Great piece over at SB Nation by Jon Bois on a set of Topps trading cards, circa the mid-1990s, called Topps Big. As the name suggests, they were slightly bigger than normal trading cards, meaning that they couldn’t be stored in normal card sleeves or binders, making then virtually worthless as collectibles. They also had little illustrated, Bazooka Joe-like stories on the back, which were, among other things, often racist.
Those who claim racism is everywhere are not exaggerating by much, and it’s rare for a medium as prolific and long-standing as sports cards to have a history completely un-checkered by racism. As far as I can recall, even throughout the Jim Crow era, sports cards have committed no significant offenses… except for Topps Big.
The back of each card featured silly comics that acted out pieces of trivia. In these comics, every player was white. Barry Bonds was white. Barry Bonds’ dad was white.
As Bois points out, this went on for three years … so if Topps noticed that their artist thought everyone in the majors was white, they apparently didn’t care. And since no one was collecting these anyway, I guess no one really noticed.
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Sports Cards For Insane People: Topps Big, In Which Every Person Is A White Person [SB Nation]
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- jimguida - Jun 24, 2011 at 3:26 PM
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There is someone else featured on the card who is “mis-colored.” Unless a White – in fact, Asian-looking, ballplayer was stealing Willie Mays’ signatuare phrase.
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- agelardi - Jun 26, 2011 at 2:58 PM
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Is it really a case of racism or more a budgetary issue cause maybe the dark ink costs more?
