of course, issuing sets in 1952 and '53 showcasing the stars of the network.  Haelan Laboratories Inc. on the wrapper means Uncle Miltie could not have been issued prior to May of 1952 (the name change occurred on April 28) and I suspect it came out in the fall that year as the 1952-53 season kicked off.

The interior wrapper was where the action was, although the obverse design's pretty eye catching.  I can't actually find any issued examples to show but some original artwork was sold by Hake's about three years ago that certainly gives one the tenor of the set. First some paste-ups:

Told ya it could be politically incorrect!  Here is an original art piece from the same lot:

None of these are detailed over at the House of Checklists, so there's at least 41 different if all the pasteups became issued pieces (there is a pasteup of the diving board joke as well). I would think that's pretty close to a final number; Bazooka would often have 42 comics in a series and despite being a competitor's product it would not surprise me if that is the proper count for Uncle Miltie.

Hoppy's Bond

Topps was always looking for ways to move more product and get their merchandise in the hands of the public.  Very early on they had third party tie-ins with Magic Photos and Varsity, so a cross promotion for Hopalong Cassidy, covered here of late was a no-brainer.  If you lived in an area where Bond Bread was sold in 1950 (and it was an area that stretched from New Orleans to New England) you could get a Hoppy card and some gum with a loaf of bread.

There were two wrappers used in the promotion.  One was designed specifically for the tie-in:

While the other looked like a mashup of the two Topps types penny wrappers with a Bond Bread label:

The promotion from the Bond Bread perspective went well beyond Topps.  Check this out:

We'll take one last look at Topps and Hoppy next time out.  Happy Fourth of July kids!

Green Trails

Well the 62nd anniversary of the premiere of Hopalong Cassidy has come and gone with nary a nod from the media.  In 1949 it was a different story and when Hoppy was a certified marketing miracle a year later there was press coverage galore.  As we saw last time out, Topps took full advantage and also had two price points on the cards. Since we are in penny arcade mode these days, a look at the penny pack seem appropriate:

The graphics are great, huh?  The copyright belongs to Willam Boyd (who played Hoppy) and we get Topps Chewing Gum as manufacturer, naturally.  Actually, I shouldn't say naturally since Topps ued about four different corporate identities in the early 1950's but that is another story!  There's also a tougher green version of the wrapper:

I'm not certain but the green packs may have held the high number part of the release with two additional episodes chronicled.  Topps though, was not don with Hoppy after the highs came out and marketed a short series of lollipop boxes.  The only two good pictures I can find are from Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non Sports Cards Volume 2, published about 20 years ago:

There's at least one other box type out the based upon the puzzle numbering but I'd wager there were a couple more puzzles than that.  The boxes made it to the street in time for Hallowe'en in 1950.  The wrappers limned those used for the cards but with a small difference:

Those would have been twisted around each individual pop. Curiously they state "Made for Topps Chewing Gum" which is odd since Topps owned a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the time that produced candy and table syrup.  While that plant was winding down around this time, I believe it was still quite viable for another couple of years.  They may have had a Brooklyn candy plant as well, still working on confirming that but Topps may have just decided it was easier to buy lolly's than to make them.

Next time we'll look some third party cross promotions that Topps used with Hoppy.

The New Standard

Well it's official folks, I am completely flummoxed by the clock at the moment and will be posting a series of shorter posts for the forseeable future.  A combination of personal goings-on, summer vacation, my new gig as a highly compensated columnist for The Wrapper,  a big project (see below) and various real world intrusions have winnowed my timeslice for this blog into an almost invisible fragment.

It's not all bad though, as a lot of of my free time is being spent these days on writing a guide to the early days of Topps, which will be made available when (if?) it's finished as a free PDF download.  When that is, I can't say but I'm hoping it will be around the fall of this year.  So instead of suspending the blog, which I do not want to do, we'll all have to make do with some Penny Arcade posts, purloined Ebay scans and shorter riffs on ancient Topps ephemera for the duration.  I hope to still maintain my twice a week posting schedule though and expect I'll sneak a couple of meatier posts in here and there.

The guide will cover Topps and their history from the founding of the American Leaf Tobacco Company by Morris "Shorin" in either 1890, 1892, 1901, 1904 or 1908 (the last date's a winner methinks) through the end of the Giant Size era following the purchase of Bowman in 1956. Originally I was going to only do a guide to the small, penny tab issues but that morphed into a project that grew and grew and grew.....

So I figured I would present today a look at the one cent wrapper from the first standard size (2 1/2" x 3 1/2") Topps issue, which was Elvis Presley, released in the late fall of 1956.  The Bubbles, Inc. attribution may have meant Topps thought this would be a controversial set.  The penny wrapper is a thing of austere beauty:

The nickel version was a bit more Elvis-like and a lot more exciting:

The cards, sadly, are nothing special (unless you were a teenage girl in 1956, I guess):

Topps was quickly moving toward retouched photos instead of using artwork by this time.  A partial uncut sheet is known:

See ya soon kids!

