Mirror Mirror

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it but the 1988 Pee Wee's Playhouse set has definitely cost me some hours researching matters and comparing cards to see what I had against what is a 159 card master checklist.

The set was covered here a while back

33 base cards with 33 variations
44 stickers, including 4 checklists
12 lenticular wigglers
12 tattoo sheets
25 activity cards, including 3 mirror variations

The mirror cards have been driving people nuts for almost thirty years now and I thought I would show them here so you all can see what you may or may not have in your collections if you collect this set.

The first mirror image concerns a skull:

The easiest way to make out the differences are by looking at the cracks atop the skull.  If you look at the 11 o'clock position on the top card, you will see the crack snakes up in a zigzag pattern.  The bottom, mirrored image, has a straighter line in that position.

The second mirrored card's variations are a little easier to discern:

The size of the little white triangles at the 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock positions around each eye are the best clue here.  It's still subtle but a little bit more obvious then the skull cracks!

Card #3 is by far the easiest of the mirrors to ID.  You can see the most prominent difference quite easily:

The blue and green eye color switches are a dead giveaway!  The "reflectors" are also rotated in an obvious way.

Each of these have other differences as well but they are very, very minute and easier to see than describe if that makes sense.

The base cards each come with two different borders: 

It's pretty easy to see the different borders and in fact, all are quite simple to spot.  I'm not going to catalog these but you can drive yourself around the bend looking to fill in the variations across all types of cards in this innovative set.

I'm down to needing two stickers (nos. 11 & 40) to complete mine.  And yes, that is a big hint!

Popsicle Stars

1963 brought us the 55 card Topps Astronaut Pictures set, which captured the nascent U.S. space program's "Mercury 7" Astronauts at a time when the entire country, especially kids, was outer space crazy. I grew up during this period and can tell you the entire country was captivated by astronauts and rockets in the 60's, which was exhaustively chronicled in the existing media of the time.

The set, colloquially just called Astronauts in the hobby,  was produced quite cheaply by Topps as they used official NASA photographs and created a card back that was a simple 3-D picture.  While I'm not actually covering that set in detail today (or possibly ever, since it's so well documented) since I'm here to discuss Popsicle cards, I will show some scans for comparative purposes and direct you here if you want to read a little more:

See, 3-D!

Just like the Tarzan 3-D issues a decade earlier, except those had the 3-D images on the front of the card (a good idea, said no one ever). Each five cent wax pack came with a pair of 3-D glasses; no penny packs were issued due to this requirement:

The wrapper was almost spectacular but marred by the intrusive advert for the 3-D glasses. Here's a proof of it:

Astronaut Pictures was reissued in a slightly different format a short time later. Topps cut a deal with the Joe Lowe Corporation to include small packs of the cards with Popsicle brand ice pops. Now the intrepid among you might recall Woody Gelman's association with Popsicles, which directly led to his employment at Topps as he had created Popsicle Pete, a mascot for the brand that caught the attention of Topps President Joseph Shorin in the late 40's. So like many things in the Topps universe, that deal was probably enabled due to past relationships.

Understandably, Popsicle did not want to include the glasses in their packaging, which looked like this and is just glorious in its colorful simplicity:

This is the same style packaging used for penny packs at the time by Topps.  I believe three cards came in each Popsicle pack.  But what to do about the backs if no glasses were provided?

Topps came up with a solution that kept the NASA provided fronts but took the back design from their Space Cards set of 1957, replicated a year later in Target: Moon, and came up with this:

Note the card number has been excised from the redesign as it was on the front of the card but some Topps indicia is displayed; this was not always the case with 3rd party products. Compare this back to the original Space Cards reverse from 1957:

The dating of Popsicle Space Cards seems to be problematic if you look at every reference available but it's actually quite simple.  The Joe Lowe Corporation was bought by Consolidated Foods Corporation in 1965 and was fully assimilated into the mother ship. The original Topps issue was from 1963 so I feel quite comfortable dating the issue at 1964.

The Popsicle cards are harder to find than Astronauts cards proper and go for at least double the price. They were not identified in the ACC Updates until the May 1, 1971 Catalog Additions were published and carry an F253 designation.

Posterized

Topps went a bit format crazy starting around 1967 right through the time they went public in 1972. All sorts of crazy mediums and sizes were used for their increasingly esoteric line of products, not the least of which was oversized posters.

