Rub-A-Dub-Dub

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): 

What's Weird?

Some Topps paperwork, that's what!  I've been somewhat focused on paper items used or issued by Topps of late and a couple of fairly strange items have randomly popped up.

Leading off is an award bestowed by Topps on Mike Sadek for First Team honors in his NCAA Collegiate District in 1967:

Yes, it's all fancified with ribbons and retaining bands, making it look kind of elegant.  However, the portfolio that contained it was just made of cheap cardboard:

There were eight NCAA Divisions for 1967 and the whole thing ended, of course, at the College World Series.  Assuming they gave ten awards per district (which would match the major league All Star Rookies count as they considered both LHP and RHP) there would have been 80 first teamers in '67.

Sadek was, as noted, a Catcher and had a nondescript eight year career with the Giants covering 1973 and then 1975-81.  He had very little power (five dingers in 813 big league AB's) except when it came to his arm, which was a rocket. The Giants took him in the twelfth round of the 1966 amateur draft but he didn't sign.  The Twins took him a year later (fifth round of the secondary draft) then ended up with Giants after all in a Rule 5 claim in 1969; I guess they really wanted him. 

He was sent down for the entire 1974 season after debuting in 1973, and that year in the minors was the only year he started more than 100 games in his career as the Giants were trying to increase his workload. His competition  after he was recalled was not stiff, with Dave Rader, Marc Hill and Milt May starting over him. 

Speaking of catchers, here's a (fuzzy) document related to the 1975 Bubble Gum Blowing Contest that Topps used as a promotional vehicle for Bazooka. They took this thing seriously, with Joe Garagiola as the host for the televised finals. The contest also gave us some pretty bizarre ephemera but I haven't seen this one before:

I tried to improve the focus but my AI enhancement program just made it worse! It's easy enough to pick out the highlights.  On August 12, 1975 John Stearns (that's the Catcher kids!), Bob Apodaca and Wayne Garrett took parts in the New York Mets heat. As you can see, Stearns won it in a squeaker! Bud Harrelson and Tom Seaver (road roomies did ya know?) were the judges and signed as witnesses.  How did they measure the bubbles?  Why, with this handy device:

We all know Kurt Bevaqcua of the Brewers won the title, but how did Stearns do? Well he lost in the first round:

You may note the Athletics had a pinch bubble blower as their team winner, Angel Mangual, played a mere 8 games for Oakland before being released on June 1, 1976. Why the Tigers and Pirates didn't participate will remain a mystery.

The Check Is In The Mail

Some business to take care of today folks, namely financial business. Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi has been sending across a steady diet of Topps esoterica and the items on display here today are about as off-the-wall as you can get.

Before the advent of apps such as Concur and iExpense, corporate expense accounts had to be filled out by hand.  I'm old enough to remember such things and I'm sure some smaller places still do it manually. Back in the day, I had to submit mine on a monthly basis.  At Topps, it was weekly:

I'm sure Topps had sales personnel either out on the road from HQ on a regular basis plus guys who were always in the field wherever their assigned regions were.  Either way, you had to keep your receipts and stuff 'em all in an envelope:

After sweating out the review of the carefully prepared "swindle sheet" by your boss and getting the all-important sign-off from "Financial Paralysis" (as we sometimes called it), a reimbursement check would appear in a week or so.  I don't have an expense check example from Topps but suspect they were mailed out in this style of envelope to anyone in the field:

Twenty cents for postage-it just went to seventy-three cents the other day-yikes!

Know When To Fold 'Em

Some more Topps Fold-A-Roo scans have emerged since I last took a look at this uber-scarce set in 2014 and also 2018.  A complete opposite-fashioned ripoff of Al Jaffee's MAD Magazine Fold-Ins, which debuted in 1964 (and which would repeatedly be ripped off by Topps as time passed) Fold-A-Roos were tested around 1966-67 (I suspect the latter year is more correct than the former), with only 24 of the advertised 36 subjects issued.  I'm trying to document as many subjects as I can and this is the latest batch.

This was number 1:

Folding the bottom flap over revealed a punchline:

OK, not the best joke.  Might as well show the reverse, as my last attempt was in grainy B&W:

No. 2 continues the meh-like trend:

As does no. 3:

One we get to no. 9, things pick up a bit:

See?

I dunno, the whole thing seems pretty lackluster overall:

No. 35 really doesn't improve upon things:

See what I mean?

Toting up the images seen in my (now three posts) on the set this is what's identified so far:

1,2,3,6,9,20,24,30,35,36

Plus there are two or three known in proof form but because of how they were laid out, each proof only contains one part or the other of the setup and gag.

My impression is that the set just wasn't smart-alecky enough and that the gimmick was pretty lame. The fragile nature of this test makes them a very difficult quarry these days though. They can't all be winners, right?

Here's The Story...

...of a pretty amazing auction lot.

