Now we cannot have Stoptober without mentioning this man the footballer Ian Wright, who was one of the first to support the scheme, along with Kate Walsh from "The Apprentice" tv series and Gary Cockerill a leading make up artist.
The idea of the scheme was a lot different to the usual methods of stopping people smoking, most of which were pretty much cold turkey, giving up cigarettes for one day, and they were not very effective. The new idea behind Stoptober was that you tried to stop smoking for the whole month, something that research had suggested was the best way; in fact trials had found that someone who stayed off cigarettes for a whole month had a much higher rate of staying smoke free.
Ian Wright provided the health and fitness link, and he was also one of the first to say that it was not just his health he was protecting, but the people around him who breathed in his smoke without knowing that they too were raising their risk of cancer. He also had a personal reason to join in, for he had asthma, and he knew how hard it was to breathe in a room full of smoke.
Kate Walsh, as a lady, was included to target women, telling them that smoking could affect the health of their children. Whilst Gary Cockerill saw the effects of smoking on skin, hair, teeth, and nails, every day.
Stoptober launched in October 2012 and it was very successful, so much so that the idea spread to other countries. Research has proven that a break from smoking, even just for a month, already sees results - in fact within two days your lungs start to expel the mucus, and even some of the tar that has collected inside them, and by the end of the month the tiny hairs inside the lungs start to grow back and function normally, clearing out even more of the residue. Depending on your age and fitness, it can take as little as a month to see your lung capacity swell and your breathing become more efficient. But, of course, a long term smoker, who has suffered years of damage, has started to destroy the air sacs in their lungs, or has developed chronic scarring to their lungs and or their throat will not see as good results as a smoker who has only just started, or been smoking but a few years.
This was the first set ever released by Merlin for the English Premier League, who took over the franchise from Panini, and it covered the 1993-94 season. The stickers were sold in packets, but we know that sheets of them were given away with magazines and newspapers, and that you could get an album and a free packet together inside special bagged editions of Shoot magazine, copy dated the 15th of January, 1994.
It was an exhaustive collection, four hundred and seventy nine stickers to collect, and an eighty page album to fill. Each of the twenty-two teams had a section, made up of the club badge, a team photo, and a mixture of in-game action and profile pictures. And it was reprinted several times, which is why they are still quite easy to acquire.
However it was the only year that these stickers were actually issued by Merlin, for they were taken over in 1995 by Topps, and renamed to Topps Europe Ltd. You may not realise that though, as the stickers remained branded as Merlin right until 2008.