1981-1982 Topps Squirt

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

Squirt brand soda came about in an effort to skimp on ingredient costs during the Great Depression. In the official "biography" for the soda taken from the Dr. Pepper legacy site before its merger with Keurig, the story is told about how, in 1938, a man named Herb Bishop started experimenting with a now-gone (as best I can tell) brand called "Citrus Club." 

Citrus Club was apparently popular in Phoenix. But, it being 1938 -- which saw a recession return in the midst of the recovery from the depths of the Depression -- people were trying to figure out ways to save money in manufacturing products. Bishop decided to reduce the amount of fruit juice and sugar in the product and increase the amount of soda water. This lead to a lighter, less sweet drink flavored with grapefruit. Bishop chose the name "Squirt" for this new drink.

In the 1940s, Bishop and business partner Ed Mehren created successful marketing campaigns around a cartoon character called "Little Squirt." By the 1950s and 1960s, Squirt became a popular drink mixer in bars. It also attracted imitators like Fresca, which debuted in 1966.

Imitation meant competition, and, to ensure that Squirt remained a viable product, competition led to consolidation in the 1970s. In 1977, regional bottler Brooks Products of Holland, Michigan, purchased the brand. Brooks later became known as Beverage America. Brooks started in 1936 in Michigan and started out with selling 7-UP bottled in beer bottles. Brooks's addition of Squirt was a major change -- putting Brooks in direct competition with Pepsi and Coke.

Under Brooks's ownership, Diet Squirt was created in the early 1980s as the first soft drink brand to use NutraSweet after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the use of the cheaper Cyclamate due to cancer concerns. 

This innovation led also to exploring different ways to get kids to buy their products -- like using baseball cards from Topps in the same way that its competitors Pepsi and Coca Cola had done in the 1970s with both licensed and unlicensed discs and cards.

In the 1990s, consolidation was again the name of the game. Select Beverages -- which was another independent soft drink bottler and distributor from the Chicago suburb of Darien -- and Beverage America were swallowed up in 1998 by Cadbury Schweppes PLC out of the UK. The transaction was funded by noted private investment company The Carlyle Group, which retained 60% ownership to Cadbury's 40% ownership. Then, in 2000, Cadbury Schweppes purchased RC Cola, Snapple, Mistic, and Stewart's from Triarc Companies. Finally, in 2006 and 2007, Cadbury snapped up its distribution chain by purchasing Dr Pepper/Seven Up Bottling Group.

That led to a spin off from Cadbury Schweppes as Dr Pepper Snapple Group. That company traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange as DPS, while the rest of Cadbury remained a chocolate confectioner. 

Finally, on July 9, 2018, Keurig Green Mountain purchased Dr Pepper Snapple Group and merged the parts together. That new company -- which still owns Squirt -- is Keurig Dr Pepper and is based in Plano, Texas -- a Dallas suburb.

EXEMPLARS
1981 Detached

Complete Panels

1982 Detached

1982 Single Card Panel

1982 Double Card Panel

Single Card Panel with Scratch-Off Game

DETAILS

Topps and Squirt teamed up on cards both in 1981 and 1982. In 1981, the set was comprised of 33 cards, while in 1982 it was scaled back to 22. 

I'm sure that making a set of 33 cards initially made sense to the folks at Topps. At the time, their card sets were printed on sheets of 132, so that would mean four sets per printed sheet, right? 

Someone forgot to figure out, however, that these cards would be issued two per panel draped on soda bottles in 6-packs. The math is not as neat when one tries to distribute an odd number of cards in sets of two. This led to a mishmash of double prints -- the first 11 cards in the set (including card three, Ben Oglivie, shown above) were all double printed. As a result, to obtain a true complete set of panels, one must purchase a total of twenty-two panels to get all thirty-three cards.

Oddly, according to Trading Card Database, four cards are short printed -- card 15 Eddie Murray, #26 Ron LeFlore, #27 Steve Kemp, and #28 Rickey Henderson. According to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (2011 edition), both Murray and LeFlore shared panels with Steve Garvey (who is still listed as double printed), while Kemp shared a panel with Reggie Jackson and Henderson shared with Bill Buckner. I'm not sure how these short prints really work in this set.

