Saturday, February 11, 2012

NFL Football Pennant Sticker Mystery

I recently received an e-mail from Pete asking if I had any information about some NFL Football Pennant stickers that he was trying to research:


My first thought was that these were the Leaf Football Pennants that were released in the early 1980's, but comparing them to known Leaf stickers, I found that they are not the same:


As the picture above shows, the Leaf pennants were cut in the shape of a pennant instead of a rectangle, and if you look at the Bills pennant, you can see that there is a difference in the color of the face mask as well as a difference in the red stripe running down the left side of the pennant.

The stickers in question certainly look very similar to the Leaf set, but do not appear to be the same. I'd almost be inclined to say that the rectangular stickers might possibly be cut from a proof sheet of Leaf pennants stickers except for the fact that the backs have instructions for affixing the stickers to some sort of box:


Looking at the die cut on the picture above, if these were going to be cut into the pennant shapes that were used for the Leaf set, part of the instructions would have been cut off, so I'm almost positive these are not a Leaf release.

Besides, the Leaf pennant stickers were meant to be stuck in the Leaf Pennant Fever Pennant Collector Book, not on a box:


Pete sent a few other pictures showing a nearly complete collection of stickers for all the teams in the league at the time:




If anyone remembers these pennant stickers or happens to know anything about them, Pete and I would greatly appreciate knowing more about them. I'm particularly curious about the "box" that you were supposed to decorate with the pennants if anyone happens to remember what that might be.

3 comments:

Greg Kraut said...

The rectangular pennant stickers were produced by LEAF in conjunction with Arrow Toys, where I was employed at the time. They were packaged as complete sets in a sealed plastic bag, and were intended to be a send-in premium. The send-in program never happened and these never made it into the collecting world, and are very scarce and tough to find. I have several sets available (in sealed bag) which I intend to be putting up for sale soon.

Fleerfan said...

Greg - Thanks for providing some great background information on these pennant stickers.

Erik S. said...

I picked up a very similar looking football pennant, whereby it is squared off in the cut but the pennant within the sticker comes to a point.

It's not NFL licensed but says Vikings in purple & yellow with a smiling Viking with a mustache and Vikings horns - cartoon character.

I have an image to upload or provide, as appropriate.

I cannot figure out the origin.