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1946+ “Wings of Today” (F279-38)
Quaker Oats Company, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Series Title: Wings of Today
American Card Catalog No.: F279-38
Manufactured by: Quaker Oats Company
Package Designed with: Quaker Sparkies Cereal Boxes
Country: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Number of Cards: 24
Card Numbering: 1 - 12
Card Dimensions (with full borders): 6.38 × 4.175 inches
Circa: 1946+
Background
During the early days of World War II up through the postwar era, the Quaker Company issued three series of breakfast cereal Package Design (PD) airplane trading card sets. The following three card sets were printed on the backs of Quaker Puffed Rice Sparkies and Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies breakfast cereal boxes.
The genesis of these airplane trade card series was the Little Orphan Annie radio show of the 1930s! Little Orphan Annie was adapted to a 15-minute radio show that debuted on WGN Chicago at 5:45 pm EST on April 6, 1931, and eventually aired from coast to coast on NBC’s Blue Network. The show was one of the first comic strips adapted to radio, attracted about 6 million fans, and left the air in 1942. The show was initially sponsored by Ovaltine, a flavored milk supplement. The scripts for the show were written by Ovaltine’s Chicago ad agency staff, and concentrated on pitching Ovaltine, using almost seven minutes of each broadcast to do so. Fans could redeem Ovaltine proofs of purchase for a secret decoder ring or badge that decoded brief messages airing in the last moments of the show. However in 1940, Ovaltine dropped the Little Orphan Annie show in favor of Captain Midnight. The Quaker Company became the show’s new sponsor and brought the fictional aviator/combat pilot Captain Sparks to the show. Sparks eventually became the star, relegating Annie to a secondary player. On the backs of Quaker Sparkies cereal boxes, kids could cut out collectible cards of the “Home Defense Series.”
After Annie was cancelled in 1942, and the “Home Defense Series” (F279-7) had ran its course, Quaker introduced the “Wings of Victory” series (F279-19).
The Wings of Victory
series contained two sets of 12 package design airplane trade cards.
The first series, cards 1 - 12 , used the very same package design format as the Home Defense Series (F279-7).
The second series, cards 14 - 25, was similar to the first, however the cards were slightly smaller.
The cards all featured American combat aircraft.
Card 13 was skipped.
So the set was in reality skip-numbered.
The third set in the series was the “Wings of Today ” (F279-38) post World War II set. This set of twelve cards featured American built general aviation (private) aircraft.
The “Wings of Today” Series
The twelve cards in the “Wings of Today” use the same basic format as its predecessor, the “Wings of Victory” (F279-19) package design Series 2 set. All of the cards feature American built post-war civilian or general aviation aircraft. The attractive color artwork is surrounded by a generous white border. The “Wings of Today” logo, shown below, also contains the card number. The card title, with a brief narration, is located on the lower portion of the cards. The card number is repeated in the bottom border in the following format: “NUMBER 1 OF A SERIES … SAVE THEM ALL.” The backs cards are blank. The cards are sequentially numbered 1 to 12. An example of a typical “Wings of Today” card is shown below. The American Card Catalog Reference Number for the series is F279-38.
Image Guide
The card fronts for eleven of the twelve “Wings of Today” package design cards are shown below. The cards represent a nicely-trimmed card with full borders. In reality, this is seldom seen for package design cards. All of the following images have been computer enhanced for presentation purposes, ie. blemishes have been removed, images straightened, etc. Behind each of the thumbnail images is a high resolution 600-dpi image.
“Wings of Today” Package Design
As noted above, the “Wings of Today” series was printed on the backs of Quaker Puffed Rice Sparkies and Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies cereal boxes. We have included examples of the Puffed Wheat and the Puffed Rice cereal boxes below from the previous “Wings of Victory” series.
Checklist
| “Wings of Today” | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ercoupe | |
| 2 | Bellanca Cruisair | |
| 3 | Cessna 140 | |
| 4 | Culver “V” | |
| 5 | Globe Swift | |
| 6 | Fairchild F-24 | |
| 7 | Aeronca Chum | |
| 8 | Republic Seabee | |
| 9 | Luscombe Silvaire | |
| 10 | North American Navion | |
| 11 | Stinson Voyage 150 | |
| 12 | Taylorcraft | |
References
