Merry Christmas!

 Read to the end for a Christmas surprise!  But first...

And last but certainly not least, a tip o' the Santa hat to Jason Rhodes, who alerted me to this stellar image of Santa's Fun Pack from 1950, which was discussed not too long ago:

(copyright Christopher Benjamin & Dennis W. Eckes, 

Sport-Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960, Edgewater Book Co., 1991)

The "surprises" are just the novelties (inserts) included with each pack but I am wonderng if the Fruit flavor Gum tab had something like a "Topps Daffy-nition" on its wrapper interior as I don't believe they came with anything like a comic insert. Questions, questions....which will keep us busy in to 2022 and beyond!

Yummy Yuletide

Christmas Eve once again kids, time for Santa to come down the chimney and have a snack!  I don't always link the blog posts here with holidays but it's just too coincidental this year to avoid.

Topps, in their early days, worked with a couple of greeting card manufacturers from about 1948-50 to attach Topps Gum and some later penny tabs such as Varsity to various greeting cards, including Christmas themed ones, before they fully switched over to Bazooka bubble gum.  Following that they then tried a few lollipop filled Yuletide products from about 1950-51 featuring Santa and Rudolph but those didn't really outlast their standalone Candy Division from what I can tell, which was shut down circa early 1952 or so.

I've shown black and white pix of Santa and Rudolph before but in the interim have acquired a Santa Pops box and can now show it to you in glorious, living color:

I'm still not sure if the different backs (there are at least two) mean Santa Pops came out in multiple years but my best guess on date is 1951.

I'll not reprise all the Christmas items I've posted here over the years but will close with an item recently auctioned off by BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd, dating from sometime in the 1970's. Behold!

Love the Bozo product placement! That Augie Napoli (1935-1994) credit is one of the few I can recall seeing on any Topps product or ephemera, their artists were usually anonymous. I believe he did the packaging artwork for the Star Wars sets in the 70's. I don't think he did the Santa on the reverse though:

And with that I will bid you all a Merry Christmas and Good Night!  See you New Year's Eve.....

Christmas Seal

Your blogmeister picked up a neat item last week off the 'bay and while I thought it would answer a specific question I had instead it created a new one.

I have seen variants of these cards before and they are sometime birthday cards, sometimes not:

The card really just thick paper and is die cut around the seal and opens up to reveal something that makes a little more sense:

The setup almost makes me think this could have been a corporate greeting from Topps but I am not sure that's right.  The gum tab has a 1946 copyright on the wrapper and I would guess this is a late 40's card.

I would have bought the card no matter but was hoping it would indicate the greeting card manufacturer but alas all it has is this (still neat but not what I was looking for):

That is number 412 by the way.  I was expecting the maker to be either Barker Greeting Cards of Cincinnati, who had cut a deal with Topps to include Magic Photos in a line of greeting cards or Buzza-Cardozo which issued a line using Hopalong Cassidy packs.  I still think Barker is the most likely as the Hoppy cards used bigger packs and the associated greeting cards had much better graphics.  There was also a birthday card that featured Varsity Football as well as an Easter gridiron variant and I am sure there are others out there.

So, my question now is: can anyone identify the manufacturer based upon the graphics and indicia on the back?

Ho Ho Ho

Well, the daunting holiday honey-do list has surpassed my ability to blog in a timely fashion, so check in after Christmas for the latest. Until then:



Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays one and all!