Design-wise for 1981, the photos of the players are small and inside a baseball on the ball's sweet spot. The front design echoes the team name font used on 1978 Topps (which also used the "position in a baseball" design feature used in both sets). The backs, of course, use exactly the same color scheme and text of the 1981 base set.

Where 1981's distribution weirdness came from issuing 33 cards in sets of two, 1982's three different ways of obtaining the cards stems from the contest that Squirt ran in conjunction with the cards. According to the 2011 Standard Catalog, "[c]ard panels come in four variations, with free grocery contest and scratch-off game cards taking one or two of the positions on the three-card panels." So, cards can be found either fully detached, on a single-card panel with a free grocery contest panel (which includes the perforations for the card to be jammed over the bottleneck) and a scratch-off game panel, or with two cards and either the contest panel or the scratch-off panel, I suppose. I don't have this set in complete form, so I'm not fully clear about how it works. 

The backs on the 1982 cards are the same design as the 1982 Topps base set. However, the set is printed on white card stock, leading to a yellow, black, and white card back that quite frankly is much easier to read and more attractive than the set on which the back is based.

Finally, Topps cribbed at least a few photos from other Topps sets for its Squirt set. For example, the Cecil Cooper photo on card #1 in 1982 is the same photo that Topps used on his 1980 Topps base set card. There are a few others that look close, but that one jumped out at me thanks to my knowing Cooper's cards so well.

HALL OF FAMERS

Despite this ostensibly being an All-Star type set, less than half of the 1981 set are HOFers.

1981: George Brett, Reggie Jackson, Jim Rice, Mike Schmidt, Rod Carew, Eddie Murray, Don Sutton, Dave Winfield, Johnny Bench, Rickey Henderson

1982 improved on 1981 -- exactly half are HOFers.

1982: Brett, Alan Trammell, Jackson, Winfield, Carlton Fisk, Rollie Fingers, Schmidt, Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Tom Seaver, Bruce Sutter

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

There are no errors listed for either set on Trading Card Database for this set. The Variations are essentially self-made as described above -- is the card perforated? Is it on a panel? Is it a 1981 with different panel mates for the first 11 cards? Is it a 1982 with the three/four types of panels available?

MY TAKE

I don't ever recall seeing these in my local grocery stores in Wisconsin. I probably would have snatched them up, tried the soda, hated it, and tried to figure out a way to get the cards without having to drink the soda. One of the few things in life that I do not like to eat are grapefruits. 

For being regional sets issued 37 and 38 years ago, these cards appear to be fairly available on eBay. I got a complete set of the 1981 panels and all of its variations for under $10 about two years ago. There are multiple lots available for purchase for the 1981 set, and there are even more individual sets and lots available for 1982. In fact, I just bought a 1982 set of the individual panels for $5 thanks to an eBay coupon that saved me $4 (basically paid for shipping). 

If you don't have these sets already, do some scanning through the eBay auctions to find good deals. Be patient -- you shouldn't have to pay a bunch to pick up either of these sets in perfect condition.

1982 Topps Cracker Jack

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

Cracker Jack started out in Chicago in 1871. German immigrant Frederick William "Fritz" Rueckheim was a popcorn seller on what is now Federal Street. He coated his popcorn in molasses, and it was a hit. Twenty-five years later, he discovered a system to make the popcorn-molasses mixture in a way that kept the popcorn from becoming a massive glob. Shortly thereafter in 1896, the Cracker Jack tradename was born.

The company stayed independent until the mid-1960s. At that time, Borden Foods and Frito-Lay engaged in a bidding war to acquire the company. While Borden won in the 1960s, Frito-Lay eventually won the war when its parent company PepsiCo bought Cracker Jack in 1997 and folded it into Frito-Lay's corporate portfolio.

Cracker Jack's association with baseball is nearly as long standing as the snack itself. Just 12 years after "Cracker Jack" became a tradename, it was incorporated into the lyrics of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" by lyricist Jack Norworth, a star in vaudeville who apparently was inspired by seeing an advertising sign on the subway in New York for a game at the Polo Grounds.

In the world of baseball cards, Cracker Jack has a similarly lengthy history. One of the most iconic card sets of the 1910s is the E145 set issued in 1914 and 1915. These cards were among the first Cracker Jack prizes, and included players from all three then-existing major leagues, assuming that the Federal League counts as a major league. Thereafter, in 1933, Cracker Jack included a set of 25 pins of popular players of the day as prizes in their boxes.