Gonna Catch The First Thing Smokin'

A Muddy Waters song and this blog do not often cross paths unless I have Itunes playing as I type. The title above is from "Rollin' Stone" a 1948 composition by Muddy and, as well documented pretty much anywhere you may care to look, is the song which gave the Rolling Stones their name. I must confess to being a bigger Muddy fan; I like the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor era Stones, especially the latter part of the 60's but the lengthy Ron Wood years leave me flat, although his work with The Faces was aces.

In '48 Muddy was really starting to take off in Chicago, although the non-African American community would not really hear of him for a good decade more. Having gone electric a couple of years earlier, Muddy was cresting toward a creative peak starting about late 1951 that he would ride through the decade and beyond. Don't believe me? Check out this spjne tingler with Junior Wells on Harmonica circa 1952.

No worries, I have not switched to a musical format!

In 1965, after having massive success with their Beatles trading cards, A&BC Gum, which was Topps' UK licensee but also created their own sets, issued a 40 card set of The Rolling Stones that seems like it should have been solid gold. However, the cards either were not marketed properly or simply did not sell and while not truly scarce are now reasonably difficult to track down. Nigel, over at his English Football site, believes the cards were a test issue and distributed to a select group of 20 stores in South London and South Wales to see how things would go.

I would think the Stones fans overall were slightly older than those of the Beatles and that may explain the lack of success as they had passed the "event horizon" for this set. Whatever the reason, David Halpen (another Anglophile collector) believes the cards were sold in South Wales on a limited basis. Here is David's image of a wrapper that held three cards, sort of the British version of a penny pack:



Only a handful of these wrappers exist in the wild apparently. You will see the cards sold for two Pence ("d" for denarius is how that is shown) and I think that was around a penny and a half US at the time, using 2.8 dollars per Pound, with 240 Pence to the Pound). This was all prior to decimal day in 1971!

The cards are really sharp with excellent photography, although why Bill Wyman posed with a cactus is beyond me on this scan of David's:



Backs are sparse, as was common at the time with the entertainment sets of both Topps and A&BC and give no clue as to subject matter beyond the basics (not the same card by the way):



Too bad they are so hard to find; they are very collectible.

Route to 66

Still drifting toward the 60's time trippers! Time though now to quickly look again at 1959's print runs, helpfully aided by a recent SCD article on this set. I wasn't aware we were both doing our own year-by-year reviews actually so I may veer off elsewhere for a bit for the rest of June-we'll see since predicting how this blog will be created post-by-post is like trying to get a grip on my 401(k), both being moving targets. 

I had completely forgotten about the odd, alternating pattern of gray and white backs in each succeeding print run and in reading the SCD piece it became apparent that Topps did indeed print two 66 card semi high series in '59. Courtesy of SCD, the print runs have the following patterns: 

1st White 

2nd Gray 

3rd Gray or White 

4th Gray 

5th White 

6th Gray 

7th White 

This confirms the 110/88/88/88/66/66/66 press runs too and shows how the 5th and 6th series really could not have been printed together or in some combination with each other. I'm not going to regale you with scans of each flavor but the jumping around of the card stock indicates to me either: a) Topps was having production problems due to the large amount of single color on each card or some other problem that was only rectified in the final series and their non-conformist number blocks when compared to the previous 506 cards or b) more then one firm printed the cards due to high demand.

From what I have been reading of late, Topps printed cards at various locations in Brooklyn and also printed cards in Philadelphia at Zabel Brothers. The Zabel Brothers story is starting to reveal itself to be sure but Philly seems to have been a focal point Topps' non-Brooklyn printing since 1951, as described here in too many posts to link. I still believe Topps sometimes printed cards in Rochester, NY when there was a need for whatever reason but that is still tenuous and I think that practice may have ended a little after they bought Bowman. 

While they did not just slap together a high number series in '59 like the year before (which we know due to the seventh series checklist starting at #496 and not #507) the nosebleed section still was littered with rookies and no-names for the most part, in addition to the All Stars and a few other special cards. Seven series must have kept their sales force busy! I showed a '58 penny wrapper last time so feel the need to show it's baby brother:

 

Playing the Slots

Before I go into the vagaries of the last pre-expansion baseball set Topps would produce in 1960, I thought I would take a fond look back at the cast of characters in the 1958 high numbers once more.

The 1958 checklists, you may recall, were designed to describe five series of 88 cards apiece and end at #440, which I believe was to have been the full set as intended by Topps. Then when the Stan Musial signing gave them the opportunity to rush his All Star card, they jury rigged a quick 55 card high number series that contained the All Star cards and a bunch of players either just starting out their MLB careers or who were journeymen ending theirs, that let them get the cards to market before the football card season kicked off.

