Newsletter - 2024-08-24

Walkers [trade : crisps : UK - Leicester] "Star Wars Trilogy Tazos" (1997) 3/50

So today in 1853 the first ever potato crisp was made, by a chef called George Crum, who was working at Saratoga Springs, in New York. Now he was quite a character. He was born in 1822, to a Native-American mother and an African American father, who was a jockey, riding under the name of Crum, though his real name was Speck. For whatever reason our man suddenly also assumes the name of Crum, and turns up as a chef, though before that time he had been involved in tracking, and dealing in assorted items. 

He found his way to New York and then to this cafe. He was a good worker but inclined to temper. One of their best dishes was what the Americans call French Fries, the French call Frites, and we call Chips. Anyway one day they had an especially awkward customer and he complained that they were too thick. They were sent back to the kitchen, trimmed, and returned, twice, and when they entered the kitchen for the third time George Crum saw red and sliced them as thin as he possibly could, also adding plenty of seasoning. However instead of choking the diner, he was delighted with them, so much so that he told all his friends to visit the cafe and try them. They were even added to the menu, as Saratoga Chips, and not just that, they appeared at other restaurants as well.

This is presumably why Americans still call crisps chips. 

However, we promised you controversy, and here it is. Because it turns out that there is an earlier mention of thinly cut potatoes, in an 1817 cook book called "The Cook`s Oracle". This book was a best seller in America, and in Europe, and it would have been widely used in cookery schools. And it is cited in many other later cook books too. 

Now our Walker`s crisps are much later then this. They were made by a butcher called Henry Walker, who was born in Mansfield, moved to Leicester and then took premises in London. Sadly he was stopped in his tracks by the Second World War, and by rationing. He had the shop, and very little meat to fill it with, and so he looked round for something that would replace all the things that people could no longer eat, and what he found was a bag of potatoes. He made these into thin cut crisps, and sold them, in bags, in his shop, as a way to beat the hunger caused by inadequate food, and they took off. 

Their first bag was sold in 1948. and it cost 3d. It was just plain potato, but into slices, but salt was added, before sale, so it was called Ready Salted. New flavours were added later, cheese and onion in the mid 1950s, and Salt and Vinegar in 1967. Since then many flavours have come and gone, and more recently they have even run competitions asking the general public to suggest new ones. 

As to their environmental and health cred, they have reduced the saturated fat across the board by 70% and planted vast fields of sunflowers for the oil. Sadly their premium "Red Sky" range did not take off, though it was a really good scheme, offering all natural ingredients and donating proceeds to a rainforest protection charity. And they also ran into opposition when they started to use meat in some of their crisps rather than vegetarian flavourings. Lastly, their popularity has led to them being named as the most likely crisp packets to be found in street littering. They have made the packets recyclable, and also they had a scheme where you could put your empty packet in any postbox and it would go back to Walkers, but this was unpopular with Royal Mail as it was too time consuming for the workers to sort by hand, and also it led to food contamination of other mail. 

Finally, we must mention that local Leicester-boy Gary Lineker has been their ambassador for almost thirty years, in a range of campaigns. And that the company has close links with Leicester Football Club. 

Now almost every food product has close links with Star Wars, and here we have one of the small circular discs called Tazos. Now these were originally given out by Sabritas, in Mexico, which was bought out by Frito-Lay, another owner of Walkers Crisps, so it is apt that we use them now. Sabritas actually gave the discs their name, an abbreviation of "taconazo", which means to kick with the heel, as you do when you are trying to flick a bottle top or similar round item. Tazos come in many types, and in all kinds of shapes. If you look along the edge of some, like ours, there are slots, and these are so that you can use the discs as a construction toy too 

These Star Wars Trilogy ones were a limited edition and they date from 1997, which was when the specially re-mastered films (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi) were released. There was a set of fifty, but with a catch, as only the first thirty nine came in Walkers crisps, the other ten were packed in with Doritos. And if you want to see all manner of wonderful things and special items relating to this issue, go over and see Andy Dukes.

