I think this fits here…
I recall buying Topps baseball cards (in wax packs) up until 1990 or so. They all came with a stick of that ubitquitous, dried-out bubble gum that had a unique flavor. Soon after, I lost touch with card-collecting, and I saw on the shelf a few years ago some packs of cards that sold for four dollars or so—which shocked me. When did the gum cease to be included, and why?
I used to collect and they generally stopped putting gum in card packs sometime in the early 90’s. In the card companies eyes, nobody seemed to like the gum and, by that time, the attraction was clearly whatever hot rookie or “chaser” card there might be in the pack.
Since then, I believe there were attempts to put the gum back in the packs but I don’t know how successful they were. Along with other sports cards, the whole baseball card market collapsed in the 90’s and has never really recovered. As for me, it’s been quite a few years since I bought a pack so I couldn’t tell you what they do now. For one thing, I rarely–if ever–see new baseball, basketball, or football card packs for sale outside of hobby/sports memorabilia stores. I don’t think kids are all that interested in sports cards anymore.
One big factor behind the decline of sports cards was the rise of playable trading cards. In the early Nineties there was a sudden surge in games like Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering and a multitude of others. These were card games but essentially sold in the bubblegum card format in little foil packs.
These things had all the best points of bubblegum cards in that they were collectable, tradable etc. the artwork was nice, there were essentially menaingless ‘stats’ for the ggeks and the rare cards were real finds in packs. But they had the massive added advantage that they were an actual playable game in their own right. Not only did you get somethingpretty and collectable that you could obsess over the minutiae of, but they were also usefu. A highly valued or rare card wasn’t just valuable because it was. Valuable cards could be used to win games. The games themselves were social events and you could play to win even more cards.
And that all but sealed the fate of bubblegum cards. They just couldn’t compete with playable trading cards.
Not to mention baseball ain’t what it used to be.
The gum also used to damage the cards.
The reason Topps stopped including bubble gum with baseball cards is because the gum was taking the printing off of the cards, which was a complaint with collectors. However, a few of Topps’s card lines do feature a (wrapped) piece of gum, to recreate the old-tyme feel.
As for non-collectable-card-game cards no longer being popular, I don’t know. Topps is still making baseball and other sports cards, and the revivals of their humor lines “Wacky Packages” and “Garbage Pail Kids” are apparently selling like hotcakes in the New York metropolitan area.
Topps’s website. Besides all of their other lines, Topps is even making a new line of onlne-only cards (one each week) with a news story. Very interesting coming from a company who has devoted cards to varied subjects over the years from the life of John F. Kennedy to the weapons and key people of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Former Baseball Card AficianadoTM chiming in.
Topps dropped the gum in 1992 when they switched from the old style cardboard backing to a new cardboard backing with a finish to it. Very similar to the old Topps Tiffany sets of the 80s.
The CCG craze didn’t really start until the mid 90s, long after Topps had abandoned the gum and sports cards became about rare Insert cards.
The Topps online thing is called eTopps, which Topps initially positioned as a stock market alternative (it debuted in 2000) and is now being pushed more towards a collectible cards/fantasy game hub.
You know what I haven’t had in a while? Big League Chew.
Thanks, all, for settling that for me. I don’t guess I ever noticed, but I might have guessed that a shim among differently-sized pieces of cardboard was bad news as to structural integrity—to say nothing of the ink wearing off!
Oh my goodness, I loved it so much, it was irritating. It had that all-consuming flavor that made you want to chew a whole pack at once. Am I the only one who had such a compulsion?
I don’t miss the cheek-rending sweetness of the gum, but boy do I miss the wax-paper packages.
(I hate trying to open new card packs.)
Nope… hard to put it away and not eat the whole damned thing :D.
chew… eat, same thing right 
Although it is true that Topps does do online cards, the “Topps Chronicles” series I referred to is a actual trading card series you can hold in your hand that can only be bought on Topps’ website.
Huh, what do you know.
I’ve been getting all the Topps Chronicles emails in an eTopps newsletter, I just assumed they were connected what with the “Order Online” subject of the email.