![]() ![]() In 1952, Berger rented a garbage barge and had the remaining baseball cards dumped from the first series, as he couldn't even give them away. Perhaps the card is the world's most expensive ever. He negotiated contracts with baseball players every year and even went to London and negotiated with The Beatles to make Topps the market leader in collectors cards. Sy Berger's original design of the baseball cards has basically been maintained ever since.īerger worked for the company for 50 years. ![]() Next, a card was made with cowboy Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) and what would become the company's golden calf, the baseball card (1952). Soon Bazooka Joe was super popular and became the generation's biggest collector's card. There was also a comic strip card about the character Bazooka Joe in the package. In the patriotic post-war spirit, the package was created in the colours of the American flag. By the time the United States entered World War II, chewing gum was available via vending machines throughout the country.Ībout 10 years later, the bubble gum Atom Bazooka was launched. In 1938 the name Topps Chewing Gum was registered and in December of the same year four flavours were launched. Collection of images from the television series Hopalong Cassidy. In the late 1930s, the family hired a market analyst who advised Morris and his four sons to invest in chewing gum. The predecessor to Topps was the import and distribution company American Leaf Tobacco, founded in 1908 by Morris Shorin. However, Topps CEO Arthur Shorin did not want to give up the idea, so the company came up with the solution: they decided to parody the dolls and create as Shorin would've called it a 'f*** you' version.īut before we go into the history of the Garbage Pail Kids, here's a brief background of Topps. However, the company behind these dolls, Original Appalachian Artworks, was not interested in a collaboration because they did not want their product to be associated with the cheap cards and chewing gum that Topps manufactured. The big collecting phenomenon of the 1980s and the ultimate dream for Topps, was the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. This had been done since Bazooka Joe was launched in the mid-20th century and was followed by, among other things, the Wild West character and TV star Hopalong Cassidy, President John F. Since 1948, the New York collectibles company Topps identified popular cultural phenomena that could be transformed into collectors cards.
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