These large diecut cards were released in 1969. There are 30 billboard type cards, and 6 cards that have 4 separate die-cuts of individual products. These are larger than a normal card. The Benjamin Guide lists them as 3 1/8" x 5 1/4". Most, but not all, of the products featured on the billboards appeared later in the second series of stickers. The cards with 4 die-cuts are reprints from the original die-cut series. Good and Empty (#25) is very rare. It was evidently pulled from production early on.
Jay Lynch forwarded a letter to me that he received from Topps' Bhob Stewart in 1968 requesting artwork for an upcoming series called Krazy Ads (the name was changed to Wacky Ads before their release). The letter is a classic piece of wacky memorabilia and I thank Jay for letting me scan it and Bhob for giving me permission to display it here. Click here to see the letter and to read some very interesting comments from Bhob about the circumstances surrounding it.
At some point the dies that perforated the design from the rest of the card were changed. The earlier cards have long cuts in them with small tabs left in (similar to the die-cuts). Later on they changed to much shorter cuts around 1/8th of an inch long. All of the pictures below have the long perforations. I would guess that there are more of the short perforation style cards around, but I'm not sure.
Phil Carpenter sent me this cool picture of an uncut sheet.
Check out this Wacky Ad artwork drawn by Tom Sutton that was never used by Topps! From the art collection of Mike Gidwitz, this unused title was scanned from the Wacky Packages Handbook, and digitally enhanced with text and die-cut marks to look like a real Wacky Ad.
