BASEBALL & BUBBLE GUM
Goodman, Walter
BASEBALL Qg BUBBLE GUM by WALTER GOODMAN Spring brings us, along with the rest of nature's bounty, a new crop of stiff and colorful, if slightly blurred, pictures of baseball heroes. My interest...
...Topps of Brooklyn accounts for about half of the more than $30 million worth of bubble gum bought by America's chewers each year...
...bubble gum policy that the children's market is divisible and the right to exploit it inalienable...
...But things soon improved...
...With the arrival of October his substantial winnings, now valueless, could be found all over the house and lawn...
...Particularly with Topps bubble gum—to the dismay of the Federal Trade Commission and competing gum makers...
...Whichever it is, in combination they bring his company nearly 13 million a year...
...In Washington, a Federal Trade Commission counsel expounded the U.S...
...When he managed to get out a few words, they were about the boys down the block who had cheated him of forty-five of the fifty cards he had been treated to on the weekend...
...My interest in the perennial baseball card and in the bubble gum which accompanies it was stirred up again last season, after years in remission, by two events...
...Shorin used to bring home advance sets for his children, but they took on value only after the children's friends were able to get them through ordinary channels and establish their worth through bartering...
...petition in the bubble gum and picture card industries...
...In Brooklyn, the makers of Topps and their attorney for the occasion, former FTC Chairman Earl W. Kintner, suffered at the prospect of a $3 million market being dispersed...
...New cards are issued periodically throughout the season in batches of sixty to one hundred, numbered consecutively like bank notes as an incentive to the compleat collector to keep checking with his supplier...
...The Beatles have set a record for sales—more than 300 million cards —in a single year...
...And then my younger son—Bennet, age seven—took on the joys and heartaches of baseball card collecting...
...The FTC charged that by signing up almost all major leaguers (414 out of 421 at the time of the accusation) and several thousand minor leaguers, Topps had "created and effected a monopoly in the manufacture and distribution of baseball picture cards, in commerce, contrary to the public policy of the United States, and to the detriment of free and open comWAtTER GOODMAN is a free lance writer whose articles and reviews have appeared in Commentary, The New Republic, The American Scholar, and The New York Times magazine...
...You are pointing at Commission Exhibit 18, at Hocus Pocus...
...too big and they are hard to hold...
...No undsies...
...Shorin attributes it to team spirit: "We said, 'Mickey, we are offering this to every player on the club . . . We want you in it...
...Tarzan came in 3-D with a viewer, and Superman was available as a decal...
...Topps tries to minimize error by snapping each player both with and without cap, just in case...
...He learned to keep up with the going card market in our neighborhood— how many ordinary guys you could get for Warren Spahn or the Met Team...
...Of course, everyone involved gets a box of "our product" at Christmastime...
...Some have done particularly well— Davey Crockett brought in $1 million in three or four months...
...We are talking about bubbleability . . .," said the Hearing Examiner...
...Although numerous other products have used baseball cards as sales aids, for some reason they go best with bubble gum...
...Along with them he has thrown out plenty of chewing gum too...
...But even in their unconfusing monopolistic form, baseball cards stir up emotions...
...Their games, according to Bennet, fall into two categories: throwing games, like Farsies, Closies, Tops, and Knock-Down-Leaners...
...There have been comic cards, monster cards, war cards (Fight the Red Menacel) and magic cards which can be interpreted only through a piece of red paper or else must be dampened to produce the picture...
...His most recent book is "All Honorable Men," a report on ethics in business and government...
...We are deeply concerned," said Shorin, announcing his intention to appeal, "with the failure of the examiner to permit introduction of evidence which shows that Beatles bubble gum far outsold [our] Baseball bubble gum this year...
...Topps began marketing baseball cards with bubble gum in 1951...
...Mickey also went along with an endorsement for Beechnut chewing gum while under contract to Topps for baseball cards, which may have confused any child who noticed...
...Of all the sales aids they have devised, from tiny comic strips to knives at bargain prices, the most successful by far have been picture cards—generally sold five or six to a package along with a flat piece of gum, which, incidentally, is twenty per cent lighter today than it was in 1955...
...I have thrown out millions of cards," says Shorin...
...The reason that a player is sometimes pictured wearing the cap of the wrong team is that photographs must be taken in the preceding season, before the annual switching around...
...The cards are updated and redesigned every year...
...The first thing I learned on looking into the 4,068 pages of FTC Docket 8463 was that, nostalgia aside, chewing gum is chewing gum—whether it is Exhibit 6, Wrigley's Spearmint, or Exhibit 2, Fleer's Dubble Bubble...
...All the formulas are, needless to add, top secret, but it comes down to a question of how much sugar, water, and flavoring you add to the chicle, and how long you cook the mixture...
