Wacky Packages Forum
Wacky Packages Discussion => General Wacky Packages Discussion => Topic started by: JailOJohn on October 05, 2021, 08:42:25 PM
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How much bread did people eat trying to get a full set of Wacky Packages stickers? I never knew how many there were….i guess three sets of 24….Did anyone ever complete a set by eating 50 loaves of Wonder Bread???? I know I ate a lot of slices of bread trying to get a set of free stickers. I think my mom would have been better off giving me a few dimes to buy wax packs instead of us all trying to eat bread morning, noon and night...
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As a kid I'd steal them. In the grocery store I would pick up a loaf, take it to another shelf that had space, fiddle with the bag closure, and stick my hand in to grab the sticker. I believe there are other self admitted loaf molesters here on the forum.
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Dang! Didnt they have video surveillance and store security people in those days?
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As a kid I'd steal them. In the grocery store I would pick up a loaf, take it to another shelf that had space, fiddle with the bag closure, and stick my hand in to grab the sticker. I believe there are other self admitted loaf molesters here on the forum.
You "heel"! >(
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You "heel"! >(
At yeast he admits it.
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Are we sure series 2 and series 3 ever actually made it into Wonder Bread loaves? I distinctly remember series one and my experience is series 1 are the ones that most likely stained.
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Dang! Didnt they have video surveillance and store security people in those days?
Apparently not. All the stuff we have now didn't come along until much, much later.
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You "heel"! >(
Ha! BTW, the actual term that's been used is "loaf gropers".
I don't remember how, but I was caught by my Mom and was told to knock it off.
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How much bread did people eat trying to get a full set of Wacky Packages stickers? I never knew how many there were….i guess three sets of 24….Did anyone ever complete a set by eating 50 loaves of Wonder Bread???? I know I ate a lot of slices of bread trying to get a set of free stickers. I think my mom would have been better off giving me a few dimes to buy wax packs instead of us all trying to eat bread morning, noon and night...
Good question. Greg's site has an image of a promo poster saying "Collect all 24," but I don't think a lot of kids knew how many there were, or drew a distinction between Wonder Bread Wackys and the regular series.
I wondered the same thing about Shedd's Peanut Butter. Just how many five-pound tubs of peanut butter was a kid going to eat?
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As a kid I'd steal them. In the grocery store I would pick up a loaf, take it to another shelf that had space, fiddle with the bag closure, and stick my hand in to grab the sticker. I believe there are other self admitted loaf molesters here on the forum.
I was even worse. I would tear a hole in the bag to get the sticker out!
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How much bread did people eat trying to get a full set of Wacky Packages stickers? I never knew how many there were….i guess three sets of 24….Did anyone ever complete a set by eating 50 loaves of Wonder Bread???? I know I ate a lot of slices of bread trying to get a set of free stickers. I think my mom would have been better off giving me a few dimes to buy wax packs instead of us all trying to eat bread morning, noon and night...
The Wonderbread Wackys completely eluded me because my parents would never buy it - the only white bread we ever had on hand was Arnold’s. Regardless, can’t imagine buying any bread at a high rate when the payoff was only one sticker per full loaf. Conversely, there are three other similar card giveaways that come to mind for me which presented no such dilemma given the sugary snacks involved that were more addictive than the cards:
-1975-79 Hostess Baseball (box cut-outs)
-1978 Drakes Cakes Incredible Hulk comic cover cards
-1980 Pop-Tarts Lake Placid Olympics Kellogg’s character cards
No need to plunder boxes with these puppies, although I think I may have been guilty of doing it a few times with the Pop-Tarts. The Hulk and Olympics cards were small sets but very hard to complete without the dupes piling up.
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I remember three more parody series that Wonder Bread did in the 1970s: Crazy Cars and two Disney ones - one with collage team pennants and one with license plates from each of the 50 states. The first one was just cards and the other two were stickers.
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That had to have been pretty embarrassing…getting caught by your own mother, groping the loaf in public….
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Since there were no numbers, how do you distinguish Wonder wackys from regular OS??
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Ha! BTW, the actual term that's been used is "loaf gropers".
