Quote:
Originally Posted by Zach Wheat
No just 2 sets, at least in 1975. The initial advertising for the Hostess set started on April 28, 1975 with the set being released in all likelihood a little earlier - sort of late for a baseball set. Six weeks later the Twinkies set was introduced as a "test" set in the South. Cal market. It was then that ITT decided to go national with both sets, introducing all cards to all areas. They may have had product distribution issues - but this was directly counter to what ITT initially intended. In July-ish 1975 Ray Faccenda, Regional Sales Manager for Hostess - noted that unlike the 1961-63 Post issues - they wanted all cards to be issued in all products equally. I am unclear if this actually happened - as it appears certain that some panels had to be re-configured for various products. It is probable that panels were product specific. This is probably due to the effort required to re-configure every panel to handle the unique packaging needs for some products as previously noted.
In 1975, Twinkies (1 card) could be found in a twin pack. To counter some of the earlier production issues noted - ITT coated one side of the card with wax to prevent the oil from soaking through (as well as changing 1 of the fonts as you noted)....which is why the pictures are often of poorer quality than Hostess cards....also meaning that it is incrementally more difficult to obtain a high grade Twinkie than its Hostess counterpart.
Z
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For my own collection I'd probably call them four sets. Boxes, Twinkies singles, Cupcake singles and the test cupcake singles. The Twinkie size differences are probably regional packaging differences, so a collectable variety, but not a different set (maybe. did they do any 3 for the price of 2 packs back then? I don't recall them. )
The boxes are slightly different from different packing plants, but the differences are usually pretty well hidden in the codes on the end flaps.
The singles were distributed evenly, but the box cards I'm pretty sure weren't just because some products sold well while others didn't.
But I can see why someone would call it two sets, either way they're cool sets.
Steve B