3-Minute “Plane-Pack” Series (F285)
National Oats Company, Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Series Title: 3-Minute “Plane-Pack” Series
American Card Catalog Number: F285 (Generic)
Manufactured by: National Oats Company, Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Obtained via Mail-Order: 3-Minute Oats, 3-Minute RaisinOats, 3-Minute Pop Corn
Series 1: F285-1: Back with single line of branding (3-MINUTE POP CORN)
Series 2: F285-2: Back with two lines of branding (3-MINUTE OATS/3-MINUTE RAISINOATS)
Series 3: F285-3: Back with three lines of branding (3-MINUTE OATS/3-MINUTE RAISINOATS/3-MINUTE POP CORN)
Number of Cards: 42-airplane cards per series
Numbering: unnumbered
Type of Card: Food Insert
Card Dimensions: 56 × 87 mm
Circa: Mid-1950s
Checklist: Download

National Oats Company “3-Minute” Overview

The National Oats Company, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was a division of Curtice-Burns Foods, Inc. The National Oats Company’s “3-Minute” trademark products included cereal food products and ingredients of foods - namely, oats, corn grits, cornmeal and unpopped popcorn. The primary 3-Minute branded food products included: (1) 3-Minute Oats, (2) 3-Minute RaisinOats, and (3) 3-Minute Pop Corn.

Popcorn was a major segment of the National Oats Company. They entered into the popcorn business in 1955 when they purchased the Popcorn Growers and Distributors in Wall Lake, Iowa. National Oats later acquired part of the Blevins company and became a major player in the popcorn processing industry. National Oats popcorn was sold under the 3-Minute Town House label at Safeway grocery stores. Its institutional sales used the Butterflake label. By 1968 the National Oats Company claimed that the company’s Wall Lake processing facility was the largest popcorn plant in the World.

On 13 October 1993, Curtice Burns Foods, announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to sell the oat milling portion of its National Oats division, to the Ralston Purina Company. The 3-Minute trademark products were thusly discontinued and were no longer marketed in the United States.

3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Airplane Cards (F285)

During the mid-1950s, the National Oats Company issued their first series of 42-unnumbered airplane cards. Throughout the years, these cards have commonly been known as 3-MINUTE OATS “Airplanes” cards. However the official name of these sets are actually 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” airplane cards. The cards were available via mail order by redeeming 3-MINUTE trademark labels from their three main products. See the newspaper advertisement and mail order instructions for the initial 42-airplane card set below.

Now let’s take a very close look at the above 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” newspaper advertisement. Notice the card back in the advertisement. It has only one line of branding … 3-MINUTE POP CORN. This indicates that there was an initial 42-airplane card set of 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 1 (F285-1) with only a single-line of branding. As of 12/30/2016, to the best of our knowledge we have been unable to physically obtain or receive any scans of these F285-1 airplane cards … this just means that they are very scarce … if not rare! Skytamer Images enlarged a section of the above advertisement that contained the image of the card back. The image was then resized and overlaid on the same image from the F285-3 set. It was a perfect match except for the single-line of branding versus the three-lines of branding. We therefore concluded that the set does indeed exist, and seems to be exceptionally rare. Any help with scans of these initial F285-1 cards would certainly be appreciated. For talking purposes, computer enhanced sample card fronts and backs of the three F285 42-airplane card sets are presented below.

As noted above, the initial series of 3-Minute “Plane-Pack” Series 1 (F285-1) of 42-airplane cards was issued to promote the National Oats Company’s 3-MINUTE most popular trademark product … 3-MINUTE POP CORN. The card backs contained the following single line of branding … 3-MINUTE POP CORN.

Evidently the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 1 promotion worked well for the National Oats Company’s 3-MINUTE POP CORN product line, and a second series was issued. The second series of 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 2 (F285-2) 42-airplane card set shared the same card fronts and backs as the F285-1 initial series, with the exception of the branding on the reverse side. This second series of 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 2 (F285-2) 42-airplane cards contained the following two-lines of branding on the reverse sides … 3-MINUTE OATS/3-MINUTE RAISINOATS. It appears that both the single-line F285-1 and the two-line F285-2 airplane card sets were being issued during the same timeframe. Between the two sets, the National Oats Company was able to promote all three of their most popular 3-MINUTE trademarked products.

Later, the first two series of the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” were discontinued in favor of a third 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 3 (F285-3) set of 42-airplane cards.

Again, this third set used the same fronts and backs as the previous two sets with the exception of the branding on the reverse side. This third set of 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 3 (F285-3) utilized the following three lines of branding surrounded by a rectangular box … 3-MINUTE OATS/3-MINUTE RAISINOATS/3-MINUTE POP CORN. This third set (F285-3) was most likely issued due to financial considerations. The issuance of this third set (F285-3) allowed the National Oats Company to consolidate and promote all three of their 3-MINUTE trademarked products at one time. The 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 3 (F285-3) set is the most commonly recognized the three sets for the last 60+ years. Basically, we did not have a clue that the first two 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” sets ever existed. At this time, the original issue dates of the three F285 42-airplane card sets appears to be lost in history.

The fronts of the cards show only American aircraft from the early to mid-1950s. The aircraft artwork is the same that was used in several contemporary aircraft card sets of that era, and are discussed later in this article.

