Candy, Man

Way back in 2009 I posted about the 1951 Baseball Candy set and, as part of what is now a mostly obsolete series of observations, examined how this multi-faceted set might have been assembled and distributed by Topps.  To refresh your collective memories, Baseball Candy was an overarching marketing name and its constituent parts were comprised of what is now considered by the hobby at large to be five separate sets: Red Backs, Blue Backs, Connie Mack All Stars, Major League All Stars and Teams. The latter three were exactly twice the size of the first two, so they all fit neatly together for packaging and printing purposes when the two card panels of the Red and Blue Backs rode along. You can click around on the labels at the right for more details if you like but this is how Topps decided to take on Bowman in the start of what some (not me) have dubbed the Bubble Gum Wars.

There is evidence that the Connie Mack All Stars and Teams were printed together (note the sliver of brownish-orange along the right side of the Mack card)...

That's a color match for sure:

It also seems the Red Backs could have included in at least one, if not two, of the Connie Mack/Teams press runs, thanks to this oddity -a favorite - that resides in my collection: 

It's possible all three red reverse sets could have been arrayed on the same press sheet but it's not a given, even with that with that Senators reverse as they may have run a waste sheet or two. But it sure seems possible. I've not yet seen scans tying the Blue Backs and Major League All Stars together like this; fingers crossed though. 

Topps had issues with distribution of Baseball Candy, and of course there are three Major League All Star cards that are true hobby rarities. I won't get into why and how today (which I have refined since my 2009 post) but I believe combinations of those three rarities (Roberts, Konstanty, Stanky) and the Teams cards could have brought the entire Baseball Candy set down.  Ignoring those Teams cards, which are somewhat scarce in their own right, the blue-themed sets are relatively tougher than their red-themed counterparts and seem to have had only a sole press run, vs. at least two for the Red Backs and Connie Mack All Stars.

This raft of problems left Topps with a bunch of undistributed Red Backs (and Connie Macks), plus a smaller amount of Blue Backs (and possibly MLAS cards) and they had to find ways to dump their excess inventory.  Topps was relatively new at this but had already come up with several solutions for reselling some earlier sets that involved primordial Fun Packs and, for the Red Backs, (and a scant amount of Blue Backs) they blew them out in 1952 in packs of Doubles:

These were marketed a hailing from T.C.G. and had no caramel or other confection in the packs:

But there was also something called the Trading Card Guild, which I believe was created by Topps to:

a) funnel cards to non-confectionery markets, but also

b) dump excess inventory, and

c) possibly allow for third party selling of "dead" sets by sellers like Sam Rosen.

Back in my 2009 Baseball Candy post, (what the heck here it is, take some of it with some salt) I did mention panels of Red Backs had been seen in Trading Card Guild packs that were elongated and made of red cello but until recently I had never seen one.  Well, thanks to a recent Lelands auction, we now have eleven of these sighted, with ten entering the hobby via said auction.  I managed to snag some scans of the packs before they were overwrapped following verification.  As you might imagine, it's a veritable sea of red:

Wowsers!  Flipping them over, one held a surprise:

Yup, that is a Connie Mack All Star (featuring Mickey Cochrane) at bottom right!  What you can't really see is the indicia on these packs but thankfully I have a couple of the wrappers in my collection and it reads like so:

These could have been used for any of the sets Topps issued in two card panel format from 1950-51 (there were eight counting Baseball Candy as one big release) and you can see the 1951 copyright at right.  The oddity here is really the Topps For Toys reference, a division they had originally created around 1948 to market a game. I believe these red cello packs were the last gasp for their toy division.

As mentioned, eleven packs were found but only ten made it to the auction block.  Well it looks like the Luke Easter/Yogi Berra combo was withheld, and I think it could have been consigned by a big time Yankees collector who simply held on to a killer pack:

So here's the thing-could some cello packs of Red Backs potentially have a Connie Mack All Star sandwiched within? If a similar Trading Card Guild pack of Blue Backs ever came up, could it also have a Major League All Star card hidden within?  Questions, questions...

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 had 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!

Hopped Up

Way back in 1950, when television was really starting to take off, a need, quickly voracious, for content developed. With some foresight in this mad scramble, William Boyd, who had gained fame by portraying the good-guy cowboy Hopalong Cassidy in dozens of old "oaters" that were staples of Saturday movie matinees in the Thirties and Forties, acquired the rights to and packaged up a gaggle of his old movies and had them formatted for the boob tube.  If Hoppy wasn't the first kids fad fueled by Tee Vee it wasn't far behind.  It also set the stage (sorry), along with the Lone Ranger, for a phalanx of kiddie TV Westerns to follow.

