Nostalgia, With Bubble Gum

 

 Fifty years ago today Alan Shepard became the first American in space by making a sub-orbital flight in a Mercury spacecraft. Two years later I was collecting Topps Astronaut cards. (Shepard's card is pictured above.) Each pack sold for a nickle and contained a number of cards, (5 I think), a pair of 3-D viewing glasses, (There were 3-d images on the back too.) and a pink square of a brittle substance that the package claimed was bubble gum. If you were so foolish as to actually attempt to eat this "gum" it would immediately shatter into jagged shards with +9 to impale. We used them for hand grenades in war games. There were 55 cards in the set.

Interest in this was driven by the excitement of the new Mercury, and Gemini space programs...and by the card set that had come out the previous year..."Mars Attacks!"

Any resemblance to a certain major motion picture starring Michael J. Fox is doubtless coincidental.

Be seeing you