A Smorgasbord! Gardner's Bakery Milwaukee Brewers

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 just about the middle of May, 1985. Spring has officially arrived here in Milwaukee, and your Brewers are about a month into the season.

They're a few games below .500, but it's fine. You started collecting baseball cards a couple of years ago, and you're not slowing down now. The new 1985 Topps cards are pretty cool-looking. And that was the only thing on your mind as you went to bed last night after a good, hard week of school. 

Now it's early Saturday morning. The sun hasn't even risen yet, but an enticing aroma has started to fill the air about a half-mile away. Soon it twists, turns, and swirls its way through the quiet streets of your town, until it reaches your open window and comes through the screen. It's such a delightful smell that it wakes you right up and you take a deep whiff.

Freshly baked bread.

The guys in that little bakery down the road get busy pretty early. It's almost like they're fanning the steam from the ovens straight into your bedroom.

Well, it's not long before you're walking downstairs and into the kitchen. There isn't any fresh bread straight from the bakery down there, but you do have the next best thing: A loaf of bread from Gardner's. And some butter.

You take out a butter knife and a slice of bread, and you butter that thing up without even toasting it. And just when you thought things couldn't get much better, you see a little cellophane packet tucked inside the bread wrapper. The detective work that your brain does for you provides  the memory instantaneously. Last year, the Gardner's loaves came with a similar little packet. Cramming the first bite of buttered bread in your mouth, you quietly slip back upstairs and pull a shoebox from your closet. Soon enough, you confirm what was in that cellophane packet last year.

Baseball cards!

And what about the year before?

Yep! You had a couple of those, too. I mean, how could you forget? It was your first year of collecting.

You stack those four cards neatly in one hand, take another bite of bread from the other hand, and trot back downstairs. The Brewers cards in that new cellophane pack are waiting to be freed, and you waste no time peeling open the wrapper.

Whoa.

You weren't expecting something that resembled a TV set with red borders! But looking back at the 1983 and 1984 designs, you at least appreciate the originality.

What about the backs?

You flip the cards over.

Okay, they're just like the regular 1985 Topps set—only it's blue with black text, instead of green with red text. That's within your threshold of comprehension.

Then you flip them back over to the front, and take another look at those red TV sets. It's still kind of weird. But a baseball card is a baseball card, and they'll be joining your other Gardner's Bakery cards. I mean, are you going to say no to that awesome mustache on 1985 Rollie Fingers? Not a chance.

So, overall, you're feeling pretty good. And now that the sun has risen, you hear the neighborhood lawn mowers start to hum their familiar Saturday morning tune.

Soon, the aroma of freshly baked bread is replaced by what could be the second sweetest smell for a baseball-loving kid like you.

Freshly cut grass.

Dad's been teaching you how to use the mower in the backyard, and you can't wait to be the designated lawn-cutter on a regular basis. You're going to mow those stripes into the grass so perfect, your backyard will look just like the outfield at Milwaukee County Stadium.

Saturday morning. Fresh bread. Mown outfield grass. Baseball cards.

Life is good.

Now let's talk about Gardner's Bakery.

As evidenced by this example of a company truck, Gardner's got their start quite a while ago—in 1928, to be exact. Based on the scant information I've come across, they were a well-loved institution in the Madison/Milwaukee area for decades. But as too many of these stories go, Gardner's was seemingly absorbed by the Sara Lee Corp., which was eventually acquired by Bimbo Bakeries USA. Bimbo is very large baking group that owns numerous brands you've probably heard of, such as Arnold, Thomas', Entenmann's, Stroehmann, and Freihofer's.

Then, in January 2019, after more than 90 years of business, the Gardner's facility was closed down. Bimbo noted that production was going to be moved to other locations in order to optimize something or other. You know how it goes.

Here's an image from a happier time in the company's history.

But let's get back to the cards for a moment.

I find it so interesting that Topps and the Brewers decided to team up with one bakery in the Wisconsin area for three straight years. It's not that similar things didn't occur with other food-issue sets at the time. (Think of the Coca-Cola Topps cards from 1981, for example.) But in this case, it wasn't a collaboration with a huge, national brand like Coke or Burger King. It wasn't even a regional thing. It was just one team, and one local bakery. 

And then you have the card design. Topps didn't just stamp a Gardner's logo on the front of their flagship cards and re-number the backs, like those Coca-Cola cards. They created an entirely different design for the front. All for Gardner's Bakery!

Maybe some of the head honchos at Topps really loved bread.

Whatever forces combined to create these Gardner's cards, I'm happy they did. And if this is the first time you're seeing them, I hope you got a kick out of them.

Now I've got two questions for you:

Have you ever lived, worked, or gone to school close enough to a bakery to smell that wonderful aroma of baked goods?

If you were to compile a "best smells" top-10 list, would freshly baked bread find its way in?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!