On the baseball front, Topp first inserted posters into the regular Baseball packs in 1967 with a set of 32 appearing in two series of 16. These were much smaller than the posters that would follow and I only mention them here as a point of reference for in 1968 Topps followed with a standalone issue of 24 oversized posters:

 

As you can see, these were quite large at 9 3/4" x 18 1/8" (approximately as I find these have shrunk a little after almost 50 years in the wild).  The posters are printed on paper similar to that of the 1967 inserts, a very cheap stock that will likely disintegrate another 50 years from now.  The flimsiness of the stock causes these to separate at the horizontal folds and they must be handled with care.  There is not a whole lot to like about them actually, other than the poses.

They came in this pack:

It's a little obscured but the product code ends in an 8, clearly marking these as a 1968 issue. You can see one poster and a stick of gum were offered for a nickel.  No big deal except two years later we are confronted with this:

That is a 1970 product code and the design essentially is the same as in 1968.  We do have a price increase to a dime and a move to Duryea noted on the wrapper (both in line with how Topps was doing things at the time) and now multiple posters are included in the pack (two I believe).  These are the same posters as in 1968 and clearly the full run of 24 was included, which is odd because two major subjects had retired in the interim (Mantle and Drysdale) and numerous players had changed teams. In addition, it is quite strange Topps reissued a baseball set two years after the fact with gum as their previous pattern was to make any such reissues non-confectionery in nature so as not to run afoul of their various contracts.  Perhaps their deal with the MLBPA in 1968 gave them the right to do this. It's worth noting some but not all team logos on these posters are obscured. The whole setup is strange and I wonder what markets these actually appeared in.

In between all this, as I want to be thorough, Topps offered a team poster issue in 1969 that was a little bit larger than the 68's and printed on much better stock.  I've already discussed those here so no need to repeat myself. An insert similar to the 67's also came in the 1970 Baseball packs and featured a better design and somewhat upgraded stock when compared to the 1967 issue. Again, this set, which was 24 in number, is not the focal point here and only a point of reference.

Amazingly, no baseball poster set was issued in 1971.

Topps saved their best for last and in 1972 offered a gorgeous 24 subject, borderless poster set printed on thick stock:

Pictures don't do these justice, the colors are extremely vivid. These are roughly the same size as the 1968's but they hold up much better.  They used to be much harder to find as the 72's look to have been a somewhat limited release.  What's happening lately though is that the 68's are commanding higher prices, perhaps because so many are deteriorating and the survival rate for the 72's would seem to be much higher, or maybe there was a find of the latter issue. 

The packs are like so:

Once again, it looks like two posters and gum came inside. Like all of the short Topps baseball specials, the set is loaded with Hall of Famers.

I'll leave off with some poster porn. In the first, you can really see the difference in paper stock between 1968 and 1972, while the bottom scan is just kind of neat.  You also get a Mantle collectible with the 1968 box (no offense Joe) so I wonder who graced the box of the 1970 reissue?

Shafer Is The One Gov To Have When You're Having Only One

The never ending election season is on many minds at the moment and while I stay away from politics on this blog, there are a few Topps themes that touch on such matters.  Today we travel back in time fifty years to the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial election of 1966 and the successful campaign of Ray Shafer.

I've known about a campaign item Topps put together for Shafer for a few years now but until last month I had no inkling of what it was.  Now, thanks to Friend o'the Archive Terry Gomes, we can take a look at one of the strangest Topps pieces of all time. Here is what I assume to be a one card set:

Terry grabbed the scans herein from an old eBay auction that he, sadly, did not win.  Here is the back:

Now the fact that this thing has finally come up for air is pretty amazing but what's even better is that these were distributed in wax packs with a stick of gum!  Here, look:

I have no idea how many of these were produced but the survival rate for such a pack must be absurdly low.

I own a postcard from the campaign which I don't think was produced by Topps. I have no clue who printed it as there is no information detailed on it that would help suss that out.  

I've obscured the addressee but the left side of the PC back is quite revealing.  I suspect Shafer had a huge hand in luring the Topps plant from Brooklyn to Duryea, which not coincidentally opened in 1966, so the card "set" may have been some kind of soft payback by Topps:

Shafer served a single term; he was barred from running again under an old statute that was later changed.

              

Marvel-ous!

I'll conclude our mini arc on the various styrofoam flyers Topps issued in the 1960's and 70's with Marvel Flyers. The set was obviously designed to supplement the Marvel Super Heroes cartoon that debuted in the fall of 1966 and ran for thirteen weeks in its first run.

