Friday, March 21, 2014

Cataloguing

I've slowed down on my spending spree a ton lately because of a few things, but mostly because of increasing my patience and realizing I don't need to buy everything and specifically I don't need to buy everything now.

Instead, I'm working more on getting my checklists/want lists put together as well as figuring out what Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Gary Carter, Ryan Braun, and all the other Brewers cards I have.

In that process, I was trying to find the photo I used for my Yount-centric background.  It's a 5" x 7" photo that was a giveaway by a local frozen pizza company called Mr. Z's Pizza.


Mr. Z's was a Wisconsin institution when it came to fundraising.  Everyone else might have their Girl Scout Cookies -- and trust me, Wisconsin does too -- but if the local marching band, chorus, baseball league, or kids MMA league needed to raise money for operations, Mr. Z's Pizzas were the likely means to do it.  As an aside, it was bought up by a Minnesota firm in 2012 rather abruptly when Mr. Z's was about to fold.

At any rate, in the mid-1980s, Mr. Z's had acquired the license to use the Milwaukee Brewer name and logo to market Brewer Pizza, Brewer Peanut Butter, Brewer Jelly, Brewer Catsup (as opposed to ketchup), Brewer Charcoal, and Brewer Mustard.  To try to market these products -- which weren't bad, but they weren't great either -- they used the usual tie in: free stuff.


I couldn't tell you how many labels it took to get any of these items, because we never bought enough Brewer Pizza to find out (but don't those Brewers shoelaces look sweet?).

Sometimes, it's fun to have been an accumulator -- though, in fairness, I was a Brewers "accumulator" in the 1980s.  It was just that baseball cards came with people from other teams included with the Brewers cards!

2 comments:

  1. Don't let anybody from the Red Sox front office see that Mr. Z's ad. We're up to our eyeballs in Red Sox stuff as it is...I don't think I need to see Red Sox peanut butter and jelly.

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  2. I'm trying to find out more about the mid 80's 5x7 set. Looking around I see it referenced as an 83, 84 or 85 set. On the back of the cards it references that the Yount "is the second in a collector series of 12". I've only found 4 cards Molitor (1), Yount (2), Fingers (5) and Cooper (6). Do you know anymore about this issue?

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