Topps is running into a bit of a Heritage insert problem: there aren't many baseball insert sets from the mid-1970s to reproduce for Heritage. In fact, there won't be a true baseball insert for Heritage until they get to the 1982 set in 2031.
So I guess we can expect to see more of what was done this year, using non-sports Topps sets from the Heritage year.
This set, Zoo's Who, was released in 1975. The checklist is made up of 40 different animal stickers. The Heritage set has half that many cards, 20. And Heritage didn't use the same animals as the original. Instead, Topps used baseball-related animals.
The Cubs were the big winner, with three of the 20 cards.
So where does Topps go from here in 2025 and beyond. I did a quick look on Trading Card Database at their non-sports sets from 1976 - 1981 and here's what I found:
1976: King Kong, Wacky Packages, Hysterical History, Autos of 1977, Happy Days, Star Trek, Welcome Back Kotter
1977: Star Wars, Charlie's Angels
1978: Close Encounters, Grease, Jaws 2, Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, Mork & Mindy, Three's Company
1979: Alien, Star Trek, Moonraker, Rocky II, The Black Hole, Wacky Packages, Buck Rogers, Incredible Hulk
1980: Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, Wacky Packages, Weird Wheels
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Most of these are movies or TV shows, so those won't translate into anything for a baseball card set. Same with Wacky Packages. I really don't know what they'll be able to do or if they'll just forget about trying to recreate old sets.
This is a turning point in Heritage, it's never gone to a non-sports set for inserts, that's Archives behavior.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they have the rights to use the Hostess designs? I guess they'd be in this year if they did, so probably not. I would think they CAN use the Drake's designs since those were explicitly Topps-branded cards, but we're a few years away from that. They've done Wacky Packages baseball before, but it kind of sucked. Still, I think we may see it again in next year's Heritage.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago Cubs card is kinda cute. The other two are just annoying. At least a put of those two players on there somewhere.
ReplyDelete1977 Topps Star Wars is very nostalgic to me, so I'm hoping Topps use it in their 2026 Heritage product.
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