Nutty Goodness

As their stable of Mad Magazine associated artists grew during the Sixties, Topps became fond of using certain words - we would probably call them memes today - to describe their more smart-alecky products.  Stan Hart, who, among many other accomplishments in his long life, wrote for Mad for decades and was a Shorin family in-law, began working at Topps in the early Fifties and was  responsible for a lot of the "freshest" set descriptors to spring from the devious minds of their New Product Development Department. One theme/meme that saw favor in the mid-Sixties was "Nutty" and Topps issued three sets using that adjective: 1964's Nutty Awards, then two types of Nutty Tickets in 1967-68 and finished up with Nutty Initial Stickers in 1967 (and again in 1977). A fourth, called Nutty Ads may have been intended to precede them all, but one of the subjects was JFK and it's likely the set was halted before any kind of test was made after he was assassinated. So there's a lot of nuttiness to cover and today's quarry consists of the two Nutty Tickets releases. 

Nutty Tickets began life as a test set, and are exactly as described, offering "admission" to a series of snark-themed events.  These were issued as single tickets, measuring 1 5/8" x 5 3/16" likely two to a pack, and tested in 1967. The test does not seem to have gone well and they were tested once again in a two-ticket panelized format, where each individual ticket measures 1 1/4" x 4 11/16", if divided evenly by the perforation line that bisects them (don't hold your breath on that being laid down accurately). The panels were carried over and included as inserts that also served as stiffeners for the 32 Mini Stickers issue of 1968. The larger cards are, quite understandably, harder to find than the smaller ones by a pretty large margin. The smaller cards, also pretty tough in their own right, are usually found as singles but the panels are out there. 

Here's a size comparison of the two sizes of Nutty Tickets, note the smaller ones have far wider left and right side waste areas (sorry about the miscut large one, I'm lucky to even have it):

Nice job dragging the Mets and Senators!  The Mets were the butt of many similar jokes until they shocked the world in 1969 so it's not a real surprise to see the dis here. Not content with some light-hearted ribbing of two doormat baseball teams, Topps decided to trash Native Americans as well!

It would have been obvious that the fine print disclaimer found on a real ticket's reverse would not really fly here, so they went with some illustrations that drove home the theme of the "event" detailed on the front:

Those horizontal lines make for a muddy look and I'm not sure why it appealed to Topps. A number of original art pieces are known-check out this one of #17 that was sent to me by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins. It really shows off just how nice these looked before Topps obfuscated things:

The Andy Yanchus collection recently offered by Bruneau & Co. had nice selection of the panels but no big boys. What it did have were test wrappers:

You have to assume that wrapper held the panels but that sticker was used for both sizes, which must have had different pack dimensions. There's been some photos seen of what I believe was intended to be the retail box and there is also a proof of it known:

The large cards are made up of 24 subjects as are the small, but the latter were issued in three counts over 36 panels encompassing 72 ducats, meaning each appeared thrice.  As mentioned above, the panelized Nutty Tickets were used to stiffen packs of 32 Mini Stickers in 1968.  That meant an elongated pack was required and non-sportwax.com has the goods:

Snark city, right? The back is kind of busy too:

"Horror Show" is peeking through but I'm not 100% sure of the subject above it, which could be "Brain Surgery" based upon the proof sheet I'll show below. That's a whole lotta Bazooka comics if you wanted that sweatshirt! There were sixteen little stickers arrayed on a larger, standard-sized sticker, so I'd imagine that's why the pack contents were spelled out in such detail.  

Here's the proof sheet with all 24 subjects showing and it has to be from the larger sized set as there's narrow white borders on the left and right edges. 

The Mini Stickers looked like this (with different geometric shapes used for effect):

Here's the back, for kicks:

A box flat is known:

There are also white-backed stickers from a reissue in 1977:

An insert card also came with them as the stiffener and thanks to Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins, we have a great image of it:

So if you do the math, it results in 44 distinct stickers with 16 subjects per sticker. Here's the test pack from that year:

The T-90-5a code intrigues me as it seems to indicate a "b'" pack should exist. Based upon the purple text on the reverse seal, I'd expect the "b" pack to have black text:

The 1968 version of 32 Mini Stickers seem harder to find than the two card panels of Nutty Tickets but easier than the larger ones. The 1977 white backs are very, very tough, as is often the case with the self-destructing test issues from Topps.