Sunday, May 31, 2009
Topps #4: Snappy Grommets
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Beck's tribute to Al Jaffee Fold-ins. Note Jaffee's name at the 2:45 mark.
Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn: Continuing with more memories of my days in the product development department of Topps Chewing Gum, another Topps humor product I envisioned would have adapted Al Jaffee into a trading card series.
I constructed a full-color, workable mock-up to show how Jaffee's popular Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions series for Mad could be revamped into Topps cards. The exterior of my dummy device showed a cartoon with the answer balloon as a die-cut hole instead of three visible answers (as above).
The answers would remain hidden until accessed. A brad or grommet held a circular thumb wheel inside the card. One could turn the thumb wheel so the three hidden answers would display one by one in the die-cut area. The dummy also showed how the card could be made interactive with a white area where the user could scribble in his/her own gagline.
The mock-up worked perfectly, yet it was defeated by the technical aspect which made it costly by Topps standards. They hated to do any product that involved something more than newsprint paper or cheap cardboard. Not to mention licensing fees and rights for Jaffee and Mad. So naturally, it was rejected.
Al Jaffee at Joe's Pub:
Fold-Ins: For 13 interactive Jaffee Fold-Ins go here.
Jaffee's Tall Tales comic strip and panel, drawn for the New York Herald Tribune from 1958 to 1965, was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. The panels were recently collected in a book, Tall Tales (Abrams, 2008), with an introduction by Stephen Colbert.
Beck's tribute to Al Jaffee Fold-ins. Note Jaffee's name at the 2:45 mark.
Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn: Continuing with more memories of my days in the product development department of Topps Chewing Gum, another Topps humor product I envisioned would have adapted Al Jaffee into a trading card series.
I constructed a full-color, workable mock-up to show how Jaffee's popular Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions series for Mad could be revamped into Topps cards. The exterior of my dummy device showed a cartoon with the answer balloon as a die-cut hole instead of three visible answers (as above).
The answers would remain hidden until accessed. A brad or grommet held a circular thumb wheel inside the card. One could turn the thumb wheel so the three hidden answers would display one by one in the die-cut area. The dummy also showed how the card could be made interactive with a white area where the user could scribble in his/her own gagline.
The mock-up worked perfectly, yet it was defeated by the technical aspect which made it costly by Topps standards. They hated to do any product that involved something more than newsprint paper or cheap cardboard. Not to mention licensing fees and rights for Jaffee and Mad. So naturally, it was rejected.
Al Jaffee at Joe's Pub:
Fold-Ins: For 13 interactive Jaffee Fold-Ins go here.
Jaffee's Tall Tales comic strip and panel, drawn for the New York Herald Tribune from 1958 to 1965, was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. The panels were recently collected in a book, Tall Tales (Abrams, 2008), with an introduction by Stephen Colbert.
Labels: fold-in, jaffee, mad, mishkin, ny1, snappy, swados, tall tales, topps
¶ 5:08 PM
