TOPPS 75 th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AUCTION H ard at the edge of a cluster of large and foreboding buildings in Brooklyn’s ironically named Sunset Park, Topps Chewing Gum, founded in 1938 by Phil, Abe, Ira and Joe Shorin, issued baseball cards, blobby looking tattoos and hundreds of other ephemeral entertainments for years out of a shabby industrial loft BY DAVE HORNISH
young consumers around the country and Topps made so much bub- ble gum over their twenty years in Brooklyn that their offices and man- ufacturing floor were noticeably sticky from the residue. Production eventually moved to Pennsylvania and the packs don’t include gum anymore, but it’s the cards that everybody wants anyway.
located in Bush Terminal. Standing next to the better-known Brooklyn Army Terminal, Topps had moved their production floor and offices into Bush Terminal Building No. 1 from three scattered downtown Brooklyn locations in 1946. Bracketed by the Gowanus Expressway to one side and Upper New York Bay to the other, they made and distributed their products amidst the noxious fumes and unrelenting clatter of an increasingly unsavory neighborhood that belied their always colorful packaging and incessant marketing. It was there Topps manufactured gum, at first aimed at adults before a postwar pivot to their world-famous Bazooka bubble gum. Shortly after their Bush Terminal move-in, they decided to start producing cards and engaged the art service of Solomon & Gel- man (Ben and Woody, respectively) to come up with innovative designs and handle pro- duction. Topps started putting little cards in some penny gum packs and saw business pick up dramatically. Such novelties helped sell their popular small confections to millions of
6
LOVEOFTHEGAMEAUCTIONS.COM
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online