Topps
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The Topps Company, Inc.
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| legal form | Incorporation |
| founding | 1938 |
| Seat | New York City |
| Number of employees | <300 distributed worldwide |
| Branch | Confectionery , merchandising , collector's pictures |
| Website | www.topps.com |
The Topps Company, Inc. is a company from New York City , mainly confectionery and Collectibles produces. It became famous through trading cards from the fields of sports, film & television and animation . In Europe, the group is represented by Topps Europe Ltd in Milton Keynes , Great Britain. The products are sold under the brand name Merlin .
Company history
Topps Company
The Topps company was founded in 1938, but the roots of the company go back to the American Leaf Tobacco group, which was founded in 1890 . This company has gone through two dramatic crises in its history. On the one hand, they were separated from their tobacco plantations in Turkey during World War I, and on the other hand, the company was badly shaken a second time during the Great Depression . This led to the decision to switch to other branches of production, and the group ultimately decided to restart as Topps and immediately concentrated its core business on an emerging new product: chewing gum .
Their first chewing gum, the bazooka chewing gum , was a complete success, not least because of the wrapped stickers that the company already included with tobacco products. So in 1950 the decision was made to market trading cards instead of the paper collecting pictures , initially with western and TV star motifs, and from 1952 onwards the first baseball cards came. A single packet of this first Topps Baseball Series today costs the way, around 5,000 US dollars , which is because the company chartered a junk boat in 1960 and a whole boatload boards in this range in the Atlantic Ocean sank, to make room in the corporate headquarters .
Between 1972 and 1987, the company changed in several steps from family business to corporation The Topps Company Inc. Until 1988, when the Upper Deck group began to conquer the market, Topps was the undisputed market leader. In order to be able to counteract the creeping displacement from the sports sector in the United States by Upper Deck , the company Topps Europe Ltd was founded, which was able to establish itself on the European market. After a hostile takeover bid of US $ 425 million from Upper Deck was fought off in 2007, the company was sold to investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners a short time later .
Topps Europe
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Topps Europe Ltd.
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| legal form | Limited Company |
| founding | 1989 |
| Seat | Milton Keynes , UK |
| Number of employees | <300 distributed worldwide |
| Branch | Confectionery , merchandising , collector's pictures |
| Website | www.merlinonline.com |
In 1989 the company was founded as Merlin Publishing Limited . Initially, the focus was more on the English market, later mainly with sticker albums, and later also card series, on the European market. Initially, the company's draft horses were the series Gladiators , WWF (later WWE ), The Beano , Dungeons & Dragons and Desert Storm . An early attempt to gain a foothold in the soccer sector with World Cup albums and national team albums failed.
In 1994 the company obtained the collecting picture rights for the English Premier League and thereby largely displaced Panini from the market in England. There followed long legal disputes over image rights to individual players, which repeatedly led to either association badges being replaced by national colors in the albums of both manufacturers or players not being depicted at all or only in T-shirts. In Panini 's 1998 World Cup album, for example, the Iranian national soccer team did not appear as single images, but only as an unofficial sheet. At the 2002 World Cup , the Panini album only included Ireland's players in later editions of the sticker bags, as the license rights first had to be clarified due to the competing product Merlin Ireland 2002 .
The scandal came when Panini had to withdraw its Premier League 2003 album from the market due to a lack of rights . This album, which had already been delivered, was withdrawn from sale in a recall campaign. Today, up to £ 100 is paid for such a blank album, and up to £ 300 for full albums in this series. Since 2000, the company has also been gaining increasing popularity in Germany, which is mainly due to the marketing of the image rights to Pokémon , Yu-Gi-Oh , Star Wars , The Lord of the Rings and SpongeBob SquarePants , which are strong on the collectible picture market Draft horses are.
In March 2008, Topps acquired the rights to market the image rights in the Bundesliga for 12.4 million euros . However, since Panini still has rights with a majority of the Bundesliga players and also the clubs Bayer 04 Leverkusen and VfL Bochum have failed to terminate their contracts with Panini on time, an agreement has been reached between Panini and Topps. Panini was also allowed to market the Bundesliga 2008/09 album, with the upcoming Topps contract being extended by one year per album.
In March 2020, Topps announced a collaboration with WAX.io to make its trading cards tradable via the blockchain .
Web links
- Official website of the American parent company
- Official website of the British company
- http://www.sticker.li/117,4,interview-stickeralbum-ab-2009-von-topps,item,0.php ( Memento from January 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive )