Oh Ye-a-a-a-h!!

Some time ago (almost exactly seven years to be precise) I took a look at the 1967 Topps Funny Travel Posters set, one of their classic large format sets of the late Sixties. One of the posters therein thoroughly mocks Madison Avenue and in doing so, portrays several character mascots loved by generations of consumers, So I thought it would be fun over this week's post and next's to break down the roster, almost of of which were eventually animated, and seen on television about a gazillion times, some of which are very much still still in use today.  In addition, I'll follow up with a look at the various Wacky Packages products that lampooned the products represented below the next time or two out. 

Here is the poster, featuring Wally Wood and Wood Studio art and my favorite of the 24 in the set:

Let's start in the upper left corner of this tour de force.  Since 1870 that red devil mascot, in one form or another, has adorned cans of Underwood's products, only one of which - their ham sandwich spread - is actually  "deviled", and it may be the oldest food trademark in the U.S.  It's changed over the years (haven't we all?) but its continual use for over 150 years is quite impressive. I'm partial to said deviled ham myself and also like their liverwurst spread.

Next is the jumping Hertz man as we move Southeast. I'm not sure he was ever animated, so this is one of the two or three mascots on the poster that is a bit fanciful in execution.  OJ Simpson famously portrayed him a few years after the poster was created but the character has been represented by many actors over the years.

I will not show OJ but here is a 1960's classic and brassy commercial that gives you an idea of how this looked in "real" life:

The Jolly Green Giant is next and boy is he prominent!  Once again, well known and still used as a mascot today for Green Giant products. The original giant was created by Leo Burnett, an ad man who became so well known that he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century. It's worth noting his classic "ho ho ho" catchphrase was not quite yet in use when Topps issued the set.

The character climbing up the Jolly Green Giant is not the little Green Sprout (a 1972 creation) but rather the mascot for Peter Pan Peanut Butter and in fact the product initially used the Disney version of the character before it turned into the one seen on the poster, which lasted about a decade:

The JGG is holding a pitcher of Kool-Aid and gives us yet another mascot in use today, the prosaic Kool-Aid Man! Known today for his wall-breaking entrances, that gimmick was a few years away still in 1967.  here's a compilation of some of the earlier "breakthroughs":

Leaping leftward, we get the Esso Tiger filling up a car full of Snap, Crackle and Pop, the three Rice Krispies mascots.  You know them well but did you know the Rolling Stones recorded a song for a TV commercial about the cereal? Yep:

This seems to have required some aforethought as it's easy to think Tony the Tiger was doing the pumping but it's not the Frosted Sugar Flakes mascot overfilling the tank. It's this guy, a  favorite mascot of mine as a kid:

I am not 100% certain that the leaking tire on the car, which is being punctured by a knight in armor on horseback from an old series of Ajax commercials, isn't also something from Madison Avenue like a tire commercial but I can't find anything on point.  Meanwhile, Ajax is stronger than dirt:

In the middle of all is the the Quaker Oats Quaker:

And let's not forget my favorite cereal character of all time, Cap'n Crunch. The Jay Ward commercials that ran for years featuring his crew of Alfie, Brunhilde, Carlyle, Dave and Sea Dog were as good as many cartoons of the day, if not better; no surprise as the studio launched Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, among others. Jay Ward Productions animated Quisp & Quake of course and several other cereal and snack brand commercials that were staples of weekday after-school cartoon programming and the Saturday Morning kiddie shows. Cap'n Crunch is too cloying for me these days but the sweet memories live on:

We'll get to the bottom row next time out!

Bubble Gum Byways

Some odds and sods today kids!

Friend o'the Archive Jason Rhodes passed along this little bit of fun some time ago and I'm just now managing to show it. I would have bought this product had I seen this box:

That looks really cool, right?!  I'm estimating it as early Sixties, based upon the box-bottom indicia:

Can't say I've seen many, if any,  80 count boxes from that era but this was one.

Another weird one was Giant Bubble Gum, which I believe was a twist wrap product from around the same time, maybe even a smidge earlier. This is courtesy of Lonnie Cummins:

A short time ago I took an unexpected peek at Topps Flavor Mates gum, which was one of the things packed into the mysterious Wild Animal Surprise Box.  It's a byway in Topps history but the highlighting  of  Imitation Flavor is not something they would often promote.  Here's a Fruit Punch flavor, to go along with the previously seen Grape, Orange and Banana:

I think that commodity code ends in a -9...

...so it's 1969 addition to the line as the Banana flavor included in the Wild Animal box dates to 1968, while the Orange has no code that I've seen and the Grape is indeterminate due to lack of a good scan.

