Five In Hand

Well Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins has done it again-he's sent along a penny tab version of the circa 1949-50 Topps Sports Oddities, a Willard Mullin illustrated set much like the same year's Spalding Sports Show and where the one cent comic is linked to the five cent version known as Know Your Sports.

(10/29/20 NOTE: I don't know as much as I thought!  I have been advised the Sports Oddities/Know Your Sports are not by Mullin-artist is presently unknown.)

Here's what I know about these sepia colored comics; I'm a Willard Mullin fanatic, so will be going well off script in describing the first's historical background:

Spalding Sports Show is designated in the 1960 American Card Catalog as R414-1 and is thought to contain 25 subjects.  It's known on one cent wrapper reverses only (early Bazooka comics were affixed to the underside of the outer foil wrapper) and the illustrations first appeared in an annual promotional pamphlet issued by A.G. Spalding & Bros. in support of their sponsored program on NBC Radio.  There is a 1944 issue with a photo of Base Ruth on the cover:

I believe that is the first of its kind as the year prior Spalding sponsored a show called "Baseball Quiz" that was hosted by the Babe. This Saturday morning kids show, which premiered in 1943, ran for five weeks or so in June and July before reappearing in late August and airing until just before Thanksgiving.  The show then returned on July 8, 1944 as "Here's Babe Ruth" but must have morphed into Spalding Sports Show at some point soon thereafter, most likely in the fall as the name was still unchanged in August --which is the latest I can track in '44-- and was off the air before Hallowe'en.

I'm not sure of the content in 1944's pamphlet but all of the issues after that year are Mullin tours-de-force. They featured a couple pages of Spalding equioment ads while the rest was all Willard.

In 1945 it wasn't only the pamphlet that got the full Mullin treatment; check out this killer newspaper ad:

There were multiple versions of the ad as well; Mullin was quite prolific. Here's the actual 1945 issue, with a selfie of sorts:

1946 brought more media ads (as did every year thereafter) and a new pamphlet:

The cover is almost a study in noir:

The 1945 and 1946 pamphlets are tough to find, no doubt quantities were limited by the war effort the first year and ongoing supply shortages the second. The '44 seems a bit easier, possibly because the Ruth connection raised retention rates but it's not exactly common.

1947 though, gave us this beauty, which set the visual pace going forward:

1948 re-introduced the orange color scheme
:

And then 1949 brought two different editions.  The first repeated the cover above but added sub brands Reach and Wright + Ditson to the cover text:

I have to think that came out at the tail end of the 1948-49 radio season.  Here' an interior shot where the resemblance to the forthcoming Topps comics is apparent:

Things got back to normal on the cover again in June of '49 when print ads started appearing for this one; I'd say the radio season back then started roughly when kids got out of school for the summer. Mullin drew himself into this one:

1950 brought an indication the radio season spanned New Year's:

1951 continued the theme and you will note a store stamp on this example, plus another Mullin appearance. Great promo item, right? You can see why Topps licensed the artwork given the reach of the publication:

Then 1952 brought the end of the era with TV presumably killing the radio show and associated sponsorship off:

I should probably show a Spalding Sports Show comic or six after all that, sorry if you've seen these here before:

Sports Oddities may not have derived from the Spalding Sports Show pamphlet art as I suspect Topps just engaged Mullin directly. I have no idea if the set even has a name in one cent form, Jeff Shepherd christened it such years ago and I'm keeping it that way. The contrast on this scan from Worthpoint, via Lonnie, is turned way up but these are not as quite as dark as R414-1:

It was on the back of a wrapper like this:

Topps used that Bazooka wrapper in 1949 and 1950 from what I know if, mixing in the white background behind "young America's favorite" with one that was solid. I believe these came after the Spalding Sports Show comics because that specific image appears on a five cent wrapper where the comic is called Know Your Sports.  It took Topps a year or so to realize you could market the same thing on the one and five cent comics without hurting sales, which is why I lean toward this set being issued after Spalding Sports Show.