I don't remember how, but I was caught by my Mom and was told to knock it off.
Seems Moms always knew - eyes in the backs of their heads! Rather than risk getting caught stealing stickers, which would certainly have resulted in "no more Wackys for you!" >( >( I just asked permission to look through the wrappers and pick which loaf we would buy that week.
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Since there were no numbers, how do you distinguish Wonder wackys from regular OS??
Some titles can be easily identified by the copyrights, and some have differences in die cuts (especially Lavirus). There's info about this in The Gallery, and Greg's site has a ton of information, with scans for comparison: http://www.wackypacks.com/stickers/wonderbread/index.html (http://www.wackypacks.com/stickers/wonderbread/index.html)
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Thanks for the info. I HAD (have) a Gallery book somewhere in my basement, cannot find it. I tend to avoid Greg's web site, since I have heard some bad things (and some good things) about him...
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Some titles can be easily identified by the copyrights, and some have differences in die cuts (especially Lavirus). There's info about this in The Gallery, and Greg's site has a ton of information, with scans for comparison: http://www.wackypacks.com/stickers/wonderbread/index.html (http://www.wackypacks.com/stickers/wonderbread/index.html)
I think another distinguishing characteristic of Wonder Bread titles is that the copyright always has only one asterisk. So on the hard to distinguish titles, if the sticker has two asterisks, it is not a Wonder Bread sticker. If it has only one asterisk, then it could be either.
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And if the sticker feels greasy even after all these years, then it's definitely a Wonder Bread.
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I think another distinguishing characteristic of Wonder Bread titles is that the copyright always has only one asterisk. So on the hard to distinguish titles, if the sticker has two asterisks, it is not a Wonder Bread sticker. If it has only one asterisk, then it could be either.
I would have sworn I typed something about that, but it be gonzo :-\ Must have accidentally typed over it, so thanks for adding that!! Think you said it better than I was fumbling over before :-[
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And if the sticker feels greasy, then it's definitely a Wonder Bread.
LOL! Other than the 2 Wonderbreads I personally pulled back in the day, I have steered clear of these sets.... too confusing
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LOL! Other than the 2 Wonderbreads I personally pulled back in the day, I have steered clear of these sets.... too confusing
Greg's site has everything you could want to know about Wonderbreads. It is worth checking out, especially if you suspect some of your tan back stickers might be Wonderbreads.
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I was never that interested because the bread included stickers I already had. When the mini stickers appeared in cereal, then I was intrigued because they were designs I'd never seen before!
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Another thing is if the sticker in question is in a batch that includes other cards that are, or could be, Wonder Bread stickers. While it increases the odds that it's authentic, it's not foolproof. I wonder if there will ever be a way to know for sure.
I think another distinguishing characteristic of Wonder Bread titles is that the copyright always has only one asterisk. So on the hard to distinguish titles, if the sticker has two asterisks, it is not a Wonder Bread sticker. If it has only one asterisk, then it could be either.
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I remember three more parody series that Wonder Bread did in the 1970s: Crazy Cars and two Disney ones - one with collage team pennants and one with license plates from each of the 50 states. The first one was just cards and the other two were stickers.
So cool, I had those too. I think I sold my Crazy Cars, though. Haven't seen 'em in a while. But of course, the trick was not to reach into the bag, or barbarically tear a hole... but to carefully use your fingernails to slowly slide the sticker up to the top of the bag while appearing to examine the bread, then it would be right there at the top when the little plastic thing accidentally fell off. Not that this actually happens. I mean, it's plausible of course. Just that it... uh... follows spatial logic. Right?
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Did anyone bother to complete a set of Wonder Bread Wackys, given that they were all the same titles from actual packs? I am usually a “completist” but dont see the point in these when the only discernible difference is an asterisk or two..
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Did anyone bother to complete a set of Wonder Bread Wackys, given that they were all the same titles from actual packs? I am usually a “completist” but dont see the point in these when the only discernible difference is an asterisk or two..
I suspect quite a chunk of us have completed this set. It's not just "an asterisk or two". Early series titles (1-4, I believe) have different copyright lines. Maybe some die-cuts are different, too? Not sure, I don't scrutinize them THAT closely...but I really should review my set to ensure it at least seems to be a complete, real set...
