1975 Hostess

[Zach Wheat]

Apologies in advance, I've learned quite a bit more about this set and I thought I would share the information.

In the July 1, 1975 issue of The Trader Speaks (“TTS”), one of the writers for TTS spoke with the Ray Facenda -- Regional Sales Manager for Hostess regarding their foray into baseball cards. Hostess & Twinkie sets were first issued around mid-April of 1975. He indicated the parent company, ITT Continental (“ITTC”) and maker of Hostess / Twinkies snacks, cited rising production costs as the reason ITTC was looking to boost sales and therefore profitability by creating baseball inserts we now refer to as the 1975 Hostess & Twinkies sets. In 1974, ITT Continental added football card inserts in Wonder Bread and were pleased with the results. The 1974 football issue consisted of 30 cards; the planned sets for 1975 baseball season would expand significantly. Mr. Facenda also noted that one side of the cardboard would be coated with a light layer of wax to prevent oil soaking through the cards. The Hostess and Twinkie sets were similar – but contained slight differences. The Twinkies set differentiated from the Hostess set, by having 60 cards instead of 150, had a black bar running through the top and bottom center of the back of Twinkie cards as well as font differences in the statistics section on the reverse of the cards.

The June 27, 1975 issue of Sports Collector News contained an interview Howard Knel, one the Product Managers for Hostess who indicated ITTC would not geographically limit distribution of the cards as other insets like Post cereal cards in the past. Much to the public’s chagrin, ITTC also issued a press release in July 1975, stating they would not sell complete sets to the public. The entire set would have to be obtained by purchasing boxes of Twinkies and other Hostess products. It appears that the 1975 Twinkies set was initially issued in 2 series – with the 1st series being issued in and around southern California around mid-April. By June the entire set was available to collectors in the Midwest, according to Jack Urban, a Hostess baseball card collector as noted in the August 1, 1975 issue of TTS.

Apparently, there were production issues and various spelling errors. Sy Berger – the genius behind many of the early Topps sets from 1952 onward, in a letter published in the August 1, 1975 issue of TTS, noted that…….

“…..permit me to set the record straight…..Topps did not make the set for Hostess Cakes….Topps lent the color photos to the Hostess people. None of the photos used (in the Hostess set)…..were used in the Topps Baseball Photo Series.”

“Further……”, he intoned in a rare moment of honesty, probably noting the spelling mistakes and fuzzy photos in the Twinkies set caused by the light layer of wax coating added to one side of the card,

“….I have seen the full set, and there are too many (errors)….I’m sure our degree of accuracy far exceeds the Hostess series”.

Although this statement is true, it is these errors which are endearing to collectors. The initial Hostess set contains a number of errors encompassing spelling names correctly as well as associating players with the wrong picture. Only 3 error cards in the set were corrected. The 3 key cards can be found in the “corrected” and “uncorrected” version. In all likelihood, the 3 errors were corrected in the original 1975 Hostess set some time prior to June of 1975. These errors are: Radar/Rader, Hooten/Hooton and the (Madlock) Pitcher/Infielder error. The Hooten card has both first name & last name misspelled – quite possibly a first in cards – with the Radar error variation the rarest of the 3 variations. The printer of HoHo panels apparently corrected the spelling of Burt Hooton’s name, with other print runs correcting the name/position of Radar/Madlock in each successive print run, accounting for the differences in rarity of each error. In the Twinkies set, the errors were never corrected.

Each Hostess panel was largely printed in 3 cards panels laid out side-by-side in different configurations to allow for product ingredients and other product packaging information. The Hostess set was produced with 150 cards produced in 3 card panels, while the Twinkies set consisted of 60 skip numbered cards using the same pictures, a smaller player stat line on the reverse, and denoted as Twinkies by the black bar on the reverse of each card. It is likely that the individual printer sheets, were tailored for individual Hostess products accounting for rarities in some panels, which went contrary to what ITT Continental had intended.

Twinkies and Hostess panels appear to have been printed by different printers at different times according to various demand preferences. A number of whole printers sheets for Hostess panels and high grade Twinkie cards exist. These were attributed to employees at various printers picking up test sheets out of the scrap bins.

Test sheets for the Twinkies set appear to have been printed in Cincinnati, OH. I was able to track down the original dealer who acquired perhaps as many as 30 sheets early on – some time in the 1980’s – and re-sold them to many of the early collectors. Over the course of conversation over many months, he indicated that the original sheets originated from a printer in Cincinnati and were printed on a sheet of 10 cards across by 6 cards wide (i.e. a full set) totaling 60 cards on a sheet. This of course, meant that each Twinkies card was printed equally with no short prints. The dealer also indicated that he never saw any variations in the Twinkies set – and the original set is complete with the “error” version of cards. Unlike most Twinkie cards, cards purchased from this dealer did not have food stains. I have almost 200 Twinkies cards including many from the original “scrap” find mentioned above and have yet to find a corrected error card. However, there are variations within the Twinkie set.

In the August 1, 1975 issue of TTS, ITT Continental announced they were already working on a 1976 Hostess baseball set. In all likelihood they were experimenting with various paper stocks to prevent oil soaking through the cards and other ways to maintain picture quality. They used several different styles of inks, with brown ink variation being the most popular ink variation. An example of this is shown in my post above. Successive issues of Hostess & Twinkie cards in 1976 onward can be found with brown ink.