Here's the big boy, with the one cent comic shown above repeated in the upper right corner:

Here's five more:

That last one came affixed to this wrapper:

Here's a six pack of Sports Oddities penny tabs, half are found on the five cent wrappers above:

And here is the best one of all, scan courtesy of Mr. Cummins; I'm not sure it's by Mullin though:

(UPDATE 9/21/20-I snagged a 1948 edition of the SSS after I published this post and this is the Matty; it was redrawn for some reason when Topps issued the comic.  Compare to the image below Matty, which has one of the Spalding Sports Show vignettes faithfully reproduced to the left of Shag Shaughnessy).

I think it's safe to say the checklist can be derived from a combination of large and small versions. I'll leave it at a visual checklist for now, which is a 14 count by my math.

These penny comics may also have been mixed in with another unnamed set dubbed Famous Events in the 1960 American Card Catalog and dubbed R411-4 by Burdick. There's two styles of these (the font along the bottom is different), so specifically dating this mess is almost impossible. At least one date repeats and it's highly doubtful all, or anything near 366 potential calendar days were issued:

Sepia soon gave way to color on the penny comics but remained on and off on the five cent versions into about 1953; a purple shade was added for a short time as well but it's unclear how many series of comics were given this treatment.

In The Year Of '49

An almost 72 year old oddity is upon us today campers, as we look at some very early Bazooka comics that are among the biggest obscurities ever issued by Topps.

I've posted previously on R414-1, the essentially unknown one-cent Bazooka comic dubbed Spalding Sports Show (SSS) and featuring artwork from Willard Mullin that was issued, per Jefferson Burdick, in 1949.  That set may or may not be complete at 25 subjects and I'll be damned if I can find a full checklist anywhere.  Well another, similar comic from it has turned up and is intriguing.

I'll show our new comic first, it's kinda batty:

Compare that to a SSS subject:

Not the same issue, nor are the foil outer wraps quite the same.  This is the foil overwrap for our newbie:

It's close to but not quite a match for the SSS foil:

Ignore the differences in albedo, which is just a result of different scan settings, and look near the top.  These wrappers seem identical except for the lack of a white background behind "Young America's Favorite" on the Spalding Sports Show wrapper. There may be a slight difference in the indicia but things are too reflective on the new one to tell for sure..

This points to the next round of comics likely issued just after the initial runs of SSS comics (Topps would print two series at once sometimes for Bazooka comics through 1954 or so but I believe the outer wraps would be consistent when they did so as these were copyrighted).  There is a set known colloquially as Sports Oddities that fits the bill though. I've got a boxing example from what I think is the same set as our 'batty" example above that I have attributed to that name.  This is scanned along with its foil wrapper, which is a match for our newly found treasure:

I think this issue is related to 1949's Know Your Sports, which appeared with the five cent Bazooka rolls of the time.  The penny version just appropriated single panels of the nickel's:

As penny Bazooka tabs started appearing in the late summer or fall of 1949, Sports Oddities seems like a 1950 issue to me but that is up in the air presently.

I'm working on cataloging as much as I can about the very early Bazooka issues for the second edition of my book detailing the early Topps days through 1956.  Other projects are also in the works but this one will likely happen first, so if you have any examples from the pre-Bazooka Joe era, please contact me. I have some but am looking for a larger collection of images to pick from.