The backs of the cards are also the same as their contemporary sets with the exception of the product branding on the reverse side. The backs of the cards were printed in a portrait (vertical) format with black ink and arranged in a vertical stack of the following four segments:

1. The card title (aircraft designation);
2. A brief descriptive text of the aircraft;
3. A simplistic 3-view OML (outer mold line) drawing of the aircraft (Note, in some cases the drawing was not included since it was “CLASSIFIED”; and
4. Product branding at the bottom of the card. The cards measure 56 × 87 mm. The generic American Card Catalog reference number for the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” 42-airplane card series is F285.

3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series Image Guides

Images-Guides for all three of the 3-Minute Oats “Plane-Pack” series of 42-airplane cards are shown below. Please keep in mind that actual cards or scans of the initial “Plane-Pack” (F285-1) 42-airplane card set have yet to surface. This single branding line set is therefore being presented as a FYI set with only computer simulated images. The other two 3-Minute “Plane-Pack” F285-2 and F285-3 use both computer enhanced/simulated and direct scanned images.

7

Contemporary Sets

The 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” airplane cards were most likely printed by the Whitman Publishing Company, Racine, Wisconsin, which also had their own anonymous square corners versions of these cards. Whitman Publishing, was a long-time subsidiary of Western Publishing, and was a children’s book publishing company that was popular from the early 1900s to the mid-1970s. Whitman published a variety of children’s books, including Westerns, Mysteries, Science Fiction, Adventure stories, and various others. Whitman also published authorized editions of popular television shows, such as Hawaii Five-O, Roy Rogers, Lassie, and book adaptions of many Walt Disney films. Their main genre of publishing was Westerns and Mystery, but they encompassed many other genres including playing cards. If you were a coin collector during this era, you bought Whitman Coin Albums for your collections.

Apparently, the Whitman Publishing Company, either printed or authorized various printings of this 42-airplane card set for other companies. All of these aircraft card sets used the same color airplane photos on the card fronts with identical reverses except for product branding. These companies an airplane card sets included:

1. Hood Country Peach Ice Cream’s “Airplanes” (F49) series.
2. Carnation Corn Flakes’ “Aircraft Recognition Cards” with five distinct (F270-1) series.
3. 3-Minute Oats’ “Plane-Pack” (F285) with three distinct 42-airplane card sets.
4. Whitman also issued at least two sets of 12 borderless square-cornered airplane cards. One of these sets is titled “Trading cards - Series B”. There was at least one other known set since Skytamer Images has two airplane cards that were not included in the “B” set. The anonymous Whitman cards had no company or set identifiers on the reverse side and were ready for product branding overprinting.
5. There was also a 42-card set issued via Oak Manufacturing Company’s “Premiere Trading Cards, Airplanes” (R724-1). These cards were issued in a traditional non-sports square cornered card format with dimensions of 67 × 95 mm. These cards shared the airplane photos and descriptive text/3-view drawings as of the previous noted issues.

Of the four sets listed above, the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” sets were by far the toughest to collect. Of the three F285 sets, the third set (F285-3) with the three lines of boxed branding would be the easiest set to complete. However, we would probably rate this particular set has SCARCE. The second set (F285-2) with two lines of branding, we would consider to be SEMI-RARE. As of 12/30/2016, we have scans of only nine of the 42 cards in the set. The scans of the nine cards, were provided to Skytamer Images by Lee Kalk. The first set (F285-1) should be considered as RARE. Currently we have no scans of these cards in our archive. The only image that we know evidence that shows the existence of this set is included in the newspaper advertisement shown near the top of this page. Therefore all of the images related to the F285-1 set are computer-generated as FYI images. If you should by chance have any of these F285-1 cards, please let us know.

3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” (F285) Checklists

The following checklists lists the 126-airplane cards in the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” (F285) series of 3 × 42-airplane cards. Please remember that of cards and the sets are unnumbered. The numbers shown in the checklist are merely the alphabetical sequence number of the individual cards.

Special Thanks

Skytamer Images would like to thank and acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to this webpage:

1. Albert “Al” B. Kramer for loaning us his entire airplane card collection to scan, which included numerous cards from the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 3 (F285-3) set, and for “filling in the blanks” to complete the F285-3 original card scans;
2. Lee Kalk for loaning us his nine 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 2 (F285-2) airplane cards;
3. Pete D’Luhosch for providing us with 600-dpi scans of several of the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Series 3 (F285-3) airplane cards,
4. Bob Dros for sharing numerous scans with us throughout the years, and
5. Jerry B?? for providing us with a scan of the 3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” shipping envelope via the Net54 Vintage Non-Sports Cards Chat Board.

References

1. John A. Shupek: Card images via the Skytamer Archive Digital Image Database.
2. Lee Kalk: Card images via the Kalk personal collection of trade cards.
3. Albert B. (Al) Kramer: Card images via the Kramer Non-Sports Trade Card Collection.
4. Bob Dros: Card images via the Dros Non-Sports Trade Card Collection.
5. Pete D’Luhosch: Card images via the D’Luhosch Non-Sports Trade Card Collection.
6. Jerry B?. “3-MINUTE “Plane-Pack” Shipping Envelope. Vintage Non-Sports Cards Chat Board. Web. 1 July 2015.

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Est. 1998