Finally, how about some original artwork for Gold Rush, as painted by Norm Saunders, as shown at normansaunders.com:

What's really neat about that artwork is his children, David and Zina, were the hand models:

Gold Rush was always a favorite of mine and when it was all chewed up, which didn't take very long, you got a little pouch that could hold all sorts of things:

Sorry, no Turkey Bubble Gum to show as we approach Thanksgiving!

Doors Of Imperception

Topps was chugging along with all sorts of esoteric non-sports issues as the odometer rolled over from 1969 to 1970. This was about year four of an internal underground comix and pop-art influence on Woody Gelman's New Product Development Department (NPD) that was peppering the youth of America with wildly inventive offerings, one of which was an interactive set of 24 subjects called Funny Doors.

It's impossible to miss the connection from which Funny Doors were sprung, namely 1968's Laugh-In subsets of Knock-Knocks and, prosaically, Funny Doors.  These both featured a small, hinged piece or two that opened up to reveal a funny saying on the under-flap and also an illustration that peeked through.  Topps refined the concept a bit and came up with a pretty humorous set.  Here is a typical example:

You can see the hinges for each little door; slightly bending the card allowed the purchaser to pry them open with their thumb, thereby ensuring a form of limited self-destruction that Topps seemed to revel in.

The setup was ingenious, with the inside surface of the door sometimes offering a word or short phrase that related to the revealed illustration. 

When printed front-and-back, the card was folded over and then sealed by Topps. As you may have surmised if unfamiliar with the set, these measure 2 1/2" x 4 11/16".

I've not seen enough of these in fully opened form (my set is 100% unopened) to know if there was something on the backside of each door but based upon this stack o'proofs from an old Huggins & Scott auction, I'm going with only some having this little extra appended on there:

The wrapper almost says it all:

Note the 1969 commodity code.  It's possible the set was green-lit in 1969 and released in 1970 but that 423 product number could cement it in '69; more research is needed there. And I say "almost" as there was a surprise inside the pack, a checklist card!

Standard-sized, it would have bounced a round a bit in the pack.  It had instructions on the back:

Some original art has popped up over the years, it's pretty neat:

A tissue overlay is known for this piece, it has some of the "inside" line art still extant and glue spots where some fell off:

I can't swear I've seen a retail box for the set but surely one exists as cards from the set, while assuredly not easy, can be found and that wrapper shown above is post-test.

Hoppin' Along

Further to last month's post on Hopalong Cassidy's wide range of Topps products way back in 1950 (yup, 75 years ago buckaroos), Friend o' the Archive Lonnie Cummins has sent along some additional details relating to Hoppy Pops.

First up, we have the sixth and final b&w box bottom image for the checklist:

It's very close to the image I've dubbed "Hoppy Gazing" but you can see his gun here, so I'll call this one "Hoppy Gazing - Gun Visible" and update the checklist accordingly:

• Hoppy Gazing
• Hoppy Gazing - Gun Visible *
• Hoppy Atop Topper
• Hoppy Next to Topper With Gun *
• Hoppy in Relaxed Pose *
• Hoppy Pointing Gun In Front of Mountains

You can see the new image has the  "Please note: Every box of Hoppy Wagon Wheel Pops features one of six Hopalong Cassidy portraits and one of six Hoppy Pop Puzzles" statement underneath and I've added an asterisk above to show which pictures have been identified with this description to date. Three have it and three don't and more research is needed to see if they each come both ways.

Lonnie also sent along another puzzle from the interior of the lollipop box and it's in color to boot (sorry):

So puzzle nos. two and six are now known.  It's not at all clear if each comes in blue or other colors were used for some of these. I suspect they could all be blue, though.

A possible alternate box cover was sent along as well by Lonnie:

It's lighter than the perforated box cover shown here last month and way less vivid. I also have an unperforated flat (proof) of the more colorful version:

These are scarce items and the one that's more pastel could either be from late in the production run, when the inks started to fade a little before printing, or even evidence of a reissue.

Considering how popular Hoppy was back in the early Fifties, it's a little strange more isn't known about his Wagon Wheel Pops.

And That's The Truth....pffffttttttt

1968 saw a number of wildly inventive sets come out of the increasingly underground-centric New Product Development Department at Topps. Woody Gelman's gang of hirsute pranksters sure look like they got a green-light from the company's top brass to go wild once the move of production facilities to Duryea was fully wrapped up, as many of the designs coming out of Brooklyn thereafter were in sync with the hippie and psychedelic zeitgeist of the next half-decade or so. Their most zeitgeist-iest set of all, with the possible exception of Nasty Valentine Notes in 1972, was 1968's Laugh-In.  At a time when Be-Ins and Love-Ins were becoming daily television news fodder, the  creation of a TV show that embraced the counterculture turned out to be a master stroke by NBC and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, while very much a product of its times, was the (sometimes) quite funny result.

