I 'll be spending a little time here at summer's end to look at some of the more esoteric items to emerge from the Andy Yanchus collection, the bulk of which was recently sold off over the course of five auctions by Bruneau & Co. of Rhode Island. Yanchus was product designer for Aurora Plastics for a decade (covering roughly 1965-75) before working as a colorist for Marvel Comics and then moving on to other projects in the mid-Nineties.
He lived in a three-level home in Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill neighborhood that featured a garage (a rare thing in such parts, I can assure you) and filled it all with Baby Boomer-era toys, models, comics, cards and much much more. Yanchus passed in 2021 and the auctioning of his collection was truly a once-in-a lifetime event. Among his myriad treasures were large tranches of non-sports issues, many of them from Topps, with some extreme test issue rarities represented. Today I want to dissect a strange 1970 release called Magic Rub-Offs as his collection's dispersal prose has answered some long-lingering questions of mine.
The retail set is said the consist of a dozen rub-off stickers and an envelope that opened to a colorful scene where the stickers could be applied. The set was called Mini-Toons and imported from the United Kingdom in packaging already being used overseas at the retail level. Mini-Toons were issued by a company called Letraset that produced the stickers (and presumably the play sheets) and Topps simply imported the whole, made-ready shebang and put their own overwraps on them. Letraset also produced the 1969 Baseball Decal inserts for Topps, which clearly indicate U.K. production on them. Letraset also made the press on lettering used by many a paste up artist and young kids for school projects, which was their core product for years. The fab Action Transfers site has all the details you will ever need, click on over HERE.
This is an example what the imported Letraset products looked like:
The one thing I couldn't figure out until the Yanchus collection hit the block was whether or not Topps had merely taken the imported Mini-Toons "as is" or if they somehow altered the graphics. As it turned out, it was a straight up repackaging, which, as we know, was titled Magic Rub-Offs. What's neat about the Yanchus pieces is that they show how Topps tested the concept before the full retail release and I'm wondering if they used all of the alleged twelve titles that ended up in the retail version or just a smattering. They incurred virtually no production costs to speak of other than the design and printing of the wrappers by doing so but, as we will see below, the array offered in the test may have been more limited. Topps tested it, as they often did with oversized items (the Letraset pieces measure about 3 1/8" x 5 1/4"), in an envelope:
So it was an envelope inside an envelope! Note too the "Made in England' indicia. Here's the plain reverse:
Yanchus had multiples of some titles but this was his "mostest" at thirteen:
I'm trying to cipher if that repetition has something to do with the test issue or if it's just a random happening. There's not many of these out there that can be readily tied to Topps so it's probably something that can't ever be answered. I note Yanchus did not have a retail wrapper in his collection, but www.actiontransfers.com shows one, which was nice as the only image I had on hand previously was a proof of same. As you can see, they graphics and color were dramatically upgraded, giving it a very Seventies look:
Topps was merely listed as distributor and then stuck a piece of gum in there. Yanchus had four test envelopes but there's no way to tell if the rest of his collection came from the retail release or was sourced elsewhere. I am guessing with his connections from Aurora and Marvel, not to mention the breadth his collection had, that he knew someone at Topps or had access to one of their back door dealer conduits, but I can't find anything definitive.
I think a partial checklist of what Topps imported can now be determined, but there is a catch; the full set released by Letraset had 24 subjects that came out over two series, with subjects from both issued by Topps. The scenes are numbered but pick up in the mid-30's and appear to use the original numbering from Letraset. It seems quite possible Topps could have released all 24 Letraset subjects but that is not confirmed, of course. Right now, this is what I believe we can attribute to Topps, thanks to Andy's stash:
- Caveman Capers
- Colonel Custard
- Fishy Fun
- Haunted House (identified by Chris Benjamin in his Sport-America guides and not a Yanchus piece)
- The Knights of Olde
- Mad Motor Race
- Mountaineering Madness
- Opening Time
- Two-Gun Pete
I'll part with a shot of Yanchus, which I nicked from Hake's (they sold some of his comic books plus his original art and color proof holdings):
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