1952, 1953, and 1983-1998 Mother's Cookies

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

Mother's Cookies came into being in 1914 in Oakland, California, supposedly as a response to to Woodrow Wilson's declaration that Mother's Day would start being observed as a national holiday. According to the Mother's Cookies history website (and a Kellogg's press release), Noah Wheatley was running a newspaper stand at the corner of Market and Kearney in San Francisco when he decided to buy some cookie recipes from a customer.

A year later, he opened a one-man operation on 12th Avenue in Oakland and baked some 2,000 cookies a day. His vanilla cookies did very well despite the fact that he sold his cookies for $1 a box -- which is the equivalent of $24.41 today. Must have been some damn good cookies.

The bakery did well, but to expand the company, Wheatley had to sell his home and his piano to get the money for a larger facility. It panned out pretty well, leading Wheatley to move to a large facility at 810 81st Street in Oakland, where it stayed until 2006.At that time, sales had declined and costs had increased to the point where Mother's shuttered its Oakland manufacturing facility and moved production to Ohio and Canada.

Corporate ownership of Mother's changed hands on several occasions. At some point, a Dutch company called Artal NV bought the company. That's according to Wikipedia, whose entry on Mother's Cookies is an utter mess. The history section treats Archway cookies as a "sister company" from its beginnings in 1936 (it's not...it became a "sister" only in 1998) and spends half the history entry about Archway. Anyway...

At some point, Artal either changed names or sold itself to Beledia N.V. (which is Belgian or Dutch depending on whom you believe), because that is the company that sold Mother's along with 7 other companies to Specialty Foods Corp. in 1993. That takeover loaded up a bunch of debt on the company (typical), and Specialty struggled in its conglomerate form to be profitable.

Specialty first tried to double down with its purchase of Archway in 1998, but that did not work either. So, the combined Mother's and Archway companies were sold in one transaction to Italian giant Parmalat. That did not work well. Parmalat was the Enron of Italian companies in some respects, racking up massive debts and creating false financial statements tied to bogus billings to shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Mother's and Archway were lucky that they could be sold off as assets; the Parmalat scandal completely destroyed Parma Football Club.

Mother's was sold with Archway to Catterton Partners, a private equity company, in 2005. The first thing that these guys did was to close the Oakland operations in a cost cutting measure. That did not work well either, and the Catterton folks used the combined Archway & Mother's Cookie Company to book nonexistent sales to keep its lines of credit open with Wachovia Bank. Shortly thereafter, Archway & Mother's declared bankruptcy.

Mother's went away for a little while, and hipsters immediately went nostalgic for the brand's signature animal cookies -- creating t-shirts saying, "Goodbye, Mothers." That goodbye was a fairly short goodbye, however, as 2009 saw Kellogg Company purchase Mother's Cookies name/assets out of bankruptcy so that another generation can gnaw on those pink and white little animal cookies.

EXEMPLARS

These images are downloaded from The Trading Card Database. While I probably should have picked an exemplar from each of the one hundred eighteen sets that Mother's Cookies issued, I decided instead to use just one from each year.

1952

1953 

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

DETAILS
Mother's Cookies sets were incredibly popular among collectors in the mid-1980s through the 1990s. As mentioned above, there were a total of 118 different sets issued by Mother's Cookies. Two of those were in 1952 and 1953 and exclusively featured players and managers from the Pacific Coast League. Otherwise, starting in 1983 and ending in 1998, Mother's issued the following sets:

1983: Giants
1984: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1985: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1986: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners
1987: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, Mark McGwire
1988: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Will Clark
1989: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey Jr., Rookies of the Year, Griffey Hand Cut, Griffey Uncut Sheet
1990: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Canseco, Clark, Nolan Ryan, Matt Williams
1991: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Rangers, Nolan Ryan 300 Wins, Ken Griffey Sr. & Jr.
1992: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Rangers, Nolan Ryan 7 No-Hitters, Jeff Bagwell, Chuck Knoblauch
1993: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Nolan Ryan Farewell
1994: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Mike Piazza, Tim Salmon, Piazza & Salmon
1995: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1996: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Rangers
1997: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Rangers
1998: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Padres

EDIT: This list of sets from TCDB led to a discussion on Twitter that some of the other individual player sets other than the 1989 Griffey set may have also been issued in uncut strips/sheets. For example, Nick Vossbrink (@vossbrink on Twitter) pointed me in the direction of a tweet from Larry Robidoux (@mrdsgrumpy), who showed a photo of the Nolan Ryan 300 Wins set from 1991 as an uncut strip:



This discussion led me to a quick eBay search to see what I could find out there. Lo and behold, it appears that nearly every single-player set was available in an uncut form, even as early as the 1987 and 1988 Mark McGwire Sets:




When found in the wild in retail, the cards were issued in an interesting manner. Like most food issues, the cards were included in the packages of the cookies for which they were used as a promotional item (credit for this photo goes to The Junior Junkie on Twitter):

For the team sets, the cards combined the best parts of a stadium giveaway with the promotional aspects: while complete sets included 27 or 28 cards, kids going to games in the various cities in the 1980s would receive packets with just twenty of the cards in them. As Giants collector and SABR member Nick Vossbrink noted on the SABR Baseball Cards blog, the packet from the stadium giveaway included a redemption coupon for eight more cards. But, there was no guarantee you would receive the eight cards you needed.