It's an extremely colorful set as these images from www.mycomicshop.com show:

You can see the plastic clip may have come attached already to the body of the plane.  Spiderman and Iron Man were one of five main, recurring characters on the cartoon.  The Incredible Hulk, Thor and the Prince Namor the Sub Mariner were the others.  I suppose Namor was added to provide a little variety, allowing the use of underwater adventures as the other superhreoes were air and land based essentially.

The wrapper shows the Human Torch:

As we'll see on the back though, not all of the Fantastic Four made it to styrofoam:

No Mr. Fantastic or Invisible Girl?  Yikes!  And Dr. Doom even made the cut:

I just wish they had included the Red Skull! Marvel novelties are quite popular right now, with all the movies and TV shows featuring their superheroes, so it's no surprise some of these go for pretty big bucks.

I'll leave you with this gallery shot; it shows all the plane bodies and as you can see, some were not really main characters:

You'll be forgiven if you don't recall The Angel or The Wasp. And the spelled Daredevil wrong!

Still, it's a very nice set commemorating a very bad cartoon. Even as a kid I could tell it was cheaply made.  Give my Bugs Bunny any day!

Planely Speaking

I've got a bit more to say on Topps Fighter Planes, last looked at here in 2011. Looking at them in the context of a Topps mania for flying aircraft novelties, that ran from the mid 60's until the mid 70's, they seem to fit into the gaps of Flying Things, which were issued in three waves (circa 1966-67, 1970-71 and 1975) and Marvel Flyers (1966).

Fighter Planes were issued twice, once in 5 cent packaging, with their Brooklyn address and once in 10 cent livery, using the Duryea address (according to Chris Benjamin). Topps was listed as a distributor as the planes were made in Japan (although I suspect the wrappers were produced in the U.S.) and the product contained no gum. I had originally thought the five cent version was an early 1960's issue based upon the artwork on the wrapper (which was an envelope) but the first item on the checklist:

I've shown those previously and they are courtesy of Howard Schenker. The set of 24 seems to consist mainly of a mix of World War 2 and Korean War fighter jets and newer planes introduced in the 1960's. If you look at the checklist carefully you will see the first plane listed is the F-111. This would be the "Aardvark", manufactured by General Dynamics and introduced in 1967.   Given the F-111's debut date, the set could not have been issued any earlier than 1967, which is my best guess as to a date right now. (UPDATE 2/22/23: Test flights were already happening around 1965)

I suspect the Fighter Planes were issued after Marvel Flyers (which had a ten cent price point at a time when Topps was firmly entrenched with five cent packaging, maybe due to the costs of licensing) but before Flying Things (ten cents on all packaging for the first four series). In any event, Topps mostly dropped five cent pricing in 1969 (Stickers and Tattoos being the most common exceptions) so there is really a three year window in which they could have been distributed. Other companies offered similar styrofoam planes and indeed they were popular boys birthday party favors back in the day.

The ten cent version, which uses the same artwork but for which I do not have a back scan, alas, was given a 12 subject checklist by Chris Benjamin in his 4th guide and he seemed pretty decisive on the matter, so I assume he had seen the reverse of this particular wrapper.  For the record, he lists:

Bell X-1
F-51 Mustang
F-86 Saber Jet
F-100F Super Saber
Flying Tiger
Grumman (sic) Avenger
Hawker Hunter
M-109
MIG 15
X-15
XF3D-1 Skynight
Zero

Topps reissued certain Flying Things series in similarly cut down fashion as time progressed, going from a high of 24 planes to a low of 6 by 1975. I'm not sure what year the ten cent version was issued though, maybe between the 1970-71 and 1975 Flying Things would be my guess but a product code would seal it.

Here is a nice flattened box, courtesy of REA:

As well as a proof of the wrapper/envelope:

Not to mention some proofs of the planes proper:

It's a neat set and a bit hard to find compared to Flying Things and Marvel Flyers.

Where The Flying Things Are

If you are a fan of confusion, this post is for you!

Over a roughly ten year period from 1966-75, Topps distributed a series of user-assembled styrofoam gliders called Flying Things.  I touched on them briefly back in 2013 but I've been researching them lately, along with the related Fighter Planes and Marvel Flyers sets.

Flying Things saw multiple releases over this span, while  Fighter Planes was issued twice and Marvel Flyers once. I'll leave the latter two for a later post and will probably have a Flying Things followup as well as this post will be all about the wrappers. I'll try to put things in chronological order but as we'll see, it's difficult to do so with precision.

