The inclusion of baseball cards in bubble gum packs was a marketing innovation that helped popularize both the gum and baseball cards throughout the 20th century. While various brands had experimented with including small premiums or prizes in their gum before, it was the American Chicle Company that truly pioneered the model of bundling trading cards with bubble gum in 1938.
American Chicle had acquired the Goudey Gum Company in 1930. Goudey had previously produced high-quality lithographed baseball cards as a standalone product, but sales were declining by the late 1930s. Seeking a way to boost interest, American Chicle’s marketing executives hit upon the idea of including a few Goudey baseball cards in each pack of their popular Dubble Bubble gum.
The 1938 Goudey Baseball Gum series was a resounding success. Each pack contained a stick of Dubble Bubble gum and one or two Goudey baseball cards randomly inserted. Some of the most famous and valuable cards from that set include the iconic Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Ty Cobb. Children enjoyed trading and collecting the cards while chewing the gum. Sales of both products skyrocketed as a result of the innovative bundling strategy.
Inspired by Goudey’s achievement, other chewing gum manufacturers soon followed suit by launching their own lines of baseball cards included in gum packs. In 1941, Bowman Gum issued the first post-war baseball card set. Over the next few decades, Bowman became the dominant brand, releasing highly anticipated new series annually featuring the latest MLB stars. Topps also entered the market in 1951 and emerged as Bowman’s chief competitor through innovative marketing and licensed MLB properties in their designs.
The golden age of baseball cards in bubble gum packs is considered to be the 1950s. Production and demand reached their peak during this decade as interest in the sport and these affordable collectibles boomed across America. Kids everywhere could be seen trading, storing, or sticking their latest bubble gum pack pulls in bicycle spokes. The cards themselves also evolved in terms of quality, size, and statistics included on the back. Exclusive licenses with MLB and the players’ union allowed Topps and Bowman to use team logos and player likenesses.
The baseball card boom started facing challenges in the late 1950s that would continue intensifying in the 1960s. First, the antitrust case United States v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. determined Topps had established an illegal monopoly over the baseball card market. As a result, other competitors like Fleer were able to enter the industry. More importantly, the rise of color television broadcasts diminished some of the appeal of collecting static baseball cards when kids could now watch live games.
Still, Topps and Fleer managed to remain dominant into the 1970s by securing coveted rookie cards of emerging MLB stars like Reggie Jackson and continuing to innovate new oddball or specialty subsets within their annual releases. The typical baseball card pack from this era contained around 11 cards, including one tough-to-pull “short print.” Declining interest among the new generation and rising costs led Topps to end their iconic run of cards included with gum after the 1981 series.
While the original baseball card bubble gum model faded in the early 1980s, it had a profound impact on sports card collecting culture. Today, vintage cards from the golden era remain enormously popular with investors and enthusiasts, with some examples from the 1938 Goudey set selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, modern trading card companies have revived premium insert hits, autographs, and parallels to recapture some of the excitement kids experienced randomly opening those early gum packs. The legacy of bundling baseball cards as affordable entertainment with bubble gum lives on in the nostalgia it created, shaping collecting hobbies for generations to come.
