A&BC Chewing Gum Ltd

Anyone remember Bubblegum cards?!  ‘Bubblegum’ or ‘trading’ card games were, at least in Kent, a popular playground sport in the mid-to-late sixties. Cards were exchanged by swapping and by playing card flicking games played in the playground. For example, you would line a number of cards up against a wall and if you could knock any down by flicking another card at them then you win those knocked down cards. Another one was just flicking the cards onto the ground, and every time you landed on top of another card then you would win all of the cards that were already on the ground. Fun eh?! These cards were mainly bubblegum cards – i.e. they were from small packs consisting of three to four cards (can't remember exactly), each accompanied by a rectangular piece of pink bubblegum, bought for a few pennies. Other cards came free with Walls or Lyons Maid ice cream or with packs of tea, but these were usually smaller and not of the correct flicking thickness.Very important that -  this was a serious business, and I managed to amass quite a collection!

Here’s a history of the most famous (English) maker of these cards (from the website referenced below):

 ‘A&BC Chewing Gum Ltd. formed in 1949, and folded in 1974. In its 25-year history it produced some of the best bubble gum and collectors cards ever seen in the U.K. The company has become a favourite amongst card traders and collectors for the quality, variety and imagination shown in the design and production of their gum giveaways. Their range covered film stars, the Beatles, the Monkees, Man from UNCLE, War cards and banknotes, as well as an impressive range of English and Scottish football cards, pennants, pin-ups, emblems and crests. In the history of gum and trade cards, they will go down as one of the greats. Using the letters of their names the owners had wanted to call the company ‘ABC’, but the Aerated Bread Company (a company which existed from 1862 until 1955 and which was known as the A.B.C. Company) objected. Instead, the partners decided on the name A&BC Chewing Gum Ltd.

Their gum was made of chewable plastic, not chicle (a natural gum from a tree native to Central America). Since sugar was not available without a licence, A&BC produced one of the first ever-sugarless chewing gums using an artificial sweetener. They worked in this way so that the product did not require sweet rationing coupons. Since the children of the time had difficulty obtaining sweets, A&BC’s chewing gum, and therefore the company, took off fairly quickly.’

(http://cards.littleoak.com.au/special_pages/abc_history/abc_history_part1.html).

One set of their cards were World War II cards known as ‘Battle’ trading cards, which came from A &BC in 1965. The thing about these cards is that most of them were incredibly graphic: full of gore, blood and death. Just what captivated young kids I suppose. Especially six to ten year-olds! Today they  seem so strange that it's like they're from another world. But as well as being really quite shocking, they are also works of art, pop-artish and iconic.

The Battle cards were painted by Norman Saunders, Maurice Blumenfeld, Ed Valigurski, and Bob Powell. I'm going to look into these artists, and here is a website for the first one:

 http://www.normansaunders.com/

And a review of a book on him:

 http://boingboing.net/2009/01/23/the-art-of-norman-sa.html

So here are some Battle cards:

Poor old Miss Anderson. Didn't quite make it to the, er, Anderson shelter:

Assume nothing!:

Blimey

Um, I think we get the idea:

Ah, just the sort of images to push on to innocent eight year-olds!
More, maybe lots, lots more, to follow, including iconic Batman (from the US), The Monkees and Tarzan cards . And yes, of course I've got the full sets!