I've briefly touched upon the 1957 Topps Robin Hood set before and today I want to take a more detailed and nuanced look at it. It's a bit of an oddity at 60 cards given it was printed in standard size (2.5 x 3.5 inches), seemingly coming on the heels of the first 66 card Topps set (1956's Elvis Presley) and the implementation of the 11 cards-per-row/12 cards-per-column print arrays used with standard sizing. The set count, being divisible by ten, very well might have been planned at the tail end of the Giant Size era, with its corresponding 10 card rows. However, I've found a major anomaly as Topps filed for the Robin Hood trademark on October 28, 1955 and indicated in their filing that what appears to be the card set was being sold as of October 4th that year:
If that's true (and why wouldn't it be) then something is off as the cards feature an actress who didn't appear until the show's third season which ran from 1957-58. This is a real puzzler and could possibly make Robin Hood the first standard sized Topps issue, arriving over a year ahead of Elvis. I really don't know what to make of this, although two potential options come to mind:
1) A failed test set to coincide with the US premiere of the program in Fall of 1955, but I've never seen anything anywhere to inform that possibility.
2) It does seem possible a gum-only release or a tattoo issue, possibly generic like the 1955 Davy Crockett tats, was first contemplated, tested and then rejected, with the trademarked bubble gum brand reused when the cards were finally issued in 1957. Again, I can find no evidence to confirm or rebut.
The show, set in the Twelfth Century's densely wooded Sherwood Forest (which as we all know was ensconced in Nottinghamshire, England) was technically called The Adventures of Robin Hood, and was the first of several Lew Grade ITC productions that would find their way in syndication to lucrative U.S. shores. As noted, it aired from Fall 1955 until the Fall of 1958, always on Mondays at 7:30 and carried by CBS, with each episode running for a half an hour. After the third season it was switched over to Saturday Mornings, which then melded in season four, which was the final one produced. I caught an episode by chance not too long ago and the forest scenes, filmed in 35 MM, were pretty great, as were the various sword fights.
The set used colorized back-and-white images from the TV show, which have that sickening, muted color used in several late Fifties Topps releases:
It is not hard to find these cards today as they were massively overproduced. What is hard though, is finding examples that look OK, as print defects are legion.
The packaging was far nicer than the product it contained. Here's a box flat straight from the Topps file room:
It was sold in all possible retail configurations: penny and nickel packs, cello and vending. I suspect cello ruled the day as the wax wrappers are hard to find:
So the whole thing's a bit of a mess! The set is also known for its inclusion of the Lucky Penny insert card:
The more I type, the more I wonder about all of this. Thoughts, dear readers?
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