Football trading stamps
This morning during one of those rare moments of fond reflection, I enjoyed a memory from my adolescence and thought it would be worth sharing.
Back in the day before cell phones, computers and gaming systems were in every household, safe and cheap diversions for boys were limited to mostly playing outside. In 1972 and in a beautiful stroke of marketing genius, Sunoco (Sun Oil Company) came up with a campaign that satisfied the football-craving urges of young men (and women too I suppose) while at the same time causing (maybe forcing) thousands of parents to purchase gasoline from their retail stations across the country. NFL Action ’72 was born.
Sunoco Football Saver Stamps
Anyone remember these things? For the time (and the price — free) they were a big hit in the Midwest where we lived. When you filled up with a tank of gas at Sunoco, the attendant would give you a pack of trading stamps that featured the NFL players of the time. They had stamps of most all the players on the 24 teams that comprised the league. Like trading cards, you’d collect them and if you didn’t have ones you wanted, you’d trade with your friends. They even had a small blue vinyl wallet that you could put them into to bring to carry around. I can’t imagine how many of those things teachers and nuns in schools across the fruited plain confiscated from those of us that got caught looking at them during class.
To heighten the whole collecting experience, Sunoco published a sturdy collecting album that you could purchase too. The album was broken down by NFL team and you’d glue your stamps into the album.
Sunoco Football Saver Album & Stamps
Now I really don’t know if this idea paid off for Sunoco or not, but since it only lasted for a year I imagine it didn’t get them the results they were looking for. But I know this, I remember the name of the brand of the station that I visited a few hundred times to get these stamps! Ahhh, the good old days.
