Boo!!!!!

Well kids, I didn't think I would be able to pull off a Hallowe'en themed post this year but a fortuitous eBay listing (and win!) has come to the rescue. And it features something I never really knew existed.

Topps began Hallowe'en themed sales programs very early in the classic Bazooka era (1947 until 1982, when Bazooka Joe and the Gang got a makeover) and as we have seen, issued a product called Trick or Treat Gum around 1950.  I've seen only a few of their Hallowe'en brochures over the years but a couple feature somewhat klunky "loot bags" that I always assumed were just appropriately themed bags of bubblegum tabs that could be dumped into an existing retail display.  It never occurred to me that these bags, generally filled with 100 or so pieces of Bazooka, were meant to be purchased whole with the contents being handed out by mom while junior grabbed the bag while trick or treating.

This is a prime example of such an offering:

Looks like a paper mask came along for the ride!  The bag itself is the size of a large lunch bag, so I doubt the average kid back in the day would want to deal with something so small. The dating is a little tricky but not too daunting. 

This is a better look at the bag detail:

Prior to the middle of 1958 that upper left corner of the wrapper said "The Atom" before it was changed to "Topps". So it's from 1958 or later.  How much later is a little hard to say without a brochure from the right year but if you look at the graphics there is no little symbol showing Bazooka as a registered trademark after the "a" on the front but it's there on the bottom-whether it means anything having it and not having it on the same item I can't quite say right now and they may have just mixed and matched for years. They were also using full color graphics on the loot bags by 1965, so it's no later than 1964.

The bottom of the bag also has a couple of clues:

"Young America's Favorite" was in use still in 1963 (and possibly '64 but I can't find wrapper scans from that year), tho' I can't quite figure when they stopped using the Parents Magazine seal.  So no help really from the bottom, at least without further research. 

So right now I have a possible range from 1958-64. I'll have to keep digging.

There was no help from the inside by the way:

Oh yeah, I found this next one in some weird Pinterest eBay aggregation.  I think it's from 1949 as Al Capp was doing work for them at the time, or so I believe.  Plus, the Twin Chews (penny tabs) had only debuted that year and the Circus-like lettering at the top fits that year as well:

That is one outstanding piece of Topps history, I'd love to find one of the point of sale posters someday!

Test Pack-o-rama

Some crazy, crazy stuff went down in the recent Mile High auction buccos, which was a veritable field day for Topps test pack enthusiasts!

Hailing from the Tennessee Beer Box Find that gave us the world's only unopened pack of 1968 Topps Basketball, a number of goodies were offered and it's as good a time as any to take a closer look, don't you think?!

leading the way, in a unique type of packaging, is that fab super-model Twiggy:

No gum but a very helpful dating was added. The baggie like pack is the only one of it's type I can ever recall seeing.  These larger than normal cards had no gum included, so letting purchases almost see the pictures within was almost a good idea!

The back could have shown another front I guess, but alas (although the baggie must have been opened to date the insert):

Next up, same date, different set. And I mean different! Angry Signs was sold after the test as Angry Stickers, in a wrapper with similar artwork to this test version:

The backs are a bit revealing:

There's a lot going on there but someone else is researching the set and I'll not step on their findings.

1968 was also represented:

The show was kinda hokey but also fascinating.  The cards are like that as well and feature a comic strip feature on the first 44 cards (out of 55).  Land Of The Giants does not seem to have survived testing though and the cards are hard to find today.

Mod Squad, on the other hand, tested well and made it to retail:

Yup, they are a little ragged.  This back of the pack has seen better days:

Have you noticed what's missing from the three white wrapper test packs?  The ingredients sticker that was stuck on the back and helped seal the pack is long gone in each case.  No surprise there, they don't always survive.

Gee Whiz Kids

My rule of thumb putting together my collection of Topps type cards has always been that anything I have on my wantlist appeared in a retail pack or store setting at some point. I exclude standalone candy and gum products for the most part unless they are pretty early (nothing really after the mid 50's) and my interest in Bazooka comics peters out by the mid 60's. I collect some proof items (examples of Bewitched, Bonanza for instance) but they are not part of the core mission.  Those two are in the price guides generally--and are thought of by many as being part of the "Topps experience"-- but there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make the grade or just wasn't known about when the formative guides were published in the 80's and early 90's.  This puts some things into WTF territory!

