Bazooka Joe (Roberto Clemente & Nolan Ryan)

Original baseball card art This one utilizes reprints of 1963 Topps Roberto Clemente and 1969 Nolan Ryan to highlight the backs of the cards that featured comic strips from the Bazooka Joe illustrators. I happened to noticed a funny spelling error on the back of Nolan's card too.... "unleased" his fastball. Bazooka gum was first distributed shortly after World War II in the U.S. by the Topps Company in Brooklyn, New York. It was then placed inside wax packages of baseball cards throughout the decades to cross promote products. After 1991, Topps ended this practice... as collectors no longer wanted cards stained by sticks of bubble gum.