Posters Are Cool

While I was organizing my cards a couple of days ago, I came across these cool fold-outs that I had acquired a few of over the years. After doing some more research, I learned that this is a set produced in 1970 called Topps Posters and it features 24-star players from that year.

I bet Topps wouldn't do anything this cool or colorful nowadays, but these posters are just really awesome. This is one of the first instances, at least to my knowledge, of a product showing a player's headshot as well as an action-shot in the background. I especially also like how the action-shot is in black and white, it just gives it more of a vintage feel.

Another good part is that the colors vary from poster to poster. While Ed Kirkpatrick's poster was predominantly red, this one has lots of blue, as well as yellow and green. And while the action-shot for the Joe Horlen poster is a bit blurry considering we can't see much of a face and it could very well be that the photo included isn't even Horlen. However, I am willing to see past all of that when I notice other small details like the 3 different fonts used on 1 poster, yes 1 poster (you'd never see that in today's products).

The player's name is all one font. The team name is a different font, and so is the player's position. That makes 3 different and unique fonts all on one poster, a bit perplexing but cool nevertheless. 

The final of the 3 posters is of Ken Harrelson, one of the key player's of the 1967 impossible dream Red Sox team. My favorite part of Harrelson's poster and my favorite detail out of all the posters is that the back of his jersey in the action-shot says "Hawk." This was Harrelson's distinctive nickname and I know it represented who he was, but I had no clue when and how a picture was taken of the nickname on Harrelson's jersey. Regardless, this poster, as well as all of the others, is really awesome and nice to admire and look at. And while Topps may never make anything like this again, we still have 1970 to bring us back fond memories.