Double Your Fun

I am starting to spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating the world of Topps from 1947-49 and one of the things that keeps popping up is, of course, Bazooka. Bazooka pretty much made the company and its success paid for the good stuff on cardboard to come but Topps first turned to comics before they turned to cards.  After a couple of years selling Bazooka only as a nickel roll, Topps started producing a penny pack of the bubble gum in the fall of 1949.  To launch the product they took out ads in a slew of comic books and then added some extras to entice the kiddies:

The "twin chew" idea added the idea of value to the product and the inclusion of not one but two comics was a smart move to keep the kiddies looking for more subjects, all the while buying more gum.  The Willard Mullin Spalding Sports Show comics (ACC# R414-1) were on the back of the foil wrapper (and may also have been briefly issued with the Topps Gum "changemakers"as well) as were the Famous Events comics (R711-4 in the ACC, which also gave this issue that name) so it appears you would get either one or the other (and possibly, eventually a third, see below).  Additionally, there was a premium offer for felt letters and numbers, staples of the Topps catalog for many years.  The retailers also got a premium certificate for their own use inside the counter carton, to encourage that they sold as many pieces of gum as possible.

I've covered the Mullin cartoons here before but here'a few more for you to look at.

A similar looking "This Day In Sports" and/or "Sports Oddities" type comic also made an appearance, possibly in early 1950; the style looks like Mullin's but I'm not sure this is his work (Update 10/29/20-it's not!):

I'll work on getting some more Famous Events scans together but here's a gander at one that actually references some of my ancestors o'the archive:

Some dates are associated with more than one event, which makes me wonder if the series was reissued at some point.  Not the prettiest of issues but it does have a certain rough charm, like all of the issues of the period (at least to my eyes).  Apologies to those who sent me the Mullin and Mullin-esque scans as I cannot recall where they originated.

R414-1

The American Card Catalog, which is responsible for giving us such nomenclature as T206 and E93, was compiled in a number of editions from the late 1930's until the early 1960's by Jefferson Burdick, with ample help from others, especially in later editions. Here's the cover of my well-worn copy, a 1980's reprint of an invaluable reference:



Topps cards have an "R" designation (for Candy and Gum Cards, the "R" may or may not stand for "recent") are are grouped in the "400" series of set identifiers, indicating a "Recent Candy and Gum Card" sports card set issued since 1948. Topps Baseball Issues are shown in the R414 grouping, their football cards as "R415" and Non Sport cards start appearing in the "700" series of "General Issues". Bowman's baseball issues would have their own set identifier (R406) as Burdick tried to corral a large number of manufacturers into manageable sub-groups.

After the number designator there can appear a dash followed by another number roughly indicating the yearly order of issuance: 1951 Connie Mack All Stars are R414-2, 1952 Topps Baseball is R414-6, 1953 Topps Baseball is R414-7 and so on.

So what, you may ask, was the first Topps baseball issue detailed in the ACC? It is none other than "Bazooka Baseball Cartoons by Mullin, 1949 2 x 2 7/8, wrappers" in Burdick's clipped description of the set. These are nothing more than Willard Mullin cartoons taken from a publication called Spalding Sports Show, which was a radio premium that had pages of Mullin cartoons and a few sporting goods ads within. These neat little publications appeared from the mid 40's until the early 50's and are quite inexpensive to collect. They all feature a stunning array of Mullin's artwork. As a footnote, I believe Babe Ruth was one of the early hosts of this show in 1945.

Here is the cover of the 1951-52 edition (actual size is about 7" x 11") followed by detail of an interior page:





As they often did with the late 40's and early 50's Bazooka wrappers, Topps licensed artwork for their wrapper interiors. For R414-1 they licensed some of the baseball themed cartoons and printed them in sepia on the inside of 1 cent and 5 cent wrappers. Here is the inside and outside of the one cent variety:





I am not 100% certain but I believe 25 of the Mullin cartoons graced Bazooka Wrappers in the days before Bazooka Joe. There is a little bit more info here on these wrappers.

I also stumbled across this offering from Columbia City Collectibles when researching this post, a Bazooka Joe comic topped with a promo for Roogie's Bump, a 1954 baseball fantasy with ads and posters featuring some killer Brooklyn Dodgers graphics. I have long followed Topp's oddball offerings but not necessarily all of the wonderful Bazooka items issued over the years. Looks like I'll have to bone up on this byway of Topps scholarship.