Posted By:
Hal LewisI have some of those "box bottom" cards that I cut out from the Topps boxes in 1986 and 1987.
And even though they were on boxes... they were INTENDED to be CUT OFF and collected... so I would consider them "cards."
If I remember correctly, there were 4 on each box bottom... and there were 5 different boxes... making a total of 20 cards in the "set".
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So now we surmise that the Type II's were not necessarily on the "candy wrapper" of the piece of caramel that the kid would buy at the store...
but that the Type II's were on the outside of the WHOLESALE BOX of candy that was delivered to the store for retail sale.
The storekeepers would probably just put the WHOLE BOX out on their counter and let people reach in and grab however many pieces of candy they wanted!
The reason for putting the Type II's on the BOX was to SHOW the kids what they would be getting INSIDE their individually wrapped piece of candy!!
This makes sense. Heck, it is no different than when I was buying wax packs in 1986. The big cardboard Topps box was sitting on the shelf... and there were pictures on the outside of the box to get you to buy the cards.
And... to entice you to buy a WHOLE BOX of cards ... they printed the "1986 Type II Topps" cards on the BOTTOM of the boxes.