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.

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.

ACC, You Know Me

Most, if not all, vintage collectors have run across the American Card Catalog as they assemble sets and compile wantlists.  Jefferson Burdick's masterwork saw four major editions, the last of which came out in 1960 which is the one most familiar to almost all current collectors.  It's the ACC that gave us descriptions such as T-206, R414-1 and C46, although most collectors do not use such nomenclature anymore for issues that came out in 1933 or later. Back when almost all hobby information was done via the U.S. Mail though, such numbering schemes were quite helpful.

This is not intended to be a brief history of the ACC; there are a couple out there already (one is mine in The Wrapper #262 and Geroge Vrechek has written extensively on Burdick and the ACC over in the Library section at www.oldbaseball.com ) and a major one is in the works from what I know if it.  Rather I want to look at one editor and two ads in the 1953 edition.

Jefferson Burdick had ceded some editorial control by 1953 and Charles Bray, Gene De Nardo and Woody Gelman had been added to the masthead.  Woody was listed as the Associate Editor in Charge of Advertising and Publication, a job which likely meant he had access to a printer that could run the catalog off cheaply (it retailed for $2) and that he coordinated the ads, of which there were 21 pages out of 168 total.  One of the ads though, was a real beaut: 

Wow, right?! Woody clearly knew in advance the publication details and worked to have a super advertising piece made up. The great thing about this ad, other than its inherent wonderfulness, is that is shows some major Topps issues up to the end of 1952 (the guide was published in February 1953 and contains no references to any 1953 issues). Wings is clearly a 1952 issue, as is Look "N' See, while the ad touts sets that were released as far back as 1950. The Non-Sports Post War listings also prove this out:

You can see details of the full releases of the multi-series Wings, Look 'N' See and Fighting Marines (thought by some to be a '53 issue) sets. It is also obvious the numbering scheme used in 1953 changed by the time the 1960 edition was released and the latter is what has been "locked" into collector's minds.  Wings, shown above as R534, is known today as R707-4 while Look 'N' See, above as R536, is now R714-16. I am fairly certain these sets in this section were shown in their order of release (or as close as possible for the time) as compiled by Gene DeNardo.

As for Bowman, they had an ad but it paled in comparison to Topps':

Warren Bowman had been gone over 18 months by the time the '53 ACC was published and I suspect he would have come up with something a little splashier had he still been around. That ad just reeks of corporate stuffiness.

The guide itself is very well made.  I have a copy that was clearly used for years back in the day (and gets quite a bit of handling from me as well) and while the cover is a bit creased, the interior pages are holding up remarkably well, as is the binding.  This is good news since it allows us to take a clear look at some advertisers of the day.  Here is a "permanent" want list from Woody Gelman himself:

That street address for Woody is the office of Solomon and Gelman at the time. S&G was an art service that did a lot, if not all, of the illustration work and design for Topps commencing about 1949 and Ben Solomon would eventually end up as the Art Director at Topps in the 60's and 70's with final say over all released printed product.  Woody seems to have come in-house at Topps while still working as a partner at S&G until at least 1957; at some point around that time he became a full time Topps employee. Ben and Woody probably first met at the Fleischer Brothers animation studio in the 1930's and a lot of early Topps employees and artists worked there as well.

Another well known figure who advertised in the '53 ACC was Dr. Lawrence Kurzrok, a famous early collector and facilitator:

Dr. Kurzrok was very early on aware of Topps:

That is his office address.  I wonder how many early advertisers used an office address instead of their home one?

I'll look at some more advertisers in the '53 ACC next time out, even though they are not really related to Topps, as it's just a fun area of the hobby to explore.


(Apologies if this post displays incorrectly-Blogger is doing something weird to my vertical spacing and I have no idea how to control it-yikes!)