Baseball Cards Magazine noted in October 1984 that these cards would be given away in this manner in varying quantities depending on the city in which the game was located. So, in San Francisco and in Oakland, 20 cards were given to the first 30,000 through the gates. In San Diego, the first 25,000 received their 20 cards, and in Seattle, only the first 20,000 received cards.

Starting in 1987, Mother's started issuing cards of individual players, as the cookie package above for Ken Griffey notes. Going back to the SABR blog, Nick noted that distribution until the early 1990s would include only area-specific cards. So, if you lived in the Bay Area, you were guaranteed either a card of either a Giant or an Athletic. But starting around that early 1990s timeframe, any of the sets that Mother's issued might show up anywhere that the cookies were found.

Also changing in the early 1990s were the stadium giveaways. Turning once again to the SABR blog, Nick mentions that the giveaway started to include 20 cards plus eight copies of some card -- like his 8 Alex Diaz cards. That led to kids running through the stadium trying to find someone to trade with to complete sets. Now that is a great idea to resurrect.

Nick was kind enough to send me a scan of the envelope that held the cards in the early 1990s. As you can see, it describes the fact that each envelope contained 7 of the same card and that everyone needed to help one another to complete a set.

HALL OF FAMERS:

Lots of sets here, so let's go!
1952: Joe Gordon & Mel Ott

1953: None.

1983: Frank Robinson

1984: Nolan Ryan (Astros), Rickey Henderson (A's), Joe Morgan (A's), Billy Williams (A's), Dick Williams (Padres), Rich Gossage (Padres), Tony Gwynn (Padres), Willie Mays (Giants), Willie McCovey (Giants), Juan Marichal (Giants), Gaylord Perry (Giants), Orlando Cepeda (Giants)

1985: Ryan (Astros), Don Sutton (A's), B. Williams (A's), D. Williams (Padres), Gwynn (Padres), Gossage (Padres)

1986: Morgan (Astros), Ryan (Astros), D. Williams (Mariners)

1987: Ryan (Astros), Yogi Berra (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Reggie Jackson (A's; single card and shared card with Canseco), Catfish Hunter (A's), Rollie Fingers (A's), D. Williams (A's), R. Henderson (A's), D. Williams (Mariners)

1988: Ryan (Astros), Berra (Astros), Tommy Lasorda (Dodgers), Sutton (Dodgers), Tony LaRussa (A's), Dennis Eckersley (A's), D. Williams (Mariners)

1989: Craig Biggio (Astros), Berra (Astros), Ken Griffey Jr. (solo 4-card set & Mariners), Lasorda (Dodgers), Eddie Murray (Dodgers), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gossage (Giants), Ryan (Rangers)

1990: Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Murray (Dodgers), Ryan (solo 4-card set & Rangers), LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gary Carter (Giants), Griffey (Mariners), Randy Johnson (Mariners)

1991: Griffey (4-card set with his dad & Mariners). Biggio (Astros), Jeff Bagwell (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Murray (Dodgers), Carter (Dodgers), Ryan (4-card solo set & Rangers), LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Jackson (A's), Gossage (Rangers)

1992: LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gossage (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Griffey (Mariners), R. Johnson (Mariners), Ryan (Rangers & 8-card solo set), Ivan Rodriguez (Rangers), Biggio (Astros), Bagwell (Astros & 4-card solo set), Lasorda (Dodgers)

1993: Rod Carew (Angels), Biggio (Astros), Bagwell (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Mike Piazza (Dodgers), Pedro Martinez (Dodgers), Ryan (10-card solo set), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gossage (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Griffey (Mariners), R. Johnson (Mariners)

1994: LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Trevor Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners), Gossage (Mariners), Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers & 4-card solo set & 4-card set with Tim Salmon).

1995: Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners)

1996: Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers), Gwynn (Padres), R. Henderson (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners), I. Rodriguez (Rangers)

1997: Murray (Angels), Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Piazza (Dodgers), Gwynn (Padres), R. Henderson (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), I. Rodriguez (Rangers)

1998: Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), R. Johnson (Astros), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Hoffman (Padres)

ERRORS & VARIATIONS:

For putting out cards for so long, Mother's Cookies did a really good job of avoiding errors. Across all those sets, there are only four errors listed on the Trading Card Database, and all went uncorrected.

