1975 Hostess Printers Proof

[steve B]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Well, since it was just an early-stage proof (read garbage), it's easy to see how they didn't want to waste paper while putting other things together, so they would just print over the scrap on hand. It couple be as simple as that.

Yep, they always use a few sheets to get the press setup, and they're almost always scrap from another job. After the first 2-3, you need maybe 5-10 to really get the registration right. A place printing fish cake boxes might not care as much. amd if the proofs had enough sheet margin they might not have needed anything else. (and it could be the proofs on top of the fish box)

[laughlinfan]

These are really cool, but I have to admit these confuse me a little. Why would they print multiples of these as just the three photos instead of doing setup with the layout and frames? I could see a few as some type of test of the printing and packaging material, but it looks like they did these repeatedly for for multiple "panels"? Would these be similar to Topps creating match proof photos? I am unfamiliar with the process (clearly!). When I think of "proofs," I think of tests of the actual card or progressive color proofs, like my Garvey Hostess proofs below. Anybody familiar with the process?

[Zach Wheat]

Marty,

Hostess was new to the game in 1975 trying to emulate the 1974 Wonder Bread football set. Although they did collaborate with Topps on the usage of Photo's, Sy Berger made it clear that ITT Continental, makers of Hostess / Twinkies did not have access to the original photos used in Topps sets, but used the photo's not chosen by Topps. The printer of this set was located in the Cinncinati area and they were battling a number of problems with the initial Twinkies set, mainly in regards to keeping the oil from soaking through the paper stock. This led to a lot of experimentation. Towards the end of production, they were experimenting with inks/layouts and players in the 1976 Hostess/Twinkies set as well, which led to some variations of the black border for a small percentage of cards.

Since the printer had to tailor the layout of card panels unique to each Hostess product, there was a lot of experimentation. A dealer I talked to in the past indicates most of the scrap or pre-production sections of cards came from an employee of the printer. He took, perhaps 30 sheets of pre-production sheets out of the scrap bin. The cards you noted above probably came from this lot. I believe they were 3 color + black sheets - and it is possible to find full sets in each color or a combination of partial colors. I believe black ink was printed last.

Z

[steve B]

Here's my take on it, which can be taken as just a semi-educated guess, since the place I worked did smaller jobs and nearly no proofing at all. I saw maybe 1-2 photographic proofs pulled from the masks in 2+years.

There are lots of reasons to do proofing, and those reasons change over time as well. I think in the 70's there wasn't much input from the players, but now I believe they can approve the final product.
Either way, for product packaging like Hostess, there would have been someone (Or more) responsible for the overall look of things. So they'd choose the photos they wanted, then try them out on a partial panel. Obviously they at one point did it without the borders, which may not have been designed yet.
That would eliminate aesthetic problems that weren't obvious.
So for example, lets say there are 5 people working on various parts of the set, and they each pick photos for certain players. Someone else picks which players would go on which box, maybe that product sells poorly in KC, so they want Brett on that box.
But three different people have picked the photos, and to make an extreme example all three pictures show a similar portrait. Obviously that makes the box panel look a bit odd, so they either have to change the player selection, or pick different photos. Hopefully that would get caught before proofing!

It seems expensive, and at the time was since color separations and plates had to be made for each color, and some number of copies run. Totally out of the question for the sort of orders we did, but not for a huge national promotion.

I have a few from 76 that as far as I can tell were proofs, but considering where I got them, they may have been issued.
They're a "bit" different from the issued cards.....


I need to scan the rest of the ones I have, but you get the idea. They could be ones where they printed red and yellow swapped, but the screening is different, very coarse on some, there were a few reversed negatives, and at least one number over 150.
I've never seen any others, and of course being a dumb HS kid when I got them, I immediately traded about half of them for another example of the card I'd traded for the whole batch.