1979 Hostess brown backs

[Zach Wheat]

Good question. From my earlier discussions regarding 1975 Twinkies brown bar scrap sheets, that is correct. Not sure about the other years, since they were experimenting with brown ink for later productions purposes.

At the time I ran in to the original source of brown bars, he had already sold a number of sheets from his initial purchase. He also cut up most of his sheets into the configurations (2, 3, 4 and 5 card panels) you can still find on eBay. He told me brown bars were printed at the end of the 1975 season.

As you are probably aware, most Twinkies cards actually packaged have oil stains somewhere on the card and will rarely grade very high. That would be a good indicator on if they were ever issued. All of my brown bar cards are fairly clean with no oil stains.

It would be a pretty impressive feat if someone could put a set of brown bar cards together for each year available....or even one year. Twinkies are an under appreciated set, and in 1975 at least, represent one of the least produced cards for the key rookies.

[steve B]

Another thing to remember is that the boxes were prined for multiple packing plants, and I suspect were printed locally in some cases.