A Smorgasbord! 1986 Topps Quaker Granola

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

School is back in session, which means kids everywhere will be once again reaching into their lunch bags and backpacks hoping to find a treat. If you're an '80s kid like me, it was always a good day if mom or dad sent you off with one of these guys.

Yeah, those good ol' chewy granola bars from Quaker. Even back then, you had a nice variety of flavors to choose from. I liked the the Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter versions. It was big news when the S'mores flavor was released around 1984, too.

But there was even bigger news in 1986:

 

 

Baseball cards would be placed inside specially marked packages!

More specifically, you'd find a little cellophane wrapper containing 3 random cards from a 33-card set that was produced by Topps, in conjunction with the Quaker Oats Company.

Here are the two examples I have in my collection:

 

1986 Topps Quaker Granola #1 Willie McGee and #17 Fernando Valenzuela

Pretty sharp design, with those bright yellow bars across the top and the bottom. And because Topps and the MLBPA were both involved, team logos were allowed to remain on helmets, caps, and uniforms. Hooray! Touches like that provided kids with even more incentive to collect the whole set.

 

So let's go back to 1986, pretend we're in grade school, and crunch some numbers with our solar-powered calculators: 

With 3 cards per box, over the course of the school year mom or dad will have to buy you 11 boxes of Quaker chewy granola bars—at the very least—if you want to put together the entire 33-card set. Maybe if your baseball card–loving friends can also convince their moms or dads to buy specially marked boxes of granola bars, then you and your friends can pull the cards, put 'em in stacks, bring 'em into school, and trade with each other so you can all complete your sets.

Now we're talking.

The other option would be to clip out 4 UPC symbols from the boxes and mail them, along with an order form, to the Topps/Chewy promotional department before December 31st. Then, in 6 to 8 weeks, a complete set would arrive in your mailbox. 

But what's the fun in that? You're going to put the set together card by card, the way a true collector would. Because you're a true collector. And you love a good granola bar.

Regardless, here's the front and back of the order form, which was also included in each 3-card pack.

 

I like how you also had the option to order the sticker yearbook and starter kit.

  

Now here's an image of the card backs.

 

 

They're pretty nicely done. I like the career highlights section at the bottom. All 33 players in the set were big stars of the day, so Topps and Quaker sure had enough highlights to choose from. Valenzuela, for example, had a 0.00 ERA through 4 All-Star games at that point. As for McGee, all he did was lead the NL in hits, singles, triples, and batting average the previous year. Atta boy, Willie.

You'll note that the blue banner on the card back says "1st Annual Collectors' Edition". This would indicate that Topps and Quaker planned to release more cards in following years. However, 1986 appears to be the only year that the two companies collaborated on a set. That's really a shame.

 

Quaker was a huge name back then, and had been for decades and decades before that. In fact, it was way back in 1877 that Quaker Oats registered the first trademark for a thing called "breakfast cereal". According to the company website, the Quaker name was chosen "as a symbol of good quality and honest value". As for the recognizable man that you see on the logo? He's been around for more than 100 years, and hasn't changed much in all that time.

 

And you know what? They're still making those chewy granola bars—in many of the same flavors that were around back when these baseball cards were produced!

 

 

So how about you readers? Did this post bring back some good granola bar memories? If you were a Quaker granola bar kid, which flavor was your favorite?

 

Let me know in the comment section, and thanks for reading!