The Calgary Molson Flames

The 1983/84 O-Pee-Chee hockey set may very well be one of the ugliest sets ever, what with all the air-brush butchery. I explored this last year....
http://nitzyshockeyden.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-airbrush-magic.html

However, one thing that always puzzled me about this set is why in the world were some of the Flame players pictured in practice jerseys featuring "Molson" across the top? Was this the first ever product placement on a hockey card, did Molson pay a fee to have their name on the cards?
Perhaps the exposure to this as a 13 year old kid led to my current love of beer....

And not all of the Flames were pictured in their "beer league" sweaters, Kent Nilsson among others has a nice action shot on his card.

Was it mere laziness on the part of the company? I mean, they managed to find a nice game shot of Lanny McDonald for his masterton Trophy card...what gives?


Even the world-reknowned hockey card producers at Vachon Cakes managed to find a game shot of Lanny for their 83/84 set.

I almost would have preferred that OPC went the airbrush route with the Flames Molson jerseys like they did with Mike Eaves....nice helmet Mike.
As well, this wasn't the first time that Calgary was treated shoddily by the card company. The 1980-81 set was put together just as the Flames were moving from Atlanta to Calgary, therefore all of the player photos had the flaming "A" painted over to make a blank red jersey.

In the end, I'm not sure of the reason for the beer advertisment on my childhood hockey cards. If anyone has any info, let me know.

Comments

Anonymous said…
They were likely shots taken during practice. It's the simplest answer and likely the correct one.
August 20, 2010 at 9:08 AM
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