1983 Hostess Olympics

You didn't think I'd go Olympic crazy and not show you any cards did you? I'm going to start off with the first Olympic cards I got when I as a kid. These are from Hostess and were originally printed in panels on the bottom of the boxes their snacks came in. Just like Hostess baseball cards, dumb kids like me would cut them off the box when everyone knows that for full book value, you need them to be in panel form. Of course if I kept the panel intact, it would likely have been demolished at some point instead of the individual cards staying snug and safe in a box with a bunch of other cards. Here are the three from my panel:

#2 Dan Gable - Considered one of the all time best wrestlers, but he was a bit before my time.

#15 Bruce Jenner - The "World's Greatest Athlete", I was too young to remember seeing him compete in the games, but I remember how big a celebrity he was.

#18 Floyd Patterson - Heavyweight champ of the world and gold medal winner. Floyd was way before my time, but it's easy to see his fights nowadays on TV or on the net.

To cash in on the '84 Olympics in Los Angeles, Topps released a 99 card Olympic themed set in 1983. Two spin off sets were created using the photos and the backs of the cards. One 44 card set with an M&M advertisement on them and this set from Hostess. I don't have any of the M&M cards, so here's a sample image ganked off the net for your educational enrichment:

The design of the cards is slightly different in each set but the photos are the same. For some reason the Hostess cards us the US Olympic Committee logo instead of the Los Angeles Olympic Committee logo which may indicate it was released at a different time than the others. The copyright on the pack is "1983 Finder Image Inter'l" but I'm not sure if the cards were actually released in '83 or '84. The text on the back is written as a newspaper clipping from the date of the Olympics the athlete competed in, and in Patterson's case has a little foreshadowing of his eventual Heavyweight championship. I don't remember what kind of snacks these cards came with or even when exactly I got them. I was card crazy back in 1983 so it's strange I only have these three cards. The Hostess set appears to be more scarce than the other two so it could be that the set was released too early in 1983 before anyone was interested in the games, or that the cards were printed on unpopular products. I have a lot more of the Topps version of this set, I'll post some of them later on this week.