Brand Name Cards

On occasion, I like to dip into the "Bag that it all", otherwise known as the bag that my wife brought home from work one day that a coworker had dumped off that was filled with junk wax. Stacy knew that I wanted to start a collection for Jacoby and figured the bag would be a good start.

Fast forward almost a year and now every time I break out that bag, he eyes roll into the back of her head, for she knows that she is responsible for opening Pandora's box. Now our house is littered with hobby boxes of various products, base cards, packing supplies, envelopes with addresses that I need to enter into a database, blue tape and...well, you no doubt know exactly what I am talking about.

The other night I dipped into the junk wax for a special reason...not to be revealed in this post...but I did find something that I had not originally noticed...A 1992 Ziploc Carl Yastrzemski!

I have been studying this card over the last couple days and also comparing it with the other various current day product I have laying around, and you know what? This card ain't half bad! In fact, I would say that Ziploc put a lot of effort into the design, the image, as well as the research on the back of the card. I would dare say that had I been a collector back in 1992, I would have been all over these. The Yaz made me start to think about these special "brand name sets". To my knowledge I don't think that many, if any companies still offer baseball card inserts today. Don't quote me on that, but my research did not turn up anything more recent than the early 90's. I decided to scour around a little bit and find some more classy examples of brand name cards...

Kmart - This is a 25th anniversary Kmart brand card. Whether that means that Kmart made cards for 25 years, or whether Kmart had been open for 25 years, I have no idea. Here is a stellar Bob Clemente.

While no logo is on the front of this card, this is a 1975 Hostess Oscar Gamble. I saw a few other examples of Hostess cards and they all seem a bit blurry, but you gotta give some style points for the fro and stache.

McDonalds jumped into the fray as well. this card is from a 1992 insert set.

1988 Nestle Dave Winfield...

1986 Kitty Clover disc cards...Apparently Kitty closer was (is?) a potato chip company that offered round disc baseball cards for several years.

1991 Bazooka Dave!

Drakes Kirby Puckett. I did not catch the year on this set, but I can tell you that Drakes is the Northeasts equivalent of Hostess, offering a lovely selection of coffee cake, yodels, and funny bones. The Drake Duck is not to be confused with the Hostess Heart, which is certainly not to be confused with Pan Bimbo Bear.

Burger King and its set. Again, I did not catch the year on this release, but I know at the very least the they make a helluva burger.

These are but a few of the many brand name cards that are floating around out there. I would love to learn more about these and see some examples if you could point me in the right direction. Who knows, maybe I will fill up a few binder pages down the road. Good stuff!