The first Flying Things issue was released in the spring of 1966. The first wrapper, provided here by Friend o'the Archive Terry Gomes, was a doozy:

The Flying Skeleton would have been instantly appealing to a little boy in the mid 60's.  I was one of those boys but for the life of me cannot recall ever seeing a Flying Thing anywhere. I have zero memory of these as a kid.

The back is handy as it has a visual checklist:

Those are the original 12 Flying Things. The indicia is interesting (I always find indicia interesting):

The Things were made in Japan and Topps is listed as distributor, which is something not often encountered.  This may mean they licensed Flying Things from a third party, something I am working on determining.  Given the curved Topps logo and Brooklyn address this can be pinned to an early 1966 to mid 1969 time frame, although as we will see below there is now an anomaly to this theorem.

Sales were robust enough to warrant a second series (and then some) as these scans from Mr. Gomes demonstrate:

A whopping 24 Flying Things were available in series two:

No change to the indicia, although .the assembly instructions have gone to a more graphical look. I suspect the first series came out in 1966 and the second in 1967 but there are no production codes to go by.

Next up, I think, is the 1970 series, courtesy of Wax Pack Dude.  These are bedecked with a contest to create a Flying Thing on the wrapper and give us a September 30, 1970 deadline for entries:

The back is lacking a checklist unfortunately,which indicates  a rehash of subjects but the contest prizes look to be taken from the gift catalog ballplayers and wholesalers and retailers got to choose from with their various certificates and contractual payment clauses:

The indicia has moved us to Duryea but it's still a distribution deal for Topps:

Made in Japan of course! Here's a look at the box and some packs:

A second series of this run of Things was issued in 1971 and we get a few more hints, once again courtesy of Mr. Wax Pack Dude:

That Flying Bathtub just screams classic Topps design to me.  The back is where it's at:

That looks like a mix of old and new designs to me.  The indicia tells the tale, as always:

It's a little hard to make out but there is a product code that reads: 453-55-1, which puts us in 1971. And, if you are really eagle-eyed, you will note the address is back to Brooklyn, two years after they had made the changeover to Duryea.  I'm not sure why this is; it may have to do with which corporate entity was importing these from Japan. But wait, there's more!

A 15 cent pack with the same product code also exists, identical in every way except for price and the massive, missing "New Series" banner:

Part of the product code (the part after the 3 digit product prefix) refers to the packaging configuration I think, either the box or case for these was likely different than with the 10 cent version.  But wait, there's still more:

Things got all purply in 1971 as well:

That;s the same graphic but the Topps logo got moved to the right and a line about the contents was added (CONTENTS: ONE FLYING THING).  Maybe someone thought there was more than one Flying Thing in each pack and complained?

The back is the same as the orange with one very small exception:

Again, it's tiny but the product code has changed to 453-06-1 from 453-55-1 on the orange wrapper.

Now we get to a couple of test packs, also from Terry Gomes.  They are like so:

Right away it's clear this is a different beast.  The manufacturing was done in the U.S.A., there is a test code on the front and no price.  We also have CONTENTS: ONE FLYING THING shown. The back only has six in the checklist, not twelve, which is often hallmark of a test issue (a truncated number of subjects when compared to the retail release): 

You can see it's a Duryea copyright, although it still says "Distributors".  I'll get to potential dating momentarily as there another test wrapper item as well:

Same as the first test wrapper but this is a header card and has a different test suffix. As Terry explains it:

The test pack was a vertically-aligned cello bag and I believe it was intended to be displayed using a J-hook. It has a test code as shown below. I suspect that there is also T-42A out there as well. As you can see, they only started with 6 titles before moving to 12 when the first series was put into production. In addition, the nose clip on the test bag "Thing" was made of METAL and not plastic like all the other series. 

I grew up in Toronto and did buy some of these around 1970-71 but they were not manufactured by O-Pee-Chee. I believe the ones distributed in Canada simply reused the Topps packaging.

The timing of the test is odd, since the series had obviously sold well previously but a metal nose clip in the early 70's is about five years after they went with plastic for the retail releases. It's a bit of a mystery. And as we see above, there is indeed a T42A out there. Still, the graphics match up with the 1970 Flying Hot Dog Wrapper above so it likely was a test before they released Flying Things again.

We're not quite done though.  The cello bag test of 42B may have led to the 1975 issue which was all cello, as per Wax Pack Dude::

Notice there is no price?  The back is like this:

Most of the names have been truncated from the earlier releases but at least we are back in Duryea (and made in the U.S.A.) but still Topps is the distributor. Curiouser and curiouser.

More to come on these.....