1975 Hostess Printers Proof

[Joe Hunter]

Recently, I picked up a rather large collection of George Brett memorabilia, some of which was relatively scarce. One of the pieces I picked up was this printers proof strip. After studying the photos for a time, I realized that the George Hendricks and Richie Zisk shots were the ones used for the 1975 Hostess panel set. However, the Brett photo was a puzzle because he did not appear in the '75 set. In fact, the final panel distributed by Hostess had Zisk and Hendricks together with Bobby Mercer instead of Brett. Brett first appeared in the Hostess set in 1976 with a completely different photo. To my knowledge, the Brett photo was never used in any published set. The question I have is why was his photo eliminated from the set in favor of Murcer? Also, I believe this printers proof is pretty rare and somewhat desirable since it includes the unpublished Brett photo. Any Hostess collectors have thoughts about this?