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I for one have had the complete run several times, some were nice enough to get PSA 9's % 10's and I sold them. Bigtomi was just talking about the cuts being different, in my opinion the biggest one to watch for is the Lavirus; It is the tan back from series one that can fetch a decent amount. I had two from Wonder bread and they both came back as PSA 9's, funny thing was PSA did not label them correctly, so I sent them back. The only difference on that sticker is the cut especially at the very top. It was because of that I sold most all my collect years ago, I still have NM-MT left and I just have not had the time to list them on FeeBay.
Matt.
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Back in the day when I saw Wackys in Wonder bread I didn't bother with them because they were titles I already had from earlier series.
When I started recollecting as an adult I didn't plan on bothering with the Wonder breads either, but ended up hunting them down because I was running out of affordable things to chase. I also had no plans on collecting both tan backs and white backs of certain series because I thought that was pointless, and well, I eventually did that, too.
Did anyone bother to complete a set of Wonder Bread Wackys, given that they were all the same titles from actual packs? I am usually a “completist” but dont see the point in these when the only discernible difference is an asterisk or two..
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Back in the day when I saw Wackys in Wonder bread I didn't bother with them because they were titles I already had from earlier series.
When I started recollecting as an adult I didn't plan on bothering with the Wonder breads either, but ended up hunting them down because I was running out of affordable things to chase. I also had no plans on collecting both tan backs and white backs of certain series because I thought that was pointless, and well, I eventually did that, too.
I bought complete sets of Wonder Breads when ebay started. The stickers tended to be in nice shape, and they were titles I liked. And, as you say, they were affordable. Back then, I was really on a budget!
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I also bought complete sets off eBay many years ago. As RawGoo wrote, they were affordable. I think each one was less than $20. Back then, I was a completist and wanted to get them. I'm no longer that obsessed.
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I also bought complete sets off eBay many years ago. As RawGoo wrote, they were affordable. I think each one was less than $20. Back then, I was a completist and wanted to get them. I'm no longer that obsessed.
I agree, I have all the wonderbreads in super high quality as dealers came across big piles of high grade WBs. It was purely to be a completist but they are not interesting to me especially series 2 and 3. I did have some as a kid and they were always bread moisture soaked so I never saved any of them.
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This is what I remember. I’d use the term plunderbread.
(https://i.postimg.cc/MfjV4RKH/9-F65-E27-A-741-B-4-BA5-BE6-C-949910-EFAB70.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/MfjV4RKH)
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I agree, I have all the wonderbreads in super high quality as dealers came across big piles of high grade WBs. It was purely to be a completist but they are not interesting to me especially series 2 and 3. I did have some as a kid and they were always bread moisture soaked so I never saved any of them.
I’m a fan of the 1975-1979 Hostess Baseball cards that had to be scissor-cut out of the box bottom. When I bought some lots on eBay I was confused as to why some looked grease-stained, more like coffee-stained, the staining was so dark and ugly. Later I found out why - some cards were part of the tray cardboard used in single-serving packs. So the oily Twinkies were sitting right on the card. What a travesty.
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This is what I remember. I’d use the term plunderbread.
(https://i.postimg.cc/MfjV4RKH/9-F65-E27-A-741-B-4-BA5-BE6-C-949910-EFAB70.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/MfjV4RKH)
26 cents for a loaf of bread! Ah, those were the days indeed!
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So the oily Twinkies were sitting right on the card. What a travesty.
Nobody cared about that or centering before grading cards ruined the hobby and made it a business.
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I remember those cards very well. Since stores around Oklahoma City never seemed to have gotten series 3 through 6, when I found that Wonder Bread had some Wackys that I didn't, I had to have them. So, as my mother shopped through the rest of the store, I would peek through every Wonder Bread on the shelf and pick the ones with cards I didn't have. (I'm sure the other Wonder Bread customers were happy about squished bread on the shelves.) My mother wasn't too pleased, especially since that was not the regular brand that we usually bought, but I put on my cutest kid face and begged her and promised I'd eat the bread. She relented and bought them for me, but she froze them so they'd keep. I ate Wonder Bread for the next year!
