Celebrate the 4th of July with 1976 Hostess Baseball Cards

Cardboard heritage never tasted so good as it did with the advent of 1976 Hostess Baseball Cards.

I mean …

Baseball cards and food have enjoyed a long and happy marriage dating back to the candy issues of the early 20th century.

So, by the mid-1970s, attentive collectors must have had their cardboard radars turned on full throttle every time they walked into their local grocery stores or 7-Elevens.

Those hobbyists who were on top of their games would have stumbled into a special treat starting in May of 1975 when they discovered that boxes of their favorite Hostess pastries featured panels of three cards on the side. And the non-junk-fooders amongst the collecting crowd surely found their sweet tooth that summer since there were 150 different cards in the offing.

What’s a little tooth decay and spiking blood sugar when there are baseball cards in the offing, right?

The casual sweets or cardboard fan may not have realized it at the time, but these cards were produced for Hostess by Topps themselves, which explains how they were able to leave team logos visible on the cards since Topps had all the necessary licensing to show pretty much whatever they wanted.

Collectors eager for a few more pieces of branded cardboard in those days of the Topps monopoly gobbled up the Hostess cards faster than you could say, “Suzy Q.”

Red, White, and Blue Snack Cakes

Bolstered by the success of their initial offering in 1975, Topps and Hostess teamed up again for another set of box-side cards in 1976.

In case you don’t remember, that was the summer that America celebrated our Bicentennial, and the whole nation was awash in patriotic deckings. The Hostess cards played right into that theme by featuring the greatest baseball players in the land set atop Red, White, and Blue stripes that denoted the player name, his team, and his position.

In many ways, the design was similar to the base 1976 Topps set, which also presented player and team information in a set of card-bottom bands, these in all sorts of hues.

Astute collectors also may have noticed other similarities between the Topps and Hostess cards — in particular, several of the player photos were very similar (or identical) between the two issues.

Hostess card backs are as simple as can be, showing the card number, player name and bio information, and five years of stats (plus lifetime line).

As in 1975, Hostess issued their set in three-card panels on the box sides of various snack cakes products, with 50 different panels comprising the set. Falling in line with other food issues, the card borders included dashed lines that encouraged collectors to cut the panels into individual cards.

Also as in 1975, Hostess designated 60 single cards for inclusion directly into individual Twinkies packages. While the Twinkies parallel skipped around in 1975, though, Hostess kept it simple in 1976 and simply used the first 60 cards from their base set for the Twinkies issue. Each Twinkies card is distinguished from its panel-born counterpart by the thick black bar running down its backside.

As you might expect from a set this size and from the 1970s, the Hostess issue is loaded with superstars and Hall of Famers, including George Brett, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Dennis Eckersley, Hank Aaron, and many others.

(The complete checklist is included below.)

Aside from the 150 cards that made it to the primetime of store shelves, Topps also created nine proof cards that never saw the side of a box. Among those phantoms are:

Get Your Red Hot Hostess Baseball Cards Here!

You might think that rushing out to load up on new baseball cards or hoarding those little cardboard rectangles is a modern phenomenon with its origins no earlier than the hobby boom of the 1980s.

But, according to Rich Mueller at Sports Collectors Daily, the Hostess cards lit a fire under collectors.

The hobby was beginning to get organized, and communication among collector groups was fairly fluid considering this was way before the advent of the Internet.

With only one major set — Topps — available each year, hobbyists were hungry for more and were quick to chase the Hostess cards. There were various reports of guys filling their freezers with box after box of Hostess goodies in the hopes that they or their family would eventually slug them all down without causing irreparable damage to their health.

You have to figure that some of these boxes were eventually gutted of their freezer-burned contents, but the cards were most likely clipped carefully away and stored in more reasonable climes for safe keeping.

These days, you can find 1976 Hostess baseball cards on eBay in decent quantities and reasonable condition, with most singles available for a few bucks, complete panels under $20, and complete sets for well under $200.

Heck, you can even find the special album designed to hold the cards, available by send-in offer, for around $10.

Quite a tasty proposition for 40-year-old cards that put you in the mood for a celebration … don’t you think?