Battle of Britain Bubblegum Cards

Hi Woodsy,

Mickey’s Toy Room is a fairly new You Tube channel, covering toys and memorabilia. In this episode he looks at various tie-ins to the film Battle of Britain (1969).

I had no idea most of these items even existed. The main focus is on a series of 66 Bubblegum cards by A&BC Chewing Gum Limited, in England, using photographs from the film, or its production.

The same set was also sold in Australia by Scanlen’s Goblin Sweets Pty. Ltd. This is well worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYgiwA1VkIk

Paul Adams from New Zealand

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The actual Battle of Britain ended 86 years ago on 3Oth October, 1940.

Cook Book: Bubble Gum Card Price Guide 1993

Recent talk of gum cards got me thinking about an old booklet I once bought.

It will have been the mid- '90's and it was about sets of gum cards by a chap called Henry Cook. It was my first real I introduction to how many sets collectors were interested in and their values. Not a thick book, it was released in 1993 and I read it cover to cover many times.

I would like say I bought it at the NEC's Memorabilia weekend but that's because one Henry Cook organized that too before it was taken over and went very sports- based.

Is it a book you know? Did you go to Memorabilia?

Cards on the Table

Too young to have collected them at the time, I was recently talking about Civil War News with my older brothers, who did collect them back when they were kids in the Sixties.

My only real experience of these American gum cards was as a collector and toy dealer.

 I first came across them in the early 1990's in a TV ToY Zone catalogue from Andy Foley - I adored those catalogues and they were my springboard - and I went on to buy a complete set in an ABC album for £60 from a fellow collector, Alex B. 

This full set was fabulous and came complete with a superb set of paper bank notes i.e. confederate money (I think it was confederate).

The odd thing is, neither of my brothers could recall these bank notes. I wonder if they were unusual in the UK or maybe even rare? Then again they may well have been mail-ins and only available to kids who sent in whatever. 

Does anyone know about the Civil War News bank notes? Where there any other sidelines to the cards? 

As a footnote, I was amazed to hear one of my brothers mention the gory aliens cards from the same period. He meant Mars Attacks! I was stunned that they were around long enough in the UK to have become known by kids. Then again, I did find a full set at a car boot sale, so they were around here in Blighty. I wonder how far across the globe they went and for how long? 

Did you have any Mars Attacks cards? 

Have you had your Secrets of Space?

 I love these old Secrets of Space cards from Weet-bix I saw online.

There's even a Moon Prospector!

This is 12 of the 20.

There's even a poster as described below! Wow! Anyone got one?

I love how you could swap with Sanitarium themselves! 

The Moon Suit, no. 13, is a really gorgeous card.

Is Weet-bix the same as Weetabix here in Blighty?

William Stout?

 

Looking for something else I came across these Lost World cards.

All new to me, who is William Stout? 

Space Cards Wrapper 1958

 

This came into my feed, an amazing wax gum wrapper from 1958. 

Space Cards by AB&C.

The rocket reminds me of the Project SWORD Apollo Saturn toy ten years later.

Is this a gum card set you know? 

LOOEY'S HOME-MADE THUNDERBIRDS AND STAR TREK GUM WRAPPERS .... and MORE!

Hi Woodsy! I was VERY impressed with Norman's ephemera collection. My Captain Scarlet choccy wrappers must be lurking around there too!

I was amused at the scrap booking with Sellotape holding the cherished items on place.

I have just finished my first ever Portrait of my friend Nick Stathopoulos, for the Blue Mountains Portrait Prize this year.

Nick is a Fine Artist, but I've known him since he was just a drooling fanboy and this work celebrates that history.

Here, he is surrounded by his closest friends and all the influences of his childhood ( mostly disaster movies!).

The display box is a mash-up of 1950's Bolland style amusement machines and 1970s style Greek action movie posters!

Of particular interest (maybe to Norman), are some decorations on the sides of the display box. Greek style Thunderbirds and Star Trek gum wrappers, glued down with yellowed Sellotape as if from 50 years ago!

Too bad none of them are real!

Keep on Bloggin' 

 Looey

Oz Base

Primrose Space Race Sweet Cigarettes Found!

Just wanted to share this totally unexpected find.

This packet of Primrose Space Race Sweet Cigarettes was placed between decks of playing cards at a local antiques shop. The empty packet with great graphics would have been the find of the day in itself, but with contents still there it is a little miracle!

As we did not have sweet cigarettes (but liquorice pipes instead) when kids, this was my first sighting of those cigs reminding me of little blackboard chalks with one end tipped in red. Also the collectable card, in this case no. 18 of 50, was present in the packet.

There seems to be a lot of these 1969 Space Race cards around, but not so many empty packets and even fewer full ones.

Arto

Helsinki Base

The ROCKETEER Cards

I was just looking through a carton of baseball cards collected for/by my daughter in 1993.

It has a number of odd cards from different unrelated sets such as The Avengers (Steed & Mrs Peel), MAD, Olympic Sports etc. One incomplete set was of the Disney movie THE ROCKETEER.