...His Yankees, naturally, he left at home when he went forth to gamble...
...Three or four times, in April last year, he burst into the house sobbing...
...He played like a maniac for weeks...
...ten per cent of his output in a bad year, but that hardly counts...
...At first they were thought of merely as an adjunct to the gum, but today, muses Joel Shorin, executive vice president of Topps, "I don't know whether the cards are used to promote the sale of bubble gum or bubble gum is used to promote the sale of cards...
...He fools nobody...
...By staying on gift-giving terms with managers, scouts, trainers, and agents, Topps gets a line on promising minor leaguers early in their professional lives...
...The more sugar, the more brittle the stick...
...He became wary of matching with older boys, and now and then, I believe, he cheated younger ones...
...The plan was a commercial catastrophe, since thousands upon thousands of children came forward with full sets...
...One can only imagine the grief here, the exaltation there, that followed the FTC examiner's 113-page decision last August ordering Topps to restrict the length of its contracts with ballplayers...
...The entire promotional effort of our bubble gum makers is concentrated on the display counters of soda fountains, delicatessens, and dealers in sundries across the land...
...Wholesalers and retailers are wooed with premiums to get them to order in bulk and display conspicuously...
...The cards' subjects have included Elvis Presley and Davey Crockett, Doctors Kildare and Casey and, recently, the Beatles in black-and-white and full color...
...and matching games, like Teams, Colors, and Matchies...
...His collection grew rapidly, and soon he was taking his occasional defeats with only the slightest tremor of a lip...
...Compared to last year's baseball card, yesterday's newspaper is a hot item, though there is always one youngster on the block who attempts a spring coup at the expense of inexperienced collectors by offering outdated cards at five for a cent...
...Three-quarters of the baseball cards are sold between March and June, mostly in and around big cities where large numbers of youngsters congregate daily and learn from, and do business with, one another...
...The more base material, the softer the chew and the more decisive the bubble...
...An experienced bubble gum hand from Topps explained: "If you take Wrigley Juicy Fruit, you can blow a bubble with that, but it is a somewhat smaller bubble than you can blow with, let us say, a piece of our Bazooka bubble gum...
...But no matter—Ben-net had learned the business...
...The Topps bubble gum case stirred passions up and down the Eastern seaboard...
...Shorin warned that if other companies were to issue other sets of baseball cards, the nation's children would become frustrated and confused...
...collectors notice and write in when they catch a Boston star in a Chicago outfit...
...The up-and-coming player is signed on for five dollars a year...
...The games, along with the cost of paper and printing, help determine the dimensions of the cards...
...the happy mean is three and one-half inches by two and one-half inches...
...No owesies...
...Too small and the cards are hard to flip...
...What does the customer of five or fourteen do with the current-model cards once he, or his grandfather, buys them...
...Some children trade...
...Some children collect...
...He mastered the crucial phrases: "No tipsies...
...For rookies, the deal means a little pocket money without exertion, as well as publicity among tomorrow's fans...
...After a careful analysis of the statistical probabilities, a Topps licensee in Venezuela offered a pair of roller skates to anyone who managed to collect a full set of cards...
...But the only enduring card, spring after rejuvenating spring, has been the baseball card...
...In a single afternoon and at no cost, Bennet rounded up 295 cards, vintage '61 to '63, to help me in my researches...
...My boy Bennet started off badly...
...He became a champion at Farsies...
...Since the nature of chewing gum does not admit of dramatic differences between one brand and another and since, as one industry spokesman laments, "Youngsters have no brand loyalty," the bubble gum makers have to keep coming up with fresh appeals...
...I have seen him fling a card thirty yards on a windless day...
...But mainly, if my suburb is at all representative, young collectors gamble...
...Penny packs, which throw off a bare one-half cent profit, are sold in ailing markets to stimulate interest...
...The licensee's mathematician had overlooked the extent to which the baseball cards would be traded...
...First came a clash between the Federal Trade Commission and Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., of Brooklyn, the nation's first name in bubble gum...
...But there is no inducement like a fast turnover...
...A several million dollar share of Topps' market consists of gum accompanied by picture cards, most notably of baseball players...
...By June he had developed strategic methods of stacking his hundreds of cards for ready action...
...In Philadelphia and Boston, respectively, Fleer Corporation and Gum Products, Inc., rejoiced at the same prospect...
...No sooner does he attain the majors than his price jumps to $125 a year, which gives Topps exclusive rights for at least five seasons to his picture on a card, alone or along with bubble gum, candy, and confections...
...No chickening out—called it...
...But why should Mickey Mantle sign up for a mere $125, considering that Elvis Presley got $2,500 for his picture, and the Beatles are getting a five per cent royalty which will bring them more than $100,000 before their charm wanes...
...We want you with every player in the club.' On that basis, Mickey Mantle went along with us...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