1952: Misspelled Marino Pieretti's last name.
1984: Bob Schmidt's card actually features a photo of Wes Westrum
1991: Misspelled Jim Deshaies' last name.
1996: In stating how Rick Wilkins was acquired by the Astros, the card notes he was traded for Scott Service. Wilkins was actually traded for current Mariners manager Scott Servais.

All in all, pretty solid work.

MY TAKE

When these cards were first issued in my lifetime in 1983, they seemed as foreign as something issued in Japan to me. These cards are not rare by any stretch of the imagination, but they were not cards that showed up with any regularity in Milwaukee in the 1980s or in Atlanta in the 2010s.

I don't have any better take or more insight to add than Nick provides on his blog and on the SABR blog. I highly encourage you to read Nick's personal blog post (linked here) in addition to his post on SABR that I linked above. Both provide a ton of information about this set.

As for finding these on eBay, they are out there. With so many years available, if you like these cards, you can find them for sale there.

1988-1990 Pacific Legends

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

After issuing his "Baseball Legends" set in 1980 through 1983 and putting them in packs for sale in 1986, Mike Cramer started issuing minor league card sets again. With the heightened interest in minor league cards -- the so-called "pre-rookie" cards that became something of a fad in the early part of the 1980s -- Cramer decided to start using the backs of his cards to promote his card shop, Pacific Trading Cards. 

As early as 1984, while his sets for teams such as the Vancouver Canadians (then the Triple-A team of the Milwaukee Brewers) were copyrighted as the intellectual property of Cramer Sports Promotions, a full quarter of the back of the card featured a cartoony advertisement for Pacific:

As the 1980s saw baseball card fever heating up and MLB issued licenses to any number of new card companies, Pacific started positioning itself to get a full license for itself. Starting with multiple non-sports products -- including a Leave It to Beaver set and the occasionally-appearing-in-repacks set for the movie Eight Men Out -- Pacific was establishing itself as a company that could create, market, and produce a set for a national audience.

The next step for Pacific was its Legends sets. For the growing company, it represented a leap toward color processing equipment and printing. It also helped vault Pacific toward obtaining a full license from the NFL Players Association and NFL Properties -- a license certainly helped by Cramer's own photographic skills in the NFL. 

After that, Pacific received a limited license from MLB so it could produce its Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver player sets. Those limited license sets proved to MLB, it seems, that Pacific could produce sets that looked good. It was about that time -- mid-1992 -- that Pacific decided to stop selling other companies' products through its mail-order business and focus solely on selling its own products. Then, in 1993, Pacific first obtained a limited MLB/MLBPA license to allow it to make Spanish language cards and, then, in November of 1993, Pacific became a licensed MLB card company. Then, in 1998, it received the license to overprint as many sets as it chose. 

In 2001, the company filed for protection from its creditors in bankruptcy. Eventually, the company was liquidated. From that bankruptcy, Donruss Leaf Playoff purchased the brand name and its rights in 2004. Then, when Panini decided to get into the American sports card market again in 2009 by buying Donruss/Playoff, Panini also bought the rights to Pacific's name, card brands, and image rights. This explains why Panini had a "Prizm" brand line for a couple of years.

EXEMPLARS

1988

1989

1990

DETAILS

The 1988 and 1989 versions are numbered consecutively as part of the same set, while the 1990 set has its own numbering. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind the continuing numbering in 1989 was, or, for that matter, why the numbering started over in 1990. 

If I am guessing, I would guess that the idea was to create a similar series of sets as the cards from the early 1980s. But, once 1990 came around, they decided to change up the card design somewhat. At first, I thought it was because they wanted to repeat players from the 1988-1989 set, but that happened in 1989 already.

Each one of the sets is comprised of 110 cards. 1988 and 1990 were both numbered 1 through 110 while 1989 was numbered 111 through 220. Each card includes a notation about where the former player resided at that time or, if they had passed away, their date of death. That was not an issue for the 1990 set, though, as all of the players depicted were still listed as living.

As you can see from the exemplars, each year's set had its own different coloration -- even the cards from the "same" set in 1988 and 1989 had different colors. The same was true for their packaging; the photos below were taken from eBay auctions linked in the captions. 

