A Smorgasbord! Kraft Dinners (Hockey)

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.

 

 

Picture a November weekend in Canada, circa 1990. It's getting cold outside.

If you're a kid from the nation up north, could anything be more comforting on a cold weekend like this than a bowl of mac & cheese and a hockey game on TV? 

 

Actually, yes. 

 

There's one more thing you can add to that list.

 

 

  

Hockey cards!

 

And you won't even have to go to the local card shop, drug store, or toy store to get them, because you'll find two cards printed on the back panel of every specially marked box of Kraft Dinners, such as this one:

 

 

If you go to the supermarket with mom next weekend, you'll see that the cards are also available on specially marked boxes of Kraft Spirals, Kraft Noodles, Kraft Singles, and another tasty product that's now made by Kraft...

 

JELL-O!

But let's get back to the pasta. Here's the back panel of a Kraft Dinner box, showing the cards.

 

 

 

 

All you have to do is take out your pair of scissors and cut on the dotted line. (But finish your mac & cheese first.)

 

The initial set, released during the 1989-90 season, was 64 cards deep. It consisted mainly of players from the 7 Canadian NHL teams the existed at the time.

For the next season, Kraft expanded the checklist to include the rest of the league, and the set topped out at a whopping 115 cards, including the ones you see above.

 

Here's a shot of the card backs.

 

 

 

The difference in color is a result of the type of cardboard used for the different boxes.  (Modano is from a Kraft Spirals box, while Vanbiesbrouck is from a Kraft Dinner box.)

 

The next season, 1991-92, saw the checklist reduced to 92 cards. But it was still a thorough set. Here are a couple of examples from my collection:

 

As you can see, the NHL was working hard to promote their 75th anniversary. Not only did they place the official "75" NHL logo on the bottom of each card, but if you look at any player's jersey that season, the logo was there as a shoulder patch, too. On top of that, the original 6 teams (Canadiens, Bruins, Rangers, Black Hawks, Red Wings, and Maple Leafs) wore some pretty cool throwback jerseys on a few special nights during the season to honor the anniversary.

 

Here are the 1991-92 card backs.

 

 

 

The design is a bit neater and cleaner than the 1990-91 set, but I have to say that I kind of miss the illustrated headshots and facsimile signatures. Regardless, With so many Kraft cards on the checklist, you can bet kids across Canada in the early '90s were busy at work cutting them out, trading them, and putting them in binders.

In the sets that followed the 75th anniversary season, Kraft's hockey card totals would fluctuate. It doesn't seem like they ever reached the gaudy numbers from the first few years, but the important point is that Kraft and the NHL would partner up in some way from 1989-90 all the way through 2001-01, consecutively. That's a lot of hockey cards!

 

As for the Kraft company, they go back a long way.

 

In the early 1900s, James L. Kraft and his brother Charles had a cheese delivery business. As you can imagine, transporting cheese without refrigeration and modern preservation techniques was difficult. The product was prone to spoilage.

Out of necessity, the brothers began working on ways to help cheese become more shelf-stable. The result, after much melting, mixing, blending, and experimentation, was a "processed" cheese that was pasteurized and could travel long distances. (And just in time for World War I. A good deal of this cheese was sent overseas to our boys in the service.) Stemming in part from that success, The Kraft company would soon acquire some smaller companies and processes that eventually led to brand names we still know today, such as Velveeta, and Philadelphia cream cheese.

One more note of interest to tie this all together: 

 

During the Great Depression, Kraft rolled out a new product. It was a box that contained dried pasta along with a little packet of processed cheese powder. It was called "Kraft Dinner". There was enough product in each box to serve 4 people, and at a super-affordable price, a whopping 8 million boxes were sold in the first year. The product became even more popular when folks discovered that it helped feed US soldiers overseas during World War II. Pretty amazing result.

Since then, a lot has changed. The Kraft company has gone through numerous mergers and acquisitions, and it's currently known as Kraft Heinz—the 5th largest food company in the world. Yeesh.

 

But Kraft Dinners are still going strong, and the brand's hockey cards that I've got in my collection are a nice way to give a nod to such an iconic product. 

 

Do you think Kraft will ever issue trading cards on their boxes again? Do any of you have Kraft hockey cards, or Kraft baseball cards?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!