Jacquemaire "Blecao / Bledine" [trade : drink : O.S - France] "Fruit" (1920s?) Un/??

Staying with an American theme, today is banana split day.

I have not found a card of this popular dessert, which is a peeled banana cut in half from top to bottom, laid on its back with its interior exposed, and covered with three scoops of different flavour ice creams. Tradition has it that these are vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. The if that were not enough you have a drizzle of each of those in sauce form, whipped cream, cherries, and then finely crushed nuts. 

You will have to imagine all that, for I just offer you a basic banana. This is an intriguing card though, issued with a kind of nutritional drink that was also a complete food. I have already been told that Blecao is not the maker, that is the name of the drink, in this case mixed with cacao, or chocolatey cocoa. The issuer was therefore changed to Bledine but when I looked that up it was but another brand. It turns out that the company is Jacquemaire Establishments, and Leon Jacquemaire was born in France, in 1894. The company was a partnership, between himself and a Maurice Miguet, both pharmacists in Villefranche sur Saône, sixteen miles from Lyon - these cards were also printed by R. Fort in Lyon.

We also know seventeen of the fruits which were included in the set, namely : 

• Abricot
• Ananas (pineapple)
• Cerises (cherries)
• Chasselas (white grapes)
• Citron (lemon)
• Figue (fig)
• Fraise (strawberry)
• Fraise des Bois (wild strawberry)
• Framboise (raspberry)
• Grenade (pomegranate)
• Mandarine
• Noisette (almonds?) 
• Noix (walnut)
• Noix de Coco (coconut)
• Orange
• Peche (peach)
• Prune
• Raisin (black grapes)
• Tomate (tomato)

Anyone who know of others do please tell so we can add them in. 

The American Tobacco Company [tobacco : O/S - USA] "Battle Series" (1901) Un/25 - A560-505 : A52-144 : USA/T.402 : RB.18/130 or TW.130

Today in 1346 saw this battle, of Crecy, take place. It was fought in Northern France and the heads of the armies were the reigning Kings of England, Edward III, and France, King Philip VI. The French drew cover first and attacked the English army, so certain were they of victory, and so much did they outnumber us. 

It shocked the whole of Europe too, for Edward III had landed in France only in mid July, with about a thousand ships and approximately fifteen hundred men, most of whom were archers, with long-bows. As for Philip VI, he was on home soil, and had almost fifteen thousand men under his command. 

We will probably never know how the British overcame such odds, but many specialists believe it was the fact that our troops were so well drilled, and others state that the crossbow, which was the French weapon of choice, took longer to load, and to aim steady at its marker, than the long-bow did.

This one battle saw the loss of Philip VI`s own brother, Charles II of Alencon, and King John of Bohemia, from whom, as the card says, three plumed feathers,  and his motto, "Ich Dien", were removed, to become used on the Prince of Wales` crest. Philip IV himself was wounded, and almost taken prisoner. As for the losses given on the card, they are slightly inaccurate, but in the right percentage - the card says 30,000 French troops were lost, but today we believe only a third of that is true. However the English losses were just a hundred men, though every one of those "just"s was mourned, and missed, by someone...

Now I believed this set first appeared in our Tobacco War Booklet, RB.18, but it already links out to Jefferson Burdick`s Catalogues, where the set is described as :

T.402 - Battle Scenes (25) TW.130. 

That TW.130 is his own abbreviation for RB.18, by the way, which is our original Tobacco War booklet. And as our volume also contains a list of all the cards I will scan it in. 

Mr. Burdick does not rate them that highly, at just 20 cents a card. However I must tell you that you can see his actual cards, courtesy of the New York Public Library Online as JB-BattleScenes - though there is one missing, which, thanks to Mr. Parker, I know to be Waterloo. And if you click on any of his cards, it will enlarge, and you can then also view the back by clicking on the small thumbnail of it just as the black of the image turns into the white of the page. You can also view them in book form, one after the other, but you do not see the backs by looking in that way. 