1988

1989

1990

In addition, in 1989, Pacific made the full set of 220 cards available to retailers to sell as well. This eBay auction is for a sales sheet from Pacific for exactly that; a photo of the sheet is below:

In terms of set composition, all three sets included between 63 and 68 non-Hall of Famers -- giving cards to players whose careers either qualified them for the Hall of the Very Good (Steve Garvey, Gene Woodling, Clete Boyer) or were known for reasons other than their playing career (Jim Bouton, Dave Dravecky, Marv Throneberry). Here are the links to the checklists on the Trading Card Database:

1988

1989

1990

HALL OF FAMERS

If your math is okay, you might have figured out that the sets have anywhere from 42 to 47 Hall of Famers.

1988 (47): Hank Aaron, Red Schoendienst, Brooks Robinson, Luke Appling, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Richie Ashburn, Ralph Kiner, Phil Rizzuto, Robin Roberts, Catfish Hunter, Pee Wee Reese, Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, Bob Lemon, Ernie Banks, Jackie Robinson, Fergie Jenkins, Sparky Anderson, Roy Campanella, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Juan Marichal, Duke Snider, Nellie Fox, Bill Mazeroski, Johnny Mize, George Kell, Bobby Doerr, Hoyt Wilhelm, Monte Irvin, Enos Slaughter, Harmon Killebrew, Billy Williams, Luis Aparicio, Jim Bunning, Orlando Cepeda, Early Wynn, Ron Santo, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Rollie Fingers, Al Kaline, Lou Boudreau, Warren Spahn, Johnny Bench

1989 (42): Reggie Jackson, Frankie Frisch, Eddie Mathews, Ty Cobb, Joe Sewell, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, B. Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Enos Slaughter, Tony LaRussa, Frank Baker, Rogers Hornsby, Bobby Doerr, Mickey Cochrane, Gaylord Perry, T. Williams, Feller, Joe Medwick, Killebrew, Boudreau, Joe Cronin, Wilhelm, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Earl Weaver, Mize, B. Williams, Lefty Grove, Mel Ott, Walter Johnson, Hunter, Hank Greenberg, Al Lopez, Arky Vaughn, Earl Averill, Jesse Haines, Whitey Ford, Honus Wagner, Phil Niekro, Edd Roush, Casey Stengel

1990 (43): Aaron, Appling, Banks, Berra, Boudreau, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, Rod Carew, Doby, Doerr, Rick Ferrell, Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, Billy Herman, Irvin, Killebrew, Kiner, Mazeroski, Perry, R. Roberts, Santo, Slaughter, Spahn, Wilhelm, B. Williams, T. Williams, Tom Seaver, Carl Yastrzemski, Orlando Cepeda, Mathews, Sewell, Hunter, Ashburn, Jim Bunning, Charlie Gehringer, Feller, Kell, LaRussa, Niekro, Rizzuto, B. Robinson, Joe Torre, Weaver

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

Pacific started out a bit roughly in 1988 and got better as time went on. 

In 1988, there were several issues. The ones that were uncorrected: misspelling Red Schoendienst's name (missed the c), having a wrong date in the copy on Minnie Minoso's card, saying Jim Lonborg played for the Braves rather than the Brewers, and saying that Sal Maglie's career started in 1945 and ended in 1917. The corrected errors: fixing a reversed photo on Elston Howard's card, misspelling Mel Stottlemyre's name as Stottlemyer, misspelling Don Larsen's name as Larson, and misspelling Jim Lonborg's name as Longborg. Makes me wonder why Red Schoendienst's card never got corrected.

In 1989, there were just two errors and neither were corrected -- misspelling Thornton Lee's name as Thornton and saying that Shoeless Joe Jackson hit 41 homers in 1911; he actually stole 41 bases and hit 7 homers.

In 1990, there was just one error: Don Newcombe's name lost its second "e" on the front of the card; the back of the card got it correct.

MY TAKE

Either I did not have much of an appreciation for sets like this one back in the 1980s, or I simply did not ever hear of these sets when it was released. In any case, I did not have any of these cards in my collection until my return to collecting in 2014. 

Now, though, I sort of like these for having cards of players who in many respects have been lost to time in terms of baseball cards.  I mean, we almost never see Smoky Burgess, Ron Hunt, Dave Kingman, Jerry Koosman, Tom Paciorek, Moe Drabowsky, or Gary Bell on baseball cards today unless it is one of those stamped buyback cards that Topps keeps sticking into its packs.

These cards are readily available today, whether on eBay or occasionally in those repacks of loose cards. Some of the more interesting ones: an unopened box of 1988 cards for $23.64 shipped, a complete factory set of the 1988-1989 cards for $29.45 shipped, a 4-box lot of unopened 1989 cards for $74.90, and an unopened wax pack box of the 1990 cards for $33.60 shipped. Singles of these cards are readily available on eBay and through COMC, and there are a number of graded and autographed versions as well.

What do you think? Is this a set you like? Why or why not?