Topps took advantage and made their first major foray into licensed character products with Hoppy.  A long series of cards were issued (stay tuned for a post on these), along with a virtually unknown saddle bag pack with candy inside.  I've posted, albeit briefly, about the saddle bag before, which is a thing of wonder:

For a product made of thin carboard, it's very well-designed.  Check out the back:

Given the ingredients, I suspect the candy was like Sugar Babies, or very similar. The one thing the packaging lacks, despite the ornateness, is color. Topps took care of that with a product called Hoppy's Wagon Wheel Pops. You got fifteen pops, in a box that had some other features beyond lolly-holstering:

Friend o'the Archive Dan Bretta, provided the above color image and most of the ones below.  Here's the all important indicia:

Topps made a go of selling candy for about eight years, including a run of Christmas-themed lollipops, but shut down their Candy Division in 1951. Thanks to Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Guide to the Non-Sports Cards, we know what the lolly wrapper looked like:

There was a nice surprise inside the box as well:

As you can see, that is puzzle number two.  California Carlson was one of Hoppy's sidekicks and a kid could have a rootin' tootin' good time connecting the dots there to cipher what he was up to with that lasso. We'll get to a count momentarily but the big prize was the advertised picture of the star of the series on the box back. Mr. Bretta sent me images of two of these. I think I'll dub this one "Hoppy Gazing":

Here's Hoppy atop his horse, Topper:

You can see how the box lid fit over the box bottom, like old sets of record albums.  I have one of these myself, (a proof) and scans of two others:

It's muddy but that upside down wording states: "Please note: Every box of Hoppy Wagon Wheel Pops features one of six Hopalong Cassidy portraits and one of six Hoppy Pop Puzzles"

So good clues there, although I'm not sure why that statement isn't on all the other portraits I've seen so far except this one:

The pictures with the statement are all smaller and show a lot more white border than the ones without it and I wonder if Topps reissued Hoppy Pops again in 1951 before their license ran out. This one doesn't look cut down but check out Hoppy's gun-it looks hand drawn! There's a lot of added whites on the jacket and hat too, which is quite possibly the handiwork of Ben Solomon.

It's plausible they each come both ways but that needs to be verified somehow and these are now hard things to find.

Right now we have one Puzzle:

#2 California Lassoing

While 5/6ths of the portrait checklist is as follows:

• Hoppy Gazing
• Hoppy Atop Topper
• Hoppy Next to Topper With Gun (and Topper looks partially illustrated to me)
• Hoppy in Relaxed Pose
• Hoppy Pointing Gun In Front of Mountains

I'd love to get the portrait checklist finished off if anyone has the last subject handy but think finishing the puzzle checklist off could be "California Dreaming."

Contract High

I don't know if his estate is moving items after his death on June 18th of this year but I expect a bunch of Willie Mays' personal memorabilia to hit the market in the coming years.  One such item is already upon us, although it could have come from a different source-his 1954 contract with Topps, which popped up recently at Mile High Auctions:

Mays started out with Bowman in 1951, was with both them and Topps in '52, then Topps only in 1953 before appearing in both company's 1954 and 1955 sets. He was in the military for most of the 1952 season and all of 1953, so Bowman probably didn't have him locked up on auto-renew like Topps did.  Mays was also buddy-buddy with Sy Berger, and, I believe while unrelated to the events being described here, he holds the record for appearances in the most Topps sets (including inserts and supplemental issues) covering his playing days from 1951-73.

He's card no. 90 in 1954 and you can see he signed his contract on March 8th.  Topps did something weird with the distribution of the set after the first series, so it's not clear if he's a second, third, or fourth series card (or possibly fifth but I'm not positive it went that far in '54) but given how late the date is, he probably wasn't locked up until the third array of cards was being composed. As a reminder, his 1954 card is one of the best ever issued of him:

The back notes his time with Uncle Sam:

The contract itself has enormous historical value of course, but I like how simple the language was. That would change, as would the methods used by Topps to retain players over the years but the other thing I like about it is the signature of Turk Karam, who was employed by Topps as a talent scout and all-around "Sports Dept. guy" before they had an official Sports Dept. 

Mays would earn his only World Series ring with the Giants in 1954 and was the National League MVP to boot-Say hey!