Well, I tried my darndest this year but I don't have any new things to show that relate to Christmas from our good friends at Topps.  Early efforts made by the company to sell Christmas themed items around 1950-53 seem to have gone poorly and much of what I am aware of otherwise consists of things like corporate greeting cards. So instead I've turned to good old Bazooka Joe and a bit of an anomaly involving everybody's favorite mascot.

Check out this Bazooka Joe Club Membership kit ephemera:

Our look at the mid 1970's Annual Reports of Topps Chewing Gum continues, today it's the 1975 edition, issued as Topps was celebrating 25 years of issuing baseball cards.  The cover is oh-so 70's:


The board of directors is still an austere bunch, featuring some progression of the Shorin family. Manuel Yellen, who was on the Board from its 1972 inception, was the retired CEO of Lorillard Tobacco.  He started there in 1933 and would have been a longtime business associate of the Shorin family from the American Leaf Tobacco Company days.  His is not the father of  current Federal Reserve head honcho Janet Yellen though.



The big trend in fiscal year 1975 was more international expansion and conquest for Topps. Manufacturing operations had begun in Halle Germany as August Storck began making Bazooka under license.  Topps was so impressed with them that they used a nice shot of their plant in the annual report



Of further note was the kickoff of Nigerian operations and the killing off of A&BC Chewing Gum in England.  I plan to take an in depth look at the Topps/A&BC relationship at some point but it's interesting that once the A&BC takeover occurred, Topps moved manufacturing to the US on a temporary basis.


This was only their third annual report but things were already becoming drier and more businesslike within. Net sales were $50.111 million, a 13.3% increase over the prior year. Other fiscal highlights concerned their ability to borrow money at the prime rate -- no doubt due to to the Shorin family's almost 70 year affiliation with Manufacturers Hanover Bank-- and a big increase in debt (that might be a lowlight). Part of their listed liabilities was an estimate for the cost of premium redemptions from various wholesalers & retailers via their longstanding "prize" certificate offers. In the fiscal year ending 1974 this amount was $630,000 while in FY ending 1975 it was $581,000. I've always wondered about the cost of this program and it is roughly 1% of net sales in the mid-70's.

Next post we'll time trip back to the U.S. Bicentennial.

Back across the pond today lads, as we look at a couple of Cricket issues issued by the eventual Topps subsidiary A&BC Gum.

1959 saw the release in England of A&BC's 48 card Cricket, or Cricketers issue. The cards are beautiful, measuring 67 x 96 mm (about 2.64 x 3.78 inches):



The colors are stunning and remind me of nothing less than the N162 Goodwin Champions set from 1888. The backs are more workmanlike:



A stone is 14 pounds (or about 6.35 kilograms) in case you are weighing along at home. I am searching for a wrapper image but can't find one at the moment and suspect they are scarce.

After skipping a year,A&BC returned with another 48 card set in 1961. I had to nick these and the rest of the scans below from Ebay but so it goes:



Colorful alright but not nearly as charming as the 59's. A Test Series is essentially the long form of Cricket, which takes days to play. The backs are off kilter for some reason, which seems intentional:



The 61's come in two sizes: 64 x 90 mm (about 2.52 x 3.54 inches, very close to American standard size) and 68 x 94 mm (about 2.68 by 3.7 inches).

After 1961 A&BC produced no further Cricket series. For that reason I assume they did not sell well which may also explain the lack of a wrapper scan again.

The first A&BC Cricket cards though were issued in 1954 as part of a set called All Sport,which was exactly that; a set of 120 multi-sport, blank backed black and white cards that were designed to be pasted into an album:



I wanted to show a Cricketer but that scan is rough. Here is another scan from the set of a Cycle Speedway Star:



The cards measure 47 x 76 mm (about 1.85 by 2.99 inches) and come with either glossy or matte fronts. Surprisingly, I was able to find a wrapper scan for these:



The coupon was how you got the album:



The album is proving elusive at the moment.

A&BC had only produced two sets previously, both in 1953 so this is one of their earlier efforts. For more on this great company you can go to Nigel's Webspace and bone up.

For the record, Blogger will not let me put an & in the Labels-sorry, I had to compromise!

Put on your bowlers lads, we're going to the UK today!

Topps made a corporate decision in the 1950's to expand their product lines internationally, first reaching into Canada then later Venezuela in this hemisphere. By the end of the decade they had set their sights on A&BC Chewing Gum of England and would further their quest into Holland, Israel, Australia & New Zealand by the early 60's.

The Topps/A&BC alliance eventually became Topps UK in the mid 70's but used the A&BC brand exclusively before that. After World War 2 A&BC would be to kids in the UK what Topps was to the young 'uns in the US. There is an excellent treatise on A&BC on Nigel's Webspace, which is also a megasite for "Footballer' cards issued in the UK. I didn't link to the article but it's at the links near the bottom of the page; it's more fun to explore his whole site anyway.

My primary interest in A&BC and some of the other international Topps affiliated brands from the mid century goes well beyond just the footballers but today I just wanted to share a couple of nice looking cards. There will be much more on A&BC as we press forward this fall.

The 1970 English Footballer set looks a little bit like the 1967 Topps Baseball Cards I think:



The A&BC sets are often referred to by their back colors. Mr. Carr would be an "orange back":



That is a coin rub feature in the lower right corner, which is a byproduct of Topps' US baseball sets. Many designs on the overseas cards over the years were based upon stateside graphics, sometimes exactly so and there will be a comprehensive feature on such similar looking pasteboards soon.

A&BC's first set of footballers was issued in 1958, around the time Topps affiliation with them commenced. The cards featured players from the English Football League First Division, the major league version of soccer on the Isle. They expanded to a second set featuring Scottish Football League players in 1962 (a very rare set) and the Scottish cards were issued separately on an annual basis (in most years) into 1980 I believe.

The Scottish cards were identical except for the back color. Here is a very dramatic looking card of the alliterative Dixie Deans:



The Scottish '70 Footballers are referred to as Green Backs:



Those full bleed backs must really do a number on the mint freaks out there! By the way, these UK cards measure the same as standard sized Topps cards of the same era, or about 64 mm x 89 mm. Not all cards are made equally however; there are some size variations with A&BC cards even on sets they replicated otherwise exactly from the US.

You can learn more about A&BC cards from a handy little booklet put out by the London Cigarette Card Company:



Like I said before, there will be more on A&BC (and other Topps concerns) around the world as the Archive goes global. There are test issues and short prints, mysteries and double prints just like in the US, so there's plenty to look at laddies!