If you’ve been reading the blog or listening to the podcast for a while, you already know I have a soft spot for Oddball Food Issue cards.
If you add a layer of nostalgia, 80s wrestling, and Canadian exclusivity on top, I absolutely fall in love.
Sets like these are becoming some of my favorite pieces in my collection. I’ll take the uniqueness of Hostess Stickers, Swanson TV Dinner cards, or Quaker Granola Bars box cut outs over graded shiny cards all day every day.
1987 Stuart Hulk Hogan card back
The 1987 Stuart Foods set is a 16 card promotional release from the Canadian snack maker. The cards measure approximately 3.5” x 5” and included a cut off promotional tab on the bottom. These are actually made on a paper stock and feel more like a mini-poster than a traditional card.
The backs feature a bio written in both French and English.
These are also extremely hard to find. An eBay search rarely returns more than a handful of listings, and prices range from $5 to $75 depending on condition and the wrestler featured. I was able to snag a lot of seven of them to start my collection from a collector who lives up in Canada. It seems that it may be helpful to have some contacts in the country where they were originally issued. Who would have thought?
I’ll be shooting to find two complete sets, one with the tabs and one without.
Box Packaging image courtesy of Bobby Burrell
Box Packaging image courtesy of Bobby Burrell
Checklist
Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake
Les Freres Rougeau Brothers
Strike Force
The Honky Tonk Man
Hulk Hogan
Demolition
Koko B. Ware
“The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiasi
Slick “The Doctor of Style”
British Bulldogs
Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart
George “The Animal” Steele
Jake “The Snake” Roberts
The Junk Yard Dog
Here’s an “unboxing” video where I show the Stuart cards I recently received as well as a few other Canadian O-Pee-Chee wrestling cards from the same lot!