By the time it reaches our original World Tobacco Issues Index, in American Tobacco Company section 2.F. "Other backs with name of Firm", the cataloguing is much reduced, to simply : 

BATTLE SCENES. Descriptive back in blue. (25). See RB.18/130. Ref USA/T.402 ... A52-144

It is the same text in our updated version, save that RB.18 has been replaced by another code RB.118, simply because the Tobacco War booklet that we were using then, in the 1950s, has been updated in the intervening years and the new version was published as RB.118. And of course the USA/T.402 code leads us right back to Jefferson Burdick`s Catalogue

Cadet Sweets [trade : confectionery : UK - Slough] "Footballers" (1957) 45/50 - CAD-590 : HX-91 : CAF-10.1 : D.289

And so to football. For today, in 1925, in Bolton, was born Nathaniel Lofthouse. He joined the local team, Bolton Wanderers, on a not so auspicious day, the fourth of September, 1939 - which was the same day that England and France declared war on Germany. He made his debut in March 1941, scoring two goals against Bury, though this was not League football, that had been stopped. He continued to turn out until he was conscripted in 1943 - but his service was not to be overseas, for he was sent down the mines, in Manchester. 

After the war he came back to Bolton Wanderers and made his League debut in August 1946. His England debut came in 1950. However just eight years later he played his final National Team appearance, and two years after that he retired from football and became a trainer, coach, and manager. Despite this very short spell of playing, he remains in the top ten of all English goal-scorers; and we can but wonder what would have happened if the Second World War had not taken those early playing years of his career, of if, maybe, he had not been so loyal to Bolton Wanderers, and transferred out. 

In 1994 he was awarded the O.B.E., though he maintained that he was more proud of having the East Stand at the new Bolton Wanderers Stadium carry his name; and of the letter which told him he was to be one of the first to join the Football Hall of Fame. Sadly he was never knighted. 

This set first appears in our original British Trade Index part II as part of a group, which reads : 

FOOTBALLERS. Sm. Nd.  .... CAF-10
1. 1957 issue. (50). Size 66 x 34, panel with series title 27 m/m long, see D.289
2. 1958 issue. (50). Size 61 x 31. Panel with series title (a) 19 (b) 28 m/m long

As for D.289, that always denotes a set which was issued by another too, however in this case it is even more intriguing, for it reads : 

D.289. FOOTBALLERS. Head and shoulder to waist length portraits, or action pictures, in colour. 
Cadet - Set CAF-10.1. Nd. (30)
Anonymous - Plain Back - Set ZH5-3. Unnd, no series title or letterpress. 2 known, equivalent to Nos.25 and 45 in Cadet Set CAF-10.1 

This is very intriguing, because if the sheet was of fifty cards, it would presumably have been five rows of ten or ten rows of five, and those two cards would have been above each other, only separated by card 35. 

In our updated British Trade Index the two sets above are separated and no longer in the same group. Our set is described as : 

FOOTBALLERS 1956-57. Nd. (50). 66 x 34, panel with series title 27 mm long. See HX-91 ... CAD-590

HX-91 is the companion handbook, but that adds something strange, for it reads :

HX-91 FOOTBALLERS/ Nd. (50). Issued by: 
       Cadet Sweets. See CAD-590     Gee. See GEE-030 (Unnd). No captions. 

Gee`s Food Products are listed in our original British Trade Index but not this set. However when I looked at GEE-030 in the updated version, it explains why, saying : "FOOTBALLERS. 1963. 65 x 34. Unnd. (50?). No caption. See HX-91. Anonymous, plain back ... GEE-030. 

