The 1977 (or ©1976) Burger Chef Cubs

I saw an BIN for a set of these at a price half of what the other listing were going for, so I grabbed it.

In 1977 Burger Chef hired MSA to produce a nine player disc set for 24 teams (the expansion Mariners and Blue Jays were skipped over).  The discs were part of a cardboard Funmeal tray.  I'll have more on the tray tomorrow.

The discs have a copyright date of 1976, but they were produced after the '76 season was over.  The Standard Catalog listing for them uses the date of 1977.  You would assume that they were made in late 1976 and distributed in 1977. 

The disc look pretty much like other MSA discs from the era.  They are the same size as the smaller Wiffle discs, which also have a 1976 copyright.

No numbering was used on them, so they are often numbers in alphabetical order by teams.

Since each team got nine players, there are some in this set that didn't appear in any other MSA disc sets.

These are the one and only disc for Bill Bonham, Rick Reuschel and Tarzan Joe Wallis.  Bonham and Wallis didn't deserve another disc, but Reuschel was the ace of the staff in the late '70s. It surprising that he didn't show up in any other sets.

Bill Buckner is a Cubs, so that is how I know that these were made after the '76 season was over.  The Cubs got him in a trade with the Dodgers on January 11, 1977.  That makes the copyright date of 1976 even more unusual.  How could an event that happened in 1977 show up on a ©1976 disc?  Did MSA have a crystal ball??  Inside trade information??

 

 

The rest of the Cubs showed up in other MSA sets and the identical picture was used also.

Here's the nine in a tile.

If you look carefully at the edges, you can see little tabs on a few places.  Remember that I said these were part of a Funmeal tray.  The discs had to be punched out of the tray.  Tomorrow I'll show you what the tray looked like in its original form and as a tray.