Sadly, Cracker Jack no longer includes prizes in their boxes. In 2016, Frito-Lay announced that the inserts in the boxes would only contain codes for use in the Cracker Jack app on Android phones. These codes were spun as being just as good as the old days -- as one would expect a marketing person would do. The quote: "The new prize inside allows families to enjoy their favorite baseball moments through a new one-of-a-kind mobile experience, leveraging digital technology to bring the iconic prize inside to life."

I rather doubt that that is the case.

EXEMPLARS

AL Sheet

NL Sheet

Sheet photos courtesy of Keymancollectibles.com.

DETAILS

These cards were issued in two panels of 8 uncut sheets with a Cracker Jack logo in the middle, as shown above. As the 1982 Baseball Cards Magazine that Night Owl scanned in back in 2013 points out, the cards were issued in conjunction with the 1982 Old-Timers All-Star game that took place at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. As The Shlabotnik Report pointed out, these cards were obtainable by mailing in proofs-of-purchase from boxes of Cracker Jack.

The set's design puts together familiar design elements from then-recent Topps sets. The Cracker Jack logo is located similarly to where the hats on the 1981 Topps cards were placed. Team names came directly from the 1978 Topps set. Player names are cribbed designwise from the 1979 Topps set. Even the colors on the back appear to be pulled directly from the 1981 Topps set.

That 1982 Old Timer's All-Star game was noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, it brought baseball back to Washington, DC for the first time since 1971. Second, the game leapt into the national consciousness when 75-year-old Luke Appling hit a home run off Warren Spahn. Here's a great clip of that homer:

The excellent "National Pastime Museum" website has a detailed story about how the game came to be in 1982. Essentially, former Atlanta Braves Vice President Dick Cecil came up with the idea and took it to a PR firm that represented Cracker Jack and Borden Foods. Cracker Jack was looking for a way to reinvigorate its association with baseball, so the game got approved very quickly and most of the time discussing the game related to whom to invite. 

The only part of the game that did not come together was having Major League Baseball's signoff. That signoff never came thanks to Bowie Kuhn and his PR guy, Bob Wirz. I have no idea why Wirz thought it would be a bad idea for MLB to sign on to this event. Then again, we are talking about Bowie Kuhn and the baseball PR and advisory squad that allowed the 1981 strike to happen.

The game continued to be played through 1990, eventually moving to Buffalo for its final three years to show off the new Pilot Field in Buffalo that was built by the Rich Family (owners of the Buffalo Bills as well). 

HALL OF FAMERS

Fifteen of the sixteen players featured on the cards in this set are in the Hall of Fame. Only card 7 -- Tony Oliva -- is not in the Hall. Oliva is a much-debated candidate for the Hall, but he has yet to receive that honor.

Here's the list of the Hall members: Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Whitey Ford, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Brooks Robinson, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Ralph Kiner, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Robin Roberts, Duke Snider, Warren Spahn

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

The Trading Card Database does not list any errors or variations. I'd argue that it is a variation as to whether the cards were kept in the uncut sheets or if they were cut apart (hopefully professionally).

MY TAKE

Did I miss when the Hall of Fame took the concept of an Old Timer's Game and made it a part of its annual marketing efforts? In fairness, the "Hall of Fame Classic" is hardly the same thing. Instead of Warren Spahn pitching to Luke Appling, the Cooperstown version features Steve Woodard facing off against Lenny DiNardo, or Aaron Harang and Kerry Robinson against one another. 

Perhaps a Hall of Famer's Game could be a fun addition to the enshrinement weekend in Cooperstown. I don't know why this is not a part of that weekend or a part of the Cooperstown events to have. I would guess the players simply do not want to do it -- or that enough players do not want to do it, at least.

I also don't know why only the 1982 Old Timer's Game got the benefit of having a card set issued for it. Did Cracker Jack/Borden decide that they did not want to pay for the cards to be produced any more? Did Topps get flak from its MLB licensors for using its license to print cards for a game that Bowie Kuhn did not support?

If you are interested in purchasing this set, it is widely available. For instance, Dave & Adam's Card World has the two-sheet set available for just $5.70 prior to shipping. If you want a crazy but awesome collectible, there is a fully JSA certified completely signed set available on eBay for $760 already framed. That would be a pretty cool set to have, though that is a bit rich for my blood!