There are three doubles, cards 27, 71 & 77

If any blog reader needs them I'll happily send them on.

Terranova47

 from a hot, steamy Connecticut

JACK DAVIS CARDS AND BOX: TERRANOVA'S PERSONAL COLLECTION

Here's the box Valentine cards were sold in which contains my cards from the 50's & 60's.

I kept it because I was never sure who drew the illustrations. I thought it was Jack Davis at the time and it wasn't until the current exhibit that I knew for sure.

Terranova47

USA

Terranova47's Anglo Confectionery CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS Cards, 1967.

Here are the scans requested of the Anglo Confectionery gum cards; CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS from 1967.

The last scan shows the back of two cards. The complete set forms a beautifully painted poster by Ron Embleton who painted the scenes for the closing credits of the TV show. I had the poster for umpteen wrappers and a postal order, still in it's mailing tube. I have spent the last ten years looking for it. It's somewhere in the house.

The Mysterons are to blame for the sloppy scanning. The cards wouldn't lay still!

Terranova47

USA

Terranova47's Bubble Gum Cards

My early collection of bubble gum cards and similar have been kept in a retail display box from said cards circa 1958.

The cards from this box were collected because the artwork looked to be by Jack Davies or similar artist from MAD Magazine. In looking at the box now I see that the cards were under licence from TOPPS the big card company in the US

Tarzan and Captain Scarlett were from the 60's but the Funny Greetings and Western cards are 50's as was the all British Associated-Rediffusion cards of their TV shows, some British, some US.

Associated-Rediffusion was the first venture of commercial TV providing an alternative to the BBC.

The box was stored in a shoe box inside a trunk.

Enjoy!

Terranova47

USA

Brian

CREATURES OF LEGEND with Kevin Tipps

 I picked this up for Moonbase Junior ages ago. Sitting down with Grandad sticking stuff in an album is what I had mind.

This particular album and card set, Creatures of Legend, were released by tea makers PG Tips, they of the chimp mascot called Kevin Tipps ( do they still exist?)

Having only a few cards currently, I've ordered a bundle offa eBay for Junior's pleasure.

Among the album's pages of mythical predators is Scylla, a six-headed Sicilian cave hag. Like much of the artwork in this set, Scylla's principle head has been lifted from that classic 1980's Vampire flick, Fright Night, you know,  the one with Roddy McDowell as the failed TV horror host and the screechy kid Evil Ed (who went on to star in much less mainstream fayre!)

The old gruesome twosome Drac and Frankie have to be included. The artwork is inspired by Hammer and Universal respectively.

Perhaps my favourite illustration is King Kong. I would say it's been inspired by the 1976 Kurt Russell Konger, would you?

TRAPPED!

Bit grisly but when you're a young kid its grisliness that catches the eye. TRAPPED was my favourite card in the Civil War News card set that my big brother had. I used to wonder, where the hell was his leg!?

Happy Halloween!

 

Space Cadets

 

Yet another foray into the world of sweet and cigarette card collecting revealed an older set of cards from Cadet Sweets, who are interesting advertised on the back of the card as being based on the famous Slough Industrial estate which was home to Century 21 in the sixties. These cards are a reproduction set from originals produced in 1957.

The majority of the set covers the usual fare, with the origins of rocketry and early attempts at powered flight, before moving on to early rockets and missiles. As the set is effectively prior to the first manned space mission, the space exploration theme which follows is exclusively speculative, taking its cues from the work of Werner Von Braun and Arthur c. Clarke. 

Many of the manned program images owe their inspiration from the March 1952 issue of Colliers magazine, which featured an expansive article by Von Braun and Willy Ley, entitled 'We Will conquer Space Soon' and showed the classic Braun designs for space wheel and multi stage rockets.

Interestingly, the actual proposed landing vehicles for the Moon and Mars are more akin to the design showed in Arthur C. Clarke's seminal publication 'The Exploration of Space' from 1951, in which he proposed a simple cylindrical moon lander, as opposed to Von Braun's vast machines composed of a skeletal framework surrounding fuel tanks and crew capsules.

     

Among the more futuristic example cards are a pair showing a commercial airliner, with a forward swept delta wing configuration. Whilst Thunderbird 2 is probably the most memorable example of the swept wing in science fiction designs and the concept may appear to be very contemporary, the concept was first discussed as far back as 1934 and was considered my the Soviet and nazi military in 1944.

Ju 287 Bomber

The Junkers Ju287 was a jet engined swept wing bomber and the earlier Belyayev DB-LK was a proposed flying wing design for the russian airforce.

Belyayev DB-LK

The Eagle comic was an early exponent of space travel in the fifties and sixties, with the Dan Dare strip, and often featured cutaway features of various aircraft and spaceships, by the artist Lesley Ashwell Wood, who also later published his work in the excellent 'Inside Information' series of children's books. One of his illustrations for Eagle shows a large cylindrical ship reminiscent of the Cadet vehicles.