A Smorgasbord! 1988 Domino's Detroit Tigers

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.

 

 

Wednesday, October 19, 1988. It's been getting a little cold here in Detroit.

But it's also World Series time. Game 4. And as a young Little-Leaguer, you're deeply immersed.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are up 2 games to 1 against the Oakland A's. You're still thinking about Kirk Gibson's amazing home run from a few nights ago.

Dad has been letting you stay up late to watch the games, which is amazing enough. But tonight, there's an added bonus.

Domino's pizza!

Oh man, pizza and a World Series game. Good thing you've finished your homework.

But before the scent of fresh, hot pizza becomes completely intoxicating, you remember something. It was a baseball card trade you made with one of your friends this past year. Quickly, you run upstairs to your bedroom, open up some shoeboxes full of cards, and find the card you were wondering about. And it turns out you wondered right.

You have a Domino's Pizza card in your collection!

Your buddy brought back a whole set of these cards from a game he went to at Tiger Stadium a couple of months ago. The players are before your time, but they won the championship in 1968, and you respect that. When your friend offered one of the cards from the set in a trade, you chose Jim Northrup—mostly for the action on the front. You get a great shot of the metal wire fence and built-in lightbulb scoreboard, and it looks like Mr. Northrup is about to make a highlight-reel catch with all the fans watching along.

You flip the card over to remind yourself what it looks like.

There's lots of great information about your hometown team, and it looks like Mr. Northrup had a more than decent World Series performance!

But now you've got to get back to the pizza, while there's still some pepperoni left.

Domino's was founded in 1960, when brothers Tom and Jim Monaghan bought a Michigan restaurant called DomiNick's from the original owner, Dominick DeVarti. The brothers added a couple of pizzerias over the next few years to make it a total of three locations, and that's what the dots on the logo represent.

As Domino's grew throughout the 1960s and '70s, their locations became known for local pizza delivery—something that wasn't all that common at the time. The business plan was an outrageous success, in part because the company added locations near college campuses filled with hungry students.

Domino's remained popular throughout the 1980s, when this Tigers card set was released. Around this time they also introduced a wacky mascot some of you might remember:

Avoid the Noid.

Then, at some point in the 1990s or early 2000s, Domino's pizza lost some of their luster. The quality of ingredients declined, and sales dropped. I do remember this time, when it felt like Domino's was a last resort for your pizza needs. 

Thankfully, in more modern times the company has reworked its menu, and it seems like Domino's is no longer the "cardboard with jarred tomato sauce on it" that it was during those down years. I haven't had Domino's in more than 20 years, so I couldn't tell you.

How about you readers? 

What are your thoughts on Domino's pizza? Any good childhood or teenage memories? Have you ordered from Domino's recently?

Do you have any cards from the Commemorative Detroit Tigers baseball card set in your collection?

Share your thoughts in the comment section, and thanks for reading.