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin's blackout-centric sketch comedy show premiered on NBC in January 1968 but had been preceded by a September 1967 special that did so well the network placed a fourteen episode order. It replaced The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (covered mostly here Topps-wise, and which was a Mid-Century Modern visual wonderland) and took off immediately. By the time Laugh-In ended six seasons later in 1973, 140 episodes had aired. The show spawned a pair of stars (Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin most prominently) and featured a handful or two of well-known secondary cast members such as Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Jo Anne Worley and Flip Wilson, with a fluid supporting cast that kept things somewhat fresh from season-to season. Early on several catchphrases (memes today kids) such as "Here Comes Da Judge" and "Your Bet Your Sweet Bippy" quickly made their way into hip conversations. 

High-profile guest celebrities of all ages and eras, including Richard Nixon, Jack Benny, Ringo Starr plus many others were the norm. The top-rated network show during its first two full seasons, it snagged seven Emmy Awards before things ran their course as viewer fatigue waxed and the influence of the Sixties on popular culture inevitably waned.

Merchandising opportunities presented themselves immediately and among the tie-ins was a gloriously irreverent and colorful 77 subject set issued by Topps that featured six distinct subsets and 24 bonus subject sticker inserts. Taking past influences into account for some of the designs and foreshadowing several others that would soon be unleashed, Laugh-In is a thoroughly fun romp through a very strange time.

33 Color Photo Cards, with a kitschy joke added via word balloon, kicked things off, each with an equally colorful puzzle piece on the reverse (more on  those in a bit). Here's Goldie:

And here's a puzzle piece:

Four puzzles can be made, three consisting of nine pieces and another with a mere six.  They feature what are pretty much the aboriginal catchphrases from the show. A really killer proof of all four exists:

Why poor Dan Rowan didn't get puzzled will have to remain a mystery. The 33 photo cards would have been proofed separately at this point and while I don't have the appropriate front scan, it's clear this isn't a mix-and-match situation as its each photo front card was backed by one distinct and discrete puzzle piece. 

These were followed by 12 Knock-Knock cards that incorporate elements of another subset (more on this is a minute):

Did I mention this was not a highbrow show?

11 Necklace cards follow and these were designed to be chained together.  It's an idea whose time came and went immediately I'd say:

Yes, repetition of themes in the set was legion!

Topps soldiered on, next adding 6 Finger Puppet cards.  These are almost always found with the holes punched out:

The even referred to each subject by name in a specific way on the reverse:

9 Funny Door cards come next and these are somewhat similar to the Knock-Knocks. This might be the most gloriously far out design in the entire set:

As noted above, these and the Knock Knocks essentially use the same gimmick. 

The set concludes with 7 Foldee cards, bringing back a design first used in 1963 and 1966, but stretched back to a forebear in 1949's Funny Foldees. Here's Arte Johnson and Ruth Buzzi:

Joe Anne Worley is the star of the card back here:

Laugh-In cards were issued in 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" standard size and the subsets were all grouped together consecutively in the main numbering scheme.

Elements from this set would be repeated in the 1969 Topps Pak o' Fun set, 1970's Funny Doors (post coming soon) and a smattering of others, including 1988's Pee Wee's Playhouse. 

There is a proof sheet known for the 44 card block of the "other" designs, all lined up nice and neat:

I cannot find images of any press sheets so can't say whether Topps composed all 33 color cards across 132 slots (in a 4x array), then all 44 cards across another 132 card slots (3x array), or if they mixed and matched.  Given that the 44 non-photo subjects all feature either metamorphic or die-cut cards, I suspect the latter.

24 yellow insert stickers, which measure 1 15/16" x 2 15/16" came in the packs.  The were dubbed Goldie's Laugh-Ons and they continue the themes found on the cards:

The stickers were blank-backed:

The wrapper is a little staid to my eye, given the riotous treatment given the cards:

That chemical magic set was also offered on the Bazooka Toppscience boxes.

The retail box though, is a thing of groovy Pop-Art beauty:

A black color process proof of the box exists (sold from the Topps Vault some time ago) and it's a true marvel:

One oddity I have noticed with this set is a non-random intermixing of Topps and OPC cards in many lots when offered for sale. I have no idea why this would be a thing, it's so far beyond the US/Canadian osmosis in any other vintage Topps set I've encountered that there must be a story there.

Laugh-In is really out there as Topps, which was basically run by middle-aged Jewish guys from Brooklyn, leaned into the freakier side of things at a time when it was not necessarily safe for them to do so from a business standpoint.