W516 copyright observation

[Spike]

I've studied these sets for several years, taking note of paper stock, ink quality, possible dating based on subjects, number sequences, IFC/IFS insignia, and UNIVERSAL text variations. Several observations came from this work.

Based on similarity to the design, paper stock, and card text of other paper toys made by Universal Toy & Novelty Manufacturing Company of Illinois, I believe that company released all 30 W516 baseball cards, ten W529 boxing cards, 20 Hollywood cards, ten W53 US presidents, and several other subjects that share the same general design for various distribution methods. They printed (at least) strip cards and notebooks based on available images.

Based on the "(C)IFC" or "(C)IFS" licensing of original images, I think Universal Toy started printing sheets of strip cards for Hollywood movies in 1919, soon added baseball and boxing, and expanded into more non-sport sets by 1921. The small globe logo seen on some notebook pages is Universal's own logo, with "Universal" printed on the banner.

William Randolph Hearst's media empire owned (or claimed to own) the licensing rights for many original images for Universal's boxing, Hollywood, and baseball strips, hence the ©IFS, ©IFC, or © that appear on those cards. Two images, Douglas Fairbanks (actor) and Johnny Dundee (boxer) also show the APEDA studio insignia. APEDA did similar photo licensing work in this era.

Turbulence in Hearst's IFS/IFC companies between 1919 and 1920 appear to have led Universal to drop its license attribution. I bet this move cut costs and reflects legal wrangling over image ownership in that era. W520 and W522 baseball sets, for example, appear to be part of larger, multi-subject Universal Toy strips printed in 1920-21 without any licensing. (They might've done this to test recent legal challenges to ownership of a licensed image.)

Print cutting was so poor on many strips that adjacent subjects from the same set or different sets tell us something about their print layout. Sheets for these sets were at least 20 cards wide (two ten-card strips) and perhaps wider. While it's unclear how _tall_ its print sheets were, I think they were at least ten strips high and perhaps taller.

In some cases, it appears Universal Toy printed multiple subjects on the same sheets. In others, they repeated the same subject over and over. I think the layout changed to fit the reason for each sheet. If a Hollywood publicist wanted cards for a movie promotion, they printed those Hollywood cards all at once. If Universal Toy needed something for their own boxes of paper toys, they printed several subjects on one sheet. This work met business needs of the moment and I doubt they thought about who would try to "collect" such cheap products.

Something about their printing process made it practical to print reversed images on some sheets, even when these reversals made baseball players change their dominant hand. Baseball, boxing, US Presidents, Hollywood, and other strips sets came with reversed, if otherwise identical, images. This led to interesting images like this backward strip of presidents (Harding at left, Washington at right) below the titles for a non-reversed 1921 Charlie Chaplin movie strip.

I'll post again soon with a matrix of card details to look for when sorting out these strip sets and their many subjects.