I have since found them at the Football Cartophilic Information Exchange/GeesFootballers - where it gives the card code of ZH5-3. That reads "FOOTBALLERS (A) Sm. 65 x 34. Unnd. (2 known) See D.289. Issued by Gee`s  ... ZH5-3"

Kelloggs [trade : cereals : UK] "Power Rangers" (1996) A2/??

Today, as some of you may already know, is National Power Rangers Day. For the rest of you, these anonymous teenage super-heroes, The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, were first shown on American television as part of the new Fox Kids channel on August 28th, 1993. However they were already well known in Japan, from the television programme "Super Sentai".

They were also a big success as a range of video games, which were produced for several different consoles, Bandai, Nintendo, and Sega. Bandai even had cut-out cards on their packaging, a series of forty two. 

It seems only natural that in 1995 they were also immortalised on the big screen too. After that, as with all things that are successful, or most of them anyway, Disney was interested, and in 2005, they bought out not just them, but the entire Fox Family channel. Somehow, though, in 2010, Haim Saban, their original producer and co-creator, managed to get them back, rebroadcast some of the original episodes, and then set about making another movie. That was released by Lions Gate in 2017, and in the following year, which was amazingly the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first screening, National Power Rangers Day made it on to the celebrations calendars.

This is an awkward item to catalogue, because although it plainly states that it was issued with Kelloggs "Frosties", there is that nagging last line that says "Made in Italy by Panini S.p.A. Modena".  They also seem to have a very odd numbering system, so I am not sure how many stickers there were. They measure 54 x 69 m/m, and the backing pulls off as a full sheet, leaving the adhesive on the reverse of the front of the sticker 

What I do know is that in 1995 the stickers were not re-issued. Instead Kelloggs "Frosties" offered six different three dimensional plastic Power Ranger figures, perhaps not cartophilic to some of us, but worthy of a mention. 

Merlin also issued a set of 246 stickers, and an album, in 1994, but you can tell them easily from ours as they have green borders, and if the backs are intact there is a large lightning sign. 

W.D. & H.O. Wills [tobacco : UK - Bristol] "Old Pottery & Porcelain" (October 1934) 13/50 - W675-205 : W62-164 : W/283

Here is another unusual one because today is Potteries Bottle Oven Day. This celebrates those curious brickwork structures which are large and cylindrical at the bottom, then taper to a neck, which is open at the far end for the steam to issue forth. At the bottom is a furnace, in which pottery and porcelain is "fired".

This "firing" is a very technical process with a lot of hazards. It is done so that the pottery or porcelain hardens, gets stronger, and resists liquids, therefore holding the contents or food in place and not allowing it to pass through. In some cases it also makes the items whiter, but that depends on what it is made from. The main hazard is the heat that this oven has to reach in order to "cook" the pot, about 2500°F or 1350°C. If it is not a glazed piece it goes into the oven but once - if it is to be glazed the liquid is applied after the first time and then it is re-fired to the same temperature, for if the second time is hotter even by a few degrees the glaze will disappear. Another hazard, and this was common in the early days of the Pottery towns, is that if the materials making up the body of the pot is not completely dry, the heat makes it explode. 

You can actually see a bottle oven on Wills` "Borough Arms" fourth series, card 169, in the lower right quadrant of the shield as viewed. The back tells us that "Stoke-upon-Trent, incorporated in 1874, owes its importance almost entirely to the porcelain and earthenware manufactures. On one side of the shield are shown a potters wheel, three jugs, and a potter`s oven". It finishes by saying that the motto is "To bestow art out of the earth" - in other words, clay. 

We have gone for another example of porcelain, Wedgwood. That name has a long association with pottery, for Josiah Wedgwood, aged only twenty-nine, set up as a potter in 1759. However the Wedgwood name was well associated with the craft, and from the 1650s several branches of the family had operated kilns across the Burslem area.

