The 1975 Hostess baseball set is a great oddball issue, but its 60-card Twinkies sibling is a little stranger. And this complete uncut sheet that recently turned up on eBay gives us a rare look at the entire set before the cards were cut apart and packaged with snack cakes.
The regular 1975 Hostess set contains 150 cards, while the Twinkies version was distributed in specially marked individual twin packages of Hostess Twinkies, reportedly in select Midwest and California markets. The cards use the same basic design, photographs and numbering as the regular Hostess issue, but the checklist skips around after #36 and ultimately includes only 60 players.
There are a couple of easy ways to distinguish the Twinkies cards, too. The backs have thick black bars at the top and bottom (which really stand out on the uncut sheet), while the left edges lack the dashed cutting line found on regular Hostess cards because that side aligned with the edge of the cardboard stabilizer inside the package. And since the cards sat right there with the snack cakes, staining isn’t exactly unusual. If you want to compare them for yourself, there are usually plenty of graded 1975 Hostess Twinkies cards on eBay.
But the interesting part of this sheet is that it wasn’t a finished production sheet. The yellow plate is noticeably off register; you can see yellow silhouettes and other elements wandering well outside their intended positions.
Flip the sheet over and you’ll see that the backs don’t line up properly with the fronts, either.
Whatever caused the printing issues, it’s a neat opportunity to see the complete 60-card Twinkies set intact, before the cards were cut apart and packaged.
Happy Collecting!
P. S. You can read more about the 1975-77 Hostess Twinkies card sets in this great piece over on Sports Collectors Daily.
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