The Last Pale Light In The West

Last week's peek at Hopalong Cassidy lollipops and candy promised a look at the cards released by Topps in 1950, and here we are.  It's not hard to describe the impact Hoppy had on early children's television - "massive" comes to mind quite easily - but he also had outsized influence for Topps. Their first set using a licensed character, Hopalong Cassidy sold and sold and sold,  brought a larger card size (2 1/16" x 2 5/8") and also kicked off a Topps marketing campaign dubbed "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" that would encompass eight different sets in total.  A cross-promotion with Bond Bread also saw Topps Hoppy cards included with loaves of bread.  

I've previously covered the various Hoppy packs in a post still holds up and you can click on over HERE to see them.  I will show the penny packs, as I think this was what most kids would have seen, based upon the number of surviving wrappers and packs:

You can see the "Save 'Em-Trade 'Em" slogan endlessly repeating on the white wrapper as well:

The release of the set was somewhat complicated.  Topps originally prepared eight separate sub-series that used actual titles from the film depicted and contained anywhere from 21-24 "episodes" accordingly. Each was taken from the more recent Hoppy movie releases (the film release dates range from late November 1946 to July 1948) and assigned a unique color sepia overtone.  This is how the first 186 cards break down:

Numbers	Title	Color	Subset Total
1-23	Dangerous Venture	Blue	23
21-47	Borrowed Trouble	Brown	24
48-71	Hoppy’s Holiday	Pink	24
72-95	False Paradise	Light Green	24
96-117	Unexpected Guest	Black	22
118-141	Devil’s Playground	Dark Green	24
142-165	Fool’s Gold	Red	24
166-186	The Dead Don’t Dream	Purple	21

You will immediately note that there are some odd subset totals when it seems like 24 cards per title would have been the goal. This makes some sense, partially because it's neater but also because there are suggestions that the press sheets used for this size of card during this era used an array of 96. If you break the above into two groups of four, the first totals 95 cards while the second comes to 91. It's possible Topps messed up the "Dangerous Venture" subset for the first group and then had some kind of similar problem with the second but I don't believe that's the case.  Also in the mix: not enough stills were provided to them to get a nice, even 24 subjects per title, or perhaps there were not enough usable images for some. There is also the possibility titles were subbed out and replaced with newer ones as sales figures came in and that could even have included seeding of just a couple of cards from an upcoming title in with the then current titles.

Here's a look at each title:

 

The sepia tints are not all as subtle as that pale looking blue; this brown is pretty much on point:

 

Whereas pink is tending a shade toward red I'd say:  

Those are lining up a little weird, sorry.  I wanted to highlight the fact these can have odd cuts, like the one seen on "Hoppy's Holiday" in glorious pink. Some more now, light green first:

Can black really be a sepia tint?  Topps sure thought so:

Here's some dark green for ya:

The Hopalong Cassidy graphic on the series 5 and 6 cards is smaller than those from the preceding four, which makes me think that first group of four was all printed, or at least designed, together.

Moving on with red:

And a very purple purple:

The graphic regains its size for the last two series of the "low numbers" as you can see above. The highs really do have shockingly bright colors and can't be classified with the tinted cards. They have even more funky cuts sometimes than their predecessors:

Ignore the pumped up color on the last one, it's not mine and I had to nab it from eBay.

Each of the first eight titles also had a companion header card inserted into packs that was printed on foil-these are very desirable, scarce and also a condition nightmare today. While the cards are not widely graded by PSA, the foils, at least relatively speaking to the rest of the set, are. Of the 126 foils submitted to PSA, none grade higher than a 6, with the majority ranging from 1's to 4's. Here's a group shot, from an old Huggins & Scott auction:

Those are in what I would call typical condition for the foils. I wonder if Topps was playing at the "silver screen" with these?  The backs have details on the length of each "movie":

Those may have been withheld until the second batch of four titles were unleashed; it would have been odd for Topps to commit to two series before seeing how the first one sold. A late release of high numbers followed, covering two 22 card series, both in the same garish colors seen above, which look like overexposed Day-Glo and stand in stark contrast to the muted sepia tones of the first eight:

187-208	Silent Conflict	Multicolored	22
209-230	Sinister Journey	Multicolored	22

We know these came later thanks to the five cent wrapper, which is also a scarce item:

You can see the original eight subset titles listed on the nickel pack wrapper, also indicative of packaging once both series were being issued..  These were sold in panelized form, with two cards per panel, and scored, leaving little nubs behind when separated:

Again, scarce items today. Some foils were also panelized and as such, almost impossibly rare now (and show the nubs quite well in relief):

If you tote it all up, there's 230 cards plus the 8 foils. That a whole lotta Hoppy!