I do remember that most of them had moisture stains from the bread. I probably have them tucked away somewhere, but not with the rest of my collection.
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Nobody cared about that or centering before grading cards ruined the hobby and made it a business.
Nonsense. I always cared about things like this. Not sure why so many seem to think that wanting things to be in nice condition is only about money.
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Not sure why so many seem to think that wanting things to be in nice condition is only about money.
Nice condition is one thing. I get that - dirty, dinged corners, creases are less desirable - but it seems like with better printing capabilities today that centering is the main focus of grading, and it has translated to vintage items. I feel the focus on older collectibles should be elsewhere such as damage from handling or simply just "aging." Shouldn't "out of the pack fresh" be a gem mint 10 as long as there weren't obvious printing flaws? I really doubt that you cared about centering as an elementary student when it was just something fun to do. Could your 10-year-old eye really detect the centering difference between what PSA would grade as a 9 compared to a 10?
And you're correct that grading shouldn't be about the money, but that's what it has become. It should simply be a way for a recognized authority, using a transparent standard, to 1) verify that the item is genuine, and then 2) qualify the quality of the item. In my opinion, it's the consumer that has become obsessed with owning the gem mint 10 that has turned the hobby into a business, not the act of grading itself.
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I’m a fan of the 1975-1979 Hostess Baseball cards that had to be scissor-cut out of the box bottom. When I bought some lots on eBay I was confused as to why some looked grease-stained, more like coffee-stained, the staining was so dark and ugly. Later I found out why - some cards were part of the tray cardboard used in single-serving packs. So the oily Twinkies were sitting right on the card. What a travesty.
Yes, I loved those baseball card cutouts, very much different from the baseball cards we collected so not chasing a copyright variation. I don't recall any of mine having stains. They didn't last the test of time, no idea what happened to mine, they might be in one of the boxes I have that fills my closet with all the sports cards I collected over the years.
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Nonsense. I always cared about things like this. Not sure why so many seem to think that wanting things to be in nice condition is only about money.
your obsession with condition is the minority for sure. As a kid before "value" of what we collected meant anything, I knew of ZERO kids who cared about centering and condition. We flipped baseball cards clearly "ruining" the value and not one of us cared, all we cared about was getting Jon Matlack as for whatever reason, nobody in our neighborhood had that card, I think it was 1975. When I re-collected wackys as an adult, I just tried to get one of each, then when I started buying collections, I upgraded my keeper set for awhile and then I realized I just don't give a shit so it is very likely in my hoard of extras, there are higher grade cards than in my keeper set.
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Nice condition is one thing. I get that - dirty, dinged corners, creases are less desirable - but it seems like with better printing capabilities today that centering is the main focus of grading, and it has translated to vintage items. I feel the focus on older collectibles should be elsewhere such as damage from handling or simply just "aging." Shouldn't "out of the pack fresh" be a gem mint 10 as long as there weren't obvious printing flaws? I really doubt that you cared about centering as an elementary student when it was just something fun to do. Could your 10-year-old eye really detect the centering difference between what PSA would grade as a 9 compared to a 10?
And you're correct that grading shouldn't be about the money, but that's what it has become. It should simply be a way for a recognized authority, using a transparent standard, to 1) verify that the item is genuine, and then 2) qualify the quality of the item. In my opinion, it's the consumer that has become obsessed with owning the gem mint 10 that has turned the hobby into a business, not the act of grading itself.
I think one feeds the other like chicken and egg. Grading companies filled a need for the obsessed and then created a new need for folks who previously didn't really care once the $ kicked in....slowly the grading population is being penetrated by other companies and PSA changing its standards making older graded cards somewhat obsolete is all part of the game to keep people chasing this. Instead of .5 grades, soon the .25 grades will come and all those PSA8s that really could be 8.25 or 8.5 of today will need to be regarded.....and those collections that lead the PSA race will need to be regarded to get some decimal bump ups....
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As a kid before "value" of what we collected meant anything, I knew of ZERO kids who cared about centering and condition. I upgraded my keeper set for awhile and then I realized I just don't give a shit.
