When I first starting collecting baseball cards back in the 1970s, Topps had a virtual monopoly on the industry. There were a few other companies putting out their own cardboard collectibles, but they made up a microscopic portion of the market. Hostess, for example, occasionally printed a trio of “panel” cards on the bottoms of Twinkies boxes. Even Toys-R-Us and K-Mart tried to get in on the action.
One of the more interesting secondary players in the card market, however, was the company from Battle Creek, Michigan, known for its breakfast cereal and sugar-frosted toaster pastries.
It all began in 1970, when Kellogg produced a 75-card set it called the “3-D Super Stars.” Unlike Topps, which had always gone with a traditional look, the 3-D Super Stars cards were hippie-era groovy. A thin plastic coating gave them a vivid sheen, and when you tilted them back and forth, the background took on a wavy psychedelic effect. Read more…