Take a look at this grouping below:

The little piece of cardboard in the upper left measures 1" x 1 3/4", so you can get a feel for the other items in that scan, which I will address individually.

The cardboard piece is the biggest head-scratcher in this group. I got it from Bob Marcy's amazing non-sports notebooks at the 2015 National, although Bob was not in attendance at the time. He had it with the 1949 X-Ray Roundup cards in a binder and given his depth of knowledge on all things non-sports, that's how I have categorized it.  However, it's slightly bigger than the cards proper and the jagged short edge is interesting.  I am thinking it's related somehow to the vending boxes for this set but I'm really not too sure.

This bad boy seems related to X-Ray Roundup as well. It's 1 1/16" tall and as you can maybe see, is folded in a bit.  I am loathe to unfurl it given its fragility and it seems a little too wide for the set but right now that's the attribution.

This one's easier and belongs to the classic 1952 Look 'N' See set.

Last up, 1957 Isolation Booth as near as I can tell although there's a few later candidates:

Unopened packs likely yielded all the red cello viewers but it's pretty amazing these have survived. Topps would issue sets needing viewers into the 60's; I think they are pretty groovy!.

Bubbleicious!

Every once in a while a Topps item comes up at auction that absolutely floors me.  Presently, this year's winning entry belongs to the good folks and Friends o'the Archive at BST Auctions.

Topps released a scarce set of Baseball cards on the backs of certain Bazooka boxes during the summer of 1959.  Twenty three in number, the set features gorgeous color photography (possibly the best ever done by Topps) and has a number of ridiculously short short prints and two variations of the Hank Aaron card.  471 have been graded as I type this and two boxes are also noted in the PSA pop report.

However, if you really want a scarce Bazooka set from 1959, you need to purse the equally spectacular Football cards. With 18 subjects and two variations of the Chuck Conerly card it's about twice as hard to find an example based upon PSA's grading. No boxes are shown by PSA but BST has one in their upcoming auction of goodies, many of which hail from the formidable collection of yet another Freind o'the Archive: Mike Blaisdell.

Feast your eyes on this:

Wow, right?!  A couple of points:
1) How the cello survived almost 60 years is beyond me.
2) That's the original Bazooka Joe blowing a ginormous bubble around said cello
3) There's no splash on the front saying a football card lurks on the back, which is kinda weird.

The card:

Like the Baseball box, it was the 20 pack that had the goods:

There wouldn't be another Bazooka Football set until 1971, when they issued not one but two sets, one in the US and another, stupendously rare one in Canada with CFL players.  Baseball of course was represented every year through 1971 so it's safe to assume the inaugural issue of Football was a bust, especially since the roylties paid by Topps to the NFL in the late 50's were negligible.

This is the only box like this I have ever seen; I can't find any scans of the two Baseball boxes that PSA has graded so for now this is the only eye candy available.

Perfectly Suited

Grrrrr!  I forgot to set a snipe on a very interesting eBay auction the other day and missed out on a document that not only relates to the legal battles between Bowman Gum and Topps in the early 1950's but is also cool in its own right.  Not a huge deal since I nabbed scans, natch, but still I'd like to have added it to the archive. First, the short backstory.....

As we all know, Bowman asserted they had many baseball players under contract (340 as it turned out, vs 283 for Topps) when Topps issued their 1951 Baseball Candy sets (comprised of five subsets: Red Backs, Blue Backs, Connie Mack All Stars, Major League All Stars and Team Cards). Bowman tried a variety of legal tactics, one of which alleged they had exclusive rights to the term "baseball" when selling confectionery products with picture cards of baseball players and sued Topps in the Eastern District of the State of New York for trademark infringement.

On March 31, 1952 Topps received a favorable ruling in the case, although they would be embroiled in appeals, suits and counter-suits for at least another eighteen months, losing most of them and really only getting the rights they coveted because the final owner of Bowman's parent company was selling most of his concerns  to buy a larger firm unrelated to cards or gum. As you can imagine, the case hinged on testimony of witnesses, affidavits of same and the results of discovery and deposition.  In addition to executives of both firms, player agents--who were third parties used to secure the contracts for Topps and Bowman and not the type of agents we think of today-- also figured.  The agents who obtained signatures on most of the Bowman contracts were Joan Crosby and Jack Tanzer, who were employees of a firm call Art Flynn Associates; Topps used what looks like a wholly owned subsidiary called Player Enterprises for this purpose by the way.

