A Smorgasbord! 1987 M&Ms Star Lineup

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.

 

  

It's the summer of 1987. July 13, to be exact. The major league all-star game is tomorrow in Oakland, and you can't wait to watch all the big names: Schmidt, Strawberry, Mattingly, Boggs, Winfield, Ozzie, Rickey. You've been finding wood-grained versions of all of them in packs of Topps cards this year.

 

And just when you thought it couldn't get more exciting, dad walks into the living room, gets your attention, and tosses a small bag in your direction. If the distinct packaging didn't give the product away as it sailed through the air, the rattling sound you hear when the bag makes impact with your hands sure does. 

You open your palms and look down to confirm. 

 

It's a pack of M&Ms!

You glance over at dad and exclaim, Yes!!

You give him your thanks, but instead of replying with any words, he walks over to you with some sort of cardboard panel in his hands. You notice he's looking down at it, and rotating it to a certain orientation. Then he hands it right over to you.

 

 

 

 

 

"Baseball cards?!" You ask in excited disbelief.

 

"Yep. They're issuing them with six-packs of M&Ms", dad replies in a matter-of-fact way.

 

"Oh, cool!" You look at the cards again, very happy with the Ripken/Brett combination.

 

"Wait, what?"

 

Something dad said about those M&Ms finally hit you. But you hear the screen door in the kitchen swing closed, which means dad has already headed out to the garage, and didn't hear your confused expression. Either that, or he chose not to.

 

So, there you sit, wondering if there might be five more packs of M&Ms somewhere in the house. And then you wonder if they'll be distributed to you at some point soon. 

 

But right now, you don't care. You got good marks on your final report card of the year, it's summer vacation, and you'll be eating your current pack of M&Ms and watching the all-star game with dad tomorrow. 

 

Life is good. 

Here's what the back of the cards look like.

The most interesting data point occurs on Cal Ripken's card. 

 

Since June 1982 played 6,947 consecutive innings

 

Consecutive games would have been the more standard factoid. But the innings streak is amazingly impressive as well. In fact, Mr. Ripken would continue that streak all the way through September 14th of 1987, ending up with 8,243 consecutive innings. Essentially, that's more than five years of playing every inning of every Orioles game.

 

As for M&Ms, they have quite a streak going as well, dating all the way back to the 1930s, when Forrest Mars Sr. noticed soldiers eating a similar candy-coated chocolate during the Spanish Civil War. The version Mars created (named after Forrest Mars and co-developer Bruce Murrie) were first available only to US soldiers during World War II. After the war, the candies were introduced to the public, and the rest is history.

 

There's also a baseball connection, as New York Yankee greats Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were affectionately known as the "M&M Boys". Although the players weren't officially endorsed by the candy maker, you'd have to imagine M&M sales increased during the early 1960s as a result of the nickname.

 

In more modern times, the brand has introduced a whole lot of flavors on top of the standard milk chocolate and peanut varieties. You can also create personalized gifts for any occasion now, with all sorts of messages and colors.

But let's get back to the summer of 1987 for a moment. I wasn't aware of the existence of a six-pack of M&Ms before I started research for this blog post. But they really did exist. Check out this full-page advertisement I found:

 

 

 

I can see that ad appearing in a comic book back then, or maybe an issue of Ranger Rick or Dynamite.

Now a couple of questions for you readers and collectors:

 

Do you have any of these M&Ms panels or individual cards in your collection?

 

What's your favorite flavor of M&M? I'm going with peanut.

 

Leave your answers in the comment section, and thanks for reading!