I had theorized previously Topps had triple printed the Musial AS and also Mantle's on at least one side of the sheet but am rethinking that a little.

Assuming the extra rows were each on a separate half sheet then any given card, other than the Musial and Mantle AS cards and four pulled commons, would appear at least four times on the 264 card master sheet, while 16 players (the eight leftmost in each "extra" row) apiece would have two additional slots. The Musial and Mantle AS cards would also appear have six additional slots apiece in this scenario while the four pulled commons would stagnate at four appearances.

So the four DP's would be printed 40% as often as the Musial and Mantle All Star cards but so would the rest of the other cards at a minimum except for 16 overprints which would appear 60% as often as the triple prints. You either appear four, six or ten times under this scenario if my math is correct. Pulling two cards per extra printed row does not a short print make! I get this distribution on this assumption:

-33 cards appear 4 times
-4 cards also appear 4 times but are in the two triple print AS rows and are not short prints even though they were pulled for the triple prints
-16 cards appear 6 times (the 8 leftmost in the two triple printed AS rows)
-2 cards appear 10 times (Musial AS and Mantle AS).

That's (37 x 4) + (16 x 6) + (2 x 10) = 264 card full press sheet.

You could have other arrays as well but I like this one the best of all the potential print runs.

Here's a look at the "no-name" commons, some of whom would become household names before long, were as a group mostly inexperienced in 1958. Here's a look at the their major league playing time prior to then:

#441 Jim Marshall - Zero games
#442 Phil Paine - 49 games sporadically since 1952
#443 Billy Harrell - 35 games over two seasons
#444 Danny Kravitz - 96 games over three seasons
#445 Bob Smith - 27 games over two seasons. Shown with the Red Sox but a Pirate in 1958
#446 Carroll Hardy - Zero games
#447 Ray Monzant - 62 games over four seasons
#448 Charlie Lau - 3 games in 1956
#449 Gene Fodge - Zero games
#450 Preston Ward - 557 sporadic games with eight teams over 10 seasons and 10 played in '57
#451 Joe Taylor - 51 games over two seasons but four years
#452 Roman Mejias - 159 games over two seasons
#453 Tom Qualters - 7 games over two seasons four years apart
#454 Harry Hanebrink - 57 games over two seasons also four years apart
#455 Hal Griggs - 36 games over two seasons and the card actually pictures veteran Bud Byerly who debuted in 1943
#456 Dick Brown - 34 games in 1957
#457 Milt Pappas - 4 games in 1957, 516 thereafter
#458 Julio Becquer - Zero games
#459 Ron Blackburn - Zero games
#460 Chuck Essegian - Zero Games but a future World Series Hero in '59
#461 Ed Mayer - 3 games in '57
#462 Gary Geiger - Zero games
#463 Vito Valtentinetti - 63 games over three sporadic seasons
#464 Curt Flood - 8 games but only 4 AB's over the previous two seasons
#465 Arnie Portocarrero - 94 games over four seasons; he would have 15 wins in '58
#466 Pete Whisenant - 252 games over four seasons on four teams spread over six years
#467 Glen Hobbie - 2 games in '57
#468 Bob Schmidt - Zero games
#469 Don Ferrarese - 50 games over three seasons
#470 R.C. Stevens - Zero games
#471 Lenny Green - 19 games in '57
#472 Joe Jay - 31 games over four seasons and all of one in '57 for this "bonus baby"
#473 Bill Renna - 317 games over four seasons; not in the Majors in '57
#474 Roman Semproch - Zero games

Not exactly a bunch of world beaters! And you could get them a penny at a time:

Penny Arcade-Penny Bazooka

A while back Jeff Shepherd sent along a really nice scan of a 1949 Bazooka ad which I was saving for a rainy day. Well, guess what--it's raining here at the main Topps Archive Research Complex! Actually, it's turned to snow and I'm typing this in my study but you get the idea.

Before Bazooka Joe hit the scene, Topps hit upon the "2 Big Chews" idea and was pushing the idea that gum was a healthy product via a positively Orwellian "Quality & Purity" logo on the wrapper:



This ad appeared on the back cover of a confectionery trade magazine. If you blow up the picture you can see the inner wrapper has something drawn on it. At the time, that would probably have consisted of the Willard Mullin Spalding Sports Show cartoons covered here previously although there are a couple of other possibilities:



You can clearly see the Quality & Purity logo on the wrapper. Now, there is more than one way to market bubble gum, as this old Topps postage meter ad shows:



I would say that is from the 60's or possibly early 70's and probably after Topps moved everything to Duryea, PA. By the way I found that at a site called www.brassdragon.biz although they seem to be having some technical issues, so no linky dink today. I'll give you this link instead, the first image is a classic!