1975 Hostess / Twinkies
Marty,
Hostess was new to the game in 1975 trying to emulate the 1974 Wonder Bread football set. Although they did collaborate with Topps on the usage of Photo's, Sy Berger made it clear that ITT Continental, makers of Hostess / Twinkies did not have access to the original photos used in Topps sets, but used the photo's not chosen by Topps. The printer of this set was located in the Cinncinati area and they were battling a number of problems with the initial Twinkies set, mainly in regards to keeping the oil from soaking through the paper stock. This led to a lot of experimentation. Towards the end of production, they were experimenting with inks/layouts and players in the 1976 Hostess/Twinkies set as well, which led to some variations of the black border for a small percentage of cards.
Since the printer had to tailor the layout of card panels unique to each Hostess product, there was a lot of experimentation. A dealer I talked to in the past indicates most of the scrap or pre-production sections of cards came from an employee of the printer. He took, perhaps 30 sheets of pre-production sheets out of the scrap bin. The cards you noted above probably came from this lot. I believe they were 3 color + black sheets - and it is possible to find full sets in each color or a combination of partial colors. I believe black ink was printed last.
Z
|