So when this Whitey Lockman Bowman check popped up on eBay, I took notice but alas did not snipe. As you can plainly see, this check was a legal exhibit used in the depositions of Ms. Crosby and Mr. Tanzer:

Interestingly, at least to me, the check in question was issued in 1949, a year before Bowman inserted the word "confections" into their player contracts.  I'm not sure what that means but maybe that was the point of this particular deposition, i.e. to show Bowman did not intend to specifically sell a combination of confections (gum) and baseball cards.  

I also find it interesting that Whitey, a starting outfielder for the New York Giants, cashed his check at a gas station in North Carolina during the winter of 1949!

Whitey was a heckuva player for a time, take a gander. 

I wonder if more exhibits from the trial will pop up-it's possible a law firm book is being broken up and sold so we'll see but right now we have this fascinating bit of Topps (and Bowman) history.

Foiled Rotten

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd recently listed some rare Bazooka five cent foil wrappers on eBay, many with comics still attached to their underside.  I've got a few of these myself (there's over a dozen different from the "foil" era), just added a couple of the below, and can attest how difficult these early Bazooka wrappers are.  They are very delicate and very old, not a great confluence of circumstances for survival. Shep seems to have rounded up the rarest ones for this offering though.

The foil wrappers, introduced in 1947 in nickel form were mostly similar to this one on the outside, with some slight variation over the years, although the earliest ones didn't have the Parents Magazine seal:

They only sold nickel packs of Bazooka until mid-1949 when the penny tabs came out but I'm not addressing those in this post.

The oldest of these Shep offerings also Willard Mullin artwork, namely the 1950-ish Know Your Sports, which is also known as Sports Oddities in some circles.  Behold the master:

Yes, that is a reference to the Harlem Rens in the lower right corner, who were founded before the more famous Globetrotters. It seems like the fact the team had been together 28 years when the comic was released would help date the issue but it's complicated. The Rens were founded in 1923 but had moved to Dayton, Ohio after the war, disbanding after the 1948-49 National Basketball League season when the NBL merged with another league to form the NBA (the NBL was integrated, the NBA would not be until their second season), so....I think Mullin jumped the gun and missed the team's dissolution.  So it's 1950-ish for this one.

If you think that's one tough, here's an even tougher one, with two known comics having survived in the series.  Topps obviously had an affinity for the bazooka!

The Bob Burns story can be found here and and the Topps Bazooka story has been covered here before. Click the links at right for a boatload of Bazooka posts if that one doesn't do it for you.

Pixie is from 1953 and hardly ever seen:

Lots to do there!

Last up is a late entry, namely an oddball from 1969 that harkens back to the originals of the 40's and 50's:

Love the discount sticker from Grant's!

Even the comic was a throw back, although Bazooka Joe had reigned supreme since his introduction in 1954 and the phasing out of the third party produced comics:

Based on that fortune, I'll bet someone just got their clock cleaned!  It's a little odd to see a sepia Joe in the late 60's but what the hey.

Pushed Out

Often when I post a blurry scan or two of something here, I get an e-mail sending along better quality pictures.  A fairly recent post showing an uncut 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Push Outs partial sheet garnered the attention of longtime Friend o'the Archive Bobby Burrell (who is pretty much the top authority on hockey cards and collectibles-check out his Vintage Hockey Collector guide!).  Bobby has provided a much better shot of this 55 card partial sheet, one that's actually complete!

Bobby had this to say about the sheet:

"The 1968 push out inserts were the very first insert for OPC in their stand along name being OPC away from Topps.

They were inserted into the second of this two series issue.

The insert sheets are always found cut in half, it would appear that the Push Out were more manageable cutting down due

to a large sheet handling would make some of them pop. Almost all have a pin mark, to hold the die cut in the process of

being done, almost every card has this small nick or pin hole, which doesn’t go through."

I think Topps and O-Pee-Chee had issues generally with die cut sets as you see a lot of partials like this from the era.  Those pinholes are also endemic on their earlier paper wrappers-the Topps Gum penny tabs that formed the first products of the company from 1938 had them as well.

The wax wrapper is pretty nice:

Puck or harmonica? You decide!

The box is pretty slammin' as well:

Thanks to 48 double prints, the 2nd series of OPC Hockey for 1968-69 indeed had 84 subjects, a very scarce number not divisible by the usual 11.