Tasty Baseball Collectibles: Cards, Stamps, Stickers and More from Food and Beverage Companies, 1950–1999
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Though baseball cards have long been associated with bubble gum, and before that tobacco, a number of other food-related companies have produced card sets and other baseball collectibles over the years, including Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Post Cereal, and Kraft.
With so much of hobby history devoted to Topps and Bowman, this book takes a long overdue look at food-issued collectibles and the companies that released them from 1950, when baseball card production was revitalized after WWII, to 1999, when baseball card production declined after the so-called “junk wax era” of the eighties and nineties.
Signature Shoes: The Athletes Who Wore Them and Delightful Pop Culture Nuggets
Just about everyone is familiar with the Nike Air Jordan shoe, but just when did the practice of attaching an athlete’s name to a shoe become common practice? This text takes you from the beginning of the signature shoe industry, and through the 1980s when the popularity of signature shoes accelerated. At the start of the ‘90s, just about every footwear company was producing a signature shoe, and looking for the next charismatic spokesperson, when they saw the dollars Nike was making with the Jordans.
Eventually, signature shoes entered all facets of popular culture and were taken for granted by the public. Before long, it wasn’t just the most well-known and marketable athletes getting their own shoe. Athletes in Major League Baseball, the Women’s National Basketball Association, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Formula One, the Professional Golfers’ Association, the National Football League, musicians, and even the National Hockey League had their own footwear to go along with the mainstays of the NBA and professional tennis circuits.