If you're in a certain age group it's pretty much impossible not to be aware of "The Brady Bunch" and its offspring. The Friday Night ABC-TV show premiered on September 26, 1969 and ran for five semi-fun-filled seasons, often with some pretty excruciating musical numbers thrown in. And this was before things devolved into a lucrative universe of never-ending syndication, spin-offs, revivals and two later very tongue-in-cheek homage movies. Unlike the very adjacent "Partridge Family" show it sometimes ran ahead of and was featured in three plain vanilla series releases with Topps, The Brady Bunch led to two very similar Topps card sets that have confused collectors ever since. The first of these sets was a test and I'll leave that for the latter part of today's festivities, focusing on the full 1971 retail issue to start.  

Back in June of this year, this lot popped up on eBay and went for a strong price:

Starting at top left and going clockwise, we see a dual-display unit sleeve that originally held two 48 count boxes of Brady's, with 240 cards per box. The there is a nicely preserved display box, s set of the cards (88 of 'em), a mysterious schematic of the display and packaging, a waste strip presumably from the outer sleeve and a wax wrapper.  Let's break it down:

To me the sleeve is the unlikely survivor here:

I suspect that little strip somehow secured both boxes inside the sleeve.  There's some shots of the sleeve's interior that I'll spare you from but it's not really obvious how that would have worked. As for the sleeve proper, Topps used this sales method for a few years, starting around 1969, often for sets like their Hallow'een offerings, but really anything they wanted to move in a little more quantity fit the bill.

It's possible this method was used to primarily  boost flagging sales of a once promising product but I'm not at all sure of that and it could also have been intended for sets with a perceived seasonal sales cycle. The ABC-TV tagline that the outer box added seems like it could have been something that made Topps some extra scratch but who knows at this point. Still, the cards and all the display trappings are somewhat hard to find for this set, although it could also have been sold in cello packs, with some vending thrown in. Vending though, was probably the worst-performing member of the Topps retail ecosystem. 

Anyhoo, here's another view:

The display box used an image provided by the show's producers and, while it omitted the Brady parents and their domestic helper Alice, it sure locks in how the kids looked in season one:

As readers here know, I like to show off all the indicia I can find.  I'm especially aware of the need to do so these days as more and more boxes are over-wrapped by a certain third-party authenticator, which generally places a COA that obscures these details:

You can see the stock and other numbering information from the commodity code matches with the sleeve (1-443-XX-01-1). The cards were described as having glue residue on the reverse due to their being entombed in a Topps file book.  

The 88 card full retail set is popular and is often confused with the 55 card test set.  We will get to all that shortly but first, the Topps provenance makes me think the schematic card could have been something made up by Topps and inserted into the file book. (UPDATE 8/5/24: the archive belonged to Philadelphia Gum a.k.a. Swell, which kept tabs on their competitors. Tip o'the Topps cap to Lonnie Cummins for that tidbit.)  

Here's the reverse, you can see it was glued to something for sure:

The wrapper offered in the lot was not pristine, so I'll sub in another scan. Other than the side panel premium ad, it's the same as the one from the eBay lot:

I dunno, that's not a great image for a wrapper in IMO, although Mike and Carol finally get their mugs out there.  Alice (Ann B. Davis) got hosed on the packaging but she does appear in the set:

I'd like to think the color choices there were either the avocado (as shown) or burnt orange!  Here's a back, it's kinda groovy:

You will note that the copyright is from 1969, even though this set hails from 1971.  The original license, according to Chris Benjamin in his Sport-Americana guides, was still valid at the time the set was released, which neatly answers that question and also explains why the set is thought to be from 1969 by many collectors, dealers and even third-party graders (I'm looking at you PSA).  That mismatch plus the test issue of 55 cards that came out in 1970 showing a copyright for the very same year is what gets folks into some additional pretzel logic.  Those 55 test cards have a reverse that looks like this:

The indicia regarding the puzzle numbering from 1971 does not appear on the test cards.  In fact, the 55 card puzzle no. 1, which depicts the fictional family in an ersatz jail cell, is the same for both sets, which means another puzzle or two could be made from the retail set of 88. Sure enough, a second puzzle featured Mike and Carol sharing a milkshake and is made up of 18 card backs, with the image taken from card #10:

The third puzzle is 15 cards worth of Brady kids, in the same pose seen on the retail box. No real effort involved by Topps for these two pseudo-jigsaws.

The test issue is incredibly scarce and is one of the tougher Topps sets to track down singles from. I mean, it's almost impossible and I wonder if it was initially created for a pitch meeting with Paramount. Even John Neuner's old guide to Non-Sport wrappers makes no mention of it. 

But it must have been tested somehow as Topps never released anything without one being conducted. It's not clear if the test was made in cello then, or the more familiar bespoke white wax wrappers used for such things, as it does not seem any of the latter can be found. But it must have been a success or we would not be seeing the regular issue cards.

And that's how they all became the Brady Bunch sets!