Our vase was made in 1790, but, as the card tells us, it is a copy of an earlier glass vessel dating back to the Roman era. We do not know when it was discovered, only that it is first mentioned in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century, and it is a very impressive piece which would have certainly have brought it to mass attention earlier if it had been known. The fact that it turned up in Rome also points to it having been discovered on some kind of, perhaps unofficial, archaeological digging. Then it disappears again, and turns up in the stock of a Scottish art dealer in the late 1770s. He sold it to Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador to Naples, who in turn sold it to the widow of the second Duke of Portland. She sold it in 1786, at auction, and, curiously, it was bought by her son, the third Duke of Portland. He was the person who lent it to Josiah Wedgwood so that a copy could be made, and then lent the original to the British Museum on temporary loan. This seems to have allowed for home visits, as in 1810 it was given to them on a more permanent basis by the fourth Duke of Portland, after it was damaged, at home, in an accident. However the sixth Duke rescinded all of this, and put it up for auction in the late 1920s, only putting it back in the British Museum when it failed to sell.

Then, in 1945, The Portland Vase was finally bought by the British Museum. 

This set was first catalogued in our original Wills booklet part IV, as : 

283. OLD POTTERY & PORCELAIN. Large cards, size 79 x 62 m/m. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issue 1934.

Our set was replaced in February 1935 by "Flowering Shrubs". The larger packets, containing these bigger format cards, did not seem to sell so well and whereas the standard sized cards seem to have been circulated for about two months, the larger ones often took four or even five months to run their course. In fact our set replaced "Famous British Liners - first series", which was first issued in June 1934. And, oddly, the second series of that set followed the "Flowering Shrubs", being issued only in June 1935, a full year later. 

I got sidetracked there, again. By the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index, the description of our set reads simply : 

OLD POTTERY & PORCELAIN. Lg. Nd. (30). ... W62-164

This text is exactly the same in the updated version of this volume, but with a new code. 

Quaderni [trade/commercial : O/S - Italy - Turin] "Auto e Moto" (19??) 282/?? 

Today, in New Zealand, one of the most famous names of motor racing was born, yet many people have forgotten the man behind the name that we know so well. 

His name was Bruce Leslie McLaren, and he was born in Auckland in 1937. He would become a driver, but also a designer, engineer, inventor and team owner, of a team that has won many championships in many racing formats, from the fast Formula One, through sports car racing, endurance, including the races at Le Mans and Sebring, and even the great race at the Indianapolis Speedway. 

His family ran a petrol station with a workshop. At one time his father had been a racer, on motorbikes, but an accident had soured the sport and he had gone over to cars. It was hoped that their son would learn engineering and come work in the garage, but this was not to be the case, and after a short spell at college he left, to go motor racing.

He had been hill climbing and doing local rallies for some time, since the age of fourteen, and soon honed his skills so much that he was runner up in the 1957 New Zealand Championship. This led him to the attention of Jack Brabham, and he fast tracked him on to a scheme where talented drivers could get a chance to race in the European series. In fact Jack Brabham also gave him his ticket into Formula One, at a later date, by introducing him to the Cooper team. And in 1959, aged just twenty-two, Bruce McLaren won his first Formula One Grand Prix, in America, becoming the youngest ever winner of such a race.

Sadly he met his death behind the wheel, just ten years later, at Goodwood, whilst testing a new car. 

The Trading Card Database/BruceMcLaren cites just fourteen cards. Two of those have this picture also appears as number 145 in both printings of the set "Famous Cars" (1972) - one being anonymous and one being titled  "Top Sellers Famous Cars". However our version is an unrecorded third, by Quaderni edis, about whom I have found absolutely nothing, except that they also issued the set of "Cantanti" so perhaps they were something to do with Figurine Panini? Do we have any [Italian] readers who know more?  

As far as other cards not on that list, well he also appears as card 2 of Danone`s "Gran Prix Ford", issued in Spain, and you can see a McLaren M23 as part of the 1993 set of "Donington Collection" issued by Castella.