To a fraction of the card collecting community, that brings up memories of ransacking grocery store shelves for unique cards or at least a double of your favorite player. You’d get it home, reach in (hoping Mom didn’t see how many slices you destroyed the process) and reveal a Franco Harris, a Forrest Blue or yet another godforsaken Tom Mack or Jerry Sherk.
Wonder worked with Topps to produce the “Wonder Bread All-Star Series”, using their photo collection (so, no NFL logos) but offering creative designs—the first series, in 1974, would feature a generic photo on the back with coaching advice, such as,”How to Employ the Draw”, for example. This was balanced by four years of stats from the player’s career. The front of the cards themselves were quite similar to the 1971 Topps series, and they can often be confused—well, by me, anyway.
The 1975 set’s appearance was much simpler, as this Chuck Foreman shows—Topps must have been on a design budget from Wonder. No frills on the front, though the back was much more detailed. It offered NFL football trivia in the form of a five-question quiz, with a few questions regarding the player’s career, as well as questions such as, “What is a ‘bread and butter’ play?” With Wonder Bread sponsoring the cards, that is a logical question.
The final set in 1976 has a far more attractive front design, with an unusual back—there are no player stats; instead, each card offered one of “Hank Stram’s Favorite Plays”. Hank had just been hired as the Saints’ new coach, and was looking at two years of misery—but no one knew that yet. I still recall playing Nerf football with these cards in my back pocket, and trying to run one of Hank’s plays with four kids on a backyard field.
The sets were very small—the ’74 set had thirty cards, while the ’75 and ’76 sets offered only 24 cards. And to modern collectors (AKA “the money-grubbing parasites that destroyed a wonderful hobby with unbridled greed”) they have little value because PSA won’t grade them highly because, well, they were shoved in a bread bag. But that’s because they never tried Hank Stram’s “Sweep Right” play with a Nerf ball in a back yard.
NOTE: Tom Mack was the only player to be featured in all three sets. So, there you go.
Check out this video on Tom Mack!
