I really don’t
know any child who grew up not liking stickers.
I don’t know
about anybody else, but stickers played a huge role in my childhood. Even when I was four years old, I have vague
memories of playing with those Garbage Pail Kids stickers and sticking them
everywhere. I stuck them on my toys, in
my colouring books...
...on the living
room walls, on the kitchen refrigerator, in my hair...
Yeah, you can
say it. I was a pretty mischievous child
when it came to stickers. But I couldn’t
help myself. All those stickers with
their bright colours and different shapes were calling out my name.
And there wasn’t
a sticker that I didn’t like.
I loved the
stickers that had the adhesive ready-stick backing, but I also loved the
stickers that you had to moisten the back to get them to stick. I loved stickers that felt fuzzy, I loved
stickers that glowed in the dark, I loved stickers that glittered and
sparkled. Stickers were just cool.
Whenever I was
in elementary school, there was no bigger rush than getting a test back from
the teacher and getting a huge sticker on the paper rewarding you for a job
well done. Seeing that gold star, smiley
face, or “Good Job” sticker right there on the paper meant that I was on an
instant high the rest of the day. And
every single teacher that I had in elementary school gave out stickers.
Well, everyone
except for my third grade teacher, who used stampers and ink pads. Although I liked the stamp pads well enough,
they weren’t as good as stickers.
For today’s blog
entry, I thought that I would take my love of stickers and use it to talk about
a popular activity that I partook in along with many other people my age. And as it so happens, this activity is linked
to my love of stickers.
Before I get
into that, I’d like to talk a little bit about the company that was behind this
activity that I loved so much, just for you to get an idea as to what they were
about, how they were founded, and what drove the company to create this idea.
In the community
of Modena, Italy, two brothers named Benito and Giuseppe Panini were operating
a newspaper distribution office in the early 1960s. And, they likely would have continued doing
that had it not been for a discovery that they had found. The two brothers found a small collection of
stickers that were made to be attached with glue. They were unsold merchandise that a Milan
based company were unable to sell.
Seeing potential in these stickers, the Panini brothers purchased the
leftover inventory, and began selling the items themselves, setting a price of ten
lire for a two-pack.
By the end of
the 1960/1961 fiscal year, the brothers had managed to sell over three million
packets of stickers, and they soon discovered that they had a potential gold
mine on their hands.
In 1961,
Giuseppe founded the business known as the Panini Group, in which he would
manufacture and sell his own stickers.
His brother Benito would join the company later that year. Two more brothers, Franco and Umberto, would
also join the company by 1963.
By 1963, the
Panini Group continued to be a huge force on the marketplace. In their first year of business, the company
sold fifteen million packages of stickers.
The following year, that number grew to twenty-nine million sold!
During the
mid-1960s, the company started printing themed sticker sets. One of the more popular sets that were created
back in that time period was the ones that featured soccer players. The general public in and around Italy snatched
up the stickers as quickly as they could be made, and are widely considered to
be collector’s items today. Children’s
board games were also made where the stickers doubled as playing cards.
And beginning in
the 1970s, some changes to the way that the stickers were produced lead to the
creation of a very successful venture.
In the early
part of the decade, the stickers began to be manufactured with an adhesive
backing, which allowed people to peel the stickers off and stick them onto a
surface without needing glue. Right
around that same time, the Panini Group began publishing “L’Almanacco
Illustrato del Calcio Italiano” (The Illustrated Guide to Italian Football),
after purchasing the rights from Carcano publishing house.
Soon after, the
company published their very first sticker album, “The 1970 Football World Cup
Sticker Album”, which proved to be incredibly successful.
Thus, the Panini
Sticker Album was born.
I have such fond
memories of Panini Sticker Albums. When
I was just a little boy, I would jump at the chance to go grocery shopping with
my mom. At that time, I admittedly was
bored out of my skull when it came to standing in the aisles of the grocery
store. My mother was (and still is) a
very fussy shopper, and she would often spend an average of ten minutes in each
aisle, trying to decide what she wanted to buy.
But then we got
to the front checkouts, and I was in heaven.
At that time, my
mom’s favourite grocery store was a little supermarket called O.K. Economy (it’s
since been replaced by a dining establishment after closing up shop in the
early 1990s). And at the end of each
cash register was the magazine rack.
There were Archie Digests, Reader’s Digests, tabloids, and horoscope
books.
And on the
bottom racks were where the Panini sticker albums (as well as Diamond brand albums, which were more common here in Canada) and packages of stickers were
kept, and if I were behaving well in the store, she would buy me three packages
of stickers for the sticker album that I was using at the time.
The packages of
stickers were something along the lines of 49 cents for each package, of which
each package contained anywhere from five to seven stickers.
When you opened
up the sticker album, you would see a whole bunch of numbered squares on each
page, kind of like this.
In each package
of stickers, the stickers were labelled with a different number. All you would have to do is locate the number
of the sticker that corresponded with the numbered space within the album. All you would then have to do is stick the
sticker on the space.
Each album
contained at least one hundred stickers within the pages. Most of the stickers were standard sized, but
there were also some instances in which you would need a set of two or four
stickers to stick together to create a bigger picture (for instance, to fill in
the sticker picture, you’d need stickers 18-21).
The more
stickers you bought, the better chance you had of completing a sticker
album...but because the stickers came in random packages, sometimes you would
inevitably get doubles, triples, or even quadruple copies of stickers.
Of course, this
lead to a whole bunch of kids in the elementary school playground trading
stickers desperately needed to complete their sticker albums. And yes, I definitely was a part of that
crowd who partook in the Panini Sticker Exchange.
MINI-CONFESSION: In
all my years of collecting sticker albums, I never managed to fully complete
one in its entirety. I did
come close with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sticker album, but the supermarket stopped selling
the TMNT sticker packs just before I found the last four stickers.
That was a part
of Panini’s appeal though. They
literally had sticker albums on all subjects.
Certainly there were dozens of sticker albums that featured sports
teams. It made sense, given that their
first album was sports-themed. But there
were so many other sticker albums out there for kids of both genders. Some of the ones I remember owning over the
years aside from the TMNT album I almost completed were largely based on
cartoon shows I watched. Among some of the
albums were He-Man, Snoopy, The New Archies, The
California Raisins, Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters, and Garfield. But lest you think that Panini sticker albums
were made solely for boys, think again.
There were just as many Panini sticker albums for Barbie, My Little
Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, and even on Troll dolls!
If it was a pop
culture phenomenon, it was turned into a Panini Sticker Album.
These days, the
Panini Group still manufactures stickers and albums all over the world. In 1986, Panini opened up a sticker museum,
and in 2006, the company teamed up with Coca-Cola and Tokenzone to produce the
very first virtual sticker album for the FIFA World Cup. The album was viewable in ten different
languages.
Beginning in
March 2009, Panini soon moved into the trading card business, purchasing famed
trading card company Donruss. Shortly
after, the company began printing off their own baseball cards. The following year, the company added hockey
cards to their line-up. And in 2010, the
company acquired a license to create a sticker collection for the 2012 London
Olympic Games.
Not a bad legacy
for a company that began with an accidental discovery by a couple of Italian
brothers, huh?
It’s good to see
that the Panini Group is still going strong over fifty years later. Their sticker albums were creative, and kept
millions of kids entertained.
It’s been years
since I last used a Panini sticker album, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have a
clue as to where one can purchase them anymore.
But I’ll never forget the rush that I felt looking through my Panini
Sticker Albums, and always being regretful that I never managed to complete a
sticker album in full.
I wonder if eBay
still has any in stock...
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