Saturday, October 18, 2014

Juicy Jamboree

Extra! Extra!  Gee, I've always wanted to say that....and now thanks to a recent arrival here at the main Topps Archives Research Complex I can.



Using my immense powers of deduction, it would appear Topps commenced a monthly newspaper for their jobbers in January of 1948.  Jamboree was the name and increasing sales was the game. The lone issue I have is a four pager printed in 11" x 17" tabloid size on very high quality paper.As you can see, Topps treated their top wholesalers very well.  Here is more to that story (I can't fit the entire thing on my scanner, sorry):


I gather Jamboree was also the name of their sales competition.

While there is not a lot of meat as concerns Topps production, this thing is a veritable cornucopia of marketing information. Topps was really slingin' that PR hash, yessir Mr. Walter Winchell even got into the act:



We also get some primordial Bazooka advertising, along with some typical content:


And since it was a man's world back then, what publication was complete without some cheesecake:


Topps sales manager Hugh Spencer got into the act in a big way:



I think this comic strip is my favorite part of the entire issue; it ties in the contest winner from the front cover quite nicely:



Meanwhile, the back cover has a massive list of jobber's salesmen who won Jamboree prizes in March:



This is a neat little cartoon as well:


The whole issue was folded three times and a few copies were likely thrown in with each jobbers orders.  I find the whole Topps sales incentive program fascinating and illustrative of how hard they pushed their reps and customers to move product..

I am pretty sure Topps also had an internal house organ for their employees but I have not yet seen a copy.

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