When I finished off my 69-72 football sets about two years ago, I looked at the ones from my childhood, and they were EX+ at best. However, I decided not to upgrade anything that didn't have a crease or was miscut and not to worry about NM for the new additions I purchased. I doubt I spent $500 finishing them off. I just looked at the Dec/Jan price guide, and the Bradshaw 71 rookie is $250-600, the 71 Greene rookie is $150-300, and the 72 Staubach rookie is $200-500. I remember paying $100, $75, and $50 for the three, respectively, and they're all NM.
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When I finished off my 69-72 football sets about two years ago, I looked at the ones from my childhood, and they were EX+ at best. However, I decided not to upgrade anything that didn't have a crease or was miscut and not to worry about NM for the new additions I purchased. I doubt I spent $500 finishing them off. I just looked at the Dec/Jan price guide, and the Bradshaw 71 rookie is $250-600, the 71 Greene rookie is $150-300, and the 72 Staubach rookie is $200-500. I remember paying $100, $75, and $50 for the three, respectively, and they're all NM.
Nice, all my football cards got washed away in some hurricane in the mid 1970s, I don't recall which one. Somehow my baseball cards survived as I think I cared more about baseball and they were in my room versus football which were in a bag in the based that flooded significantly. Not entirely sure what happened to all my wackys, I found a stash of around 100 but they were clearly extras, had tan maddie, Bum, Choke but in general were not in good shape. I recall some kid harassing me(I think his name was greg Forester or something like that) always wanting my wackys in the late 1970s after I had stopped collecting them and they were not in stores any more, I am wondering if I got hood winked into giving him my collection.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest I was obsessed with condition as a little kid. I wasn’t. I did evolve into that as I kept collecting through my early teens.
What I meant was that I cared a lot about condition before I ever cared about PSA or grading. Even so, I have to admit I am still not and never have been a centering nut. I care much more about overall card condition, a straight cut and whiteness than centering.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest I was obsessed with condition as a little kid. I wasn’t. I did evolve into that as I kept collecting through my early teens.
What I meant was that I cared a lot about condition before I ever cared about PSA or grading. Even so, I have to admit I am still not and never have been a centering nut. I care much more about overall card condition, a straight cut and whiteness than centering.
I cared about condition as a kid, too. I picked the best as my "keepers" and used the others for trading and sticking.
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I cared about condition as a kid, too. I picked the best as my "keepers" and used the others for trading and sticking.
The biggest thing I care about is the clarity of the sticker, and the color saturation. I'll treasure a nice, clear, deep-color sticker over a slightly blurry, less colorful one regardless of centeredness or slightly rough edges. Obviously the manual printers and ink dispensers and what-not of the 70's gave us the wide range of quality that is seen in the OS wackys. I love finding that sticker that has sharper small print and/or bolder color.
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I still have the complete run.
Richard
#StayWacky
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This is a great point. There's so much talk about centering and edges, but I think this is what it should be about, how crisp and rich the art is.
The biggest thing I care about is the clarity of the sticker, and the color saturation. I'll treasure a nice, clear, deep-color sticker over a slightly blurry, less colorful one regardless of centeredness or slightly rough edges. Obviously the manual printers and ink dispensers and what-not of the 70's gave us the wide range of quality that is seen in the OS wackys. I love finding that sticker that has sharper small print and/or bolder color.
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Nothing like a triple-decker "Buddy and Jim" peanutbutter & jelly sandwich on Wonderbread on a 1970's summer day! It was like having a cake for lunch! And Webers didn't cut it. I remember those days where maybe they were out of Wonder and we got Webers instead... yah, NOT cool! That's like getting the plain bag of potato chips instead of barbeque, or regular milk instead of chocolate milk, or plainwrap store-brand soda instead of Coke, A&W, or Shasta! Shastphemy!
BONUS POINTS: For anyone who understood my Buddy & Jim reference above.
(No prize... just points)
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BONUS POINTS: For anyone who understood my Buddy & Jim reference above.
(No prize... just points)
I never watched Sesame Street, so I had to look it up.
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I never watched Sesame Street, so I had to look it up.
I watched Sesame Street and didn't know either >(