Old School Design: 1976 Burger Chef Baseball Cards

Today's article continues down the Old School Design path with a look at some classic, memory producing items from the fast food chain Burger Chef. The Burger Chef chain of restaurants was popular in the 1970's and featured one of the original kid's meals. The Fun Meal was a kid favorite, featuring the title characters of the restaurant, Burger Chef and Jeff, and their cast of monster friends.

In 1976, Burger Chef created a Fun Meal that was a young baseball fan's dream. The bottom of the Fun Meal box featured little round baseball cards of your favorite players that you could pop out and collect. The cards are 1970's classics because they are only endorsed by the players' union and all of the team logos have been airbrushed off the caps of the players. The set I have featured here was one of my favorites, as it featured the Houston Astros.

The really fun part of this classic card set is what is on the backs of the cards. Traditionally you would expect to see some stats, or player information, but not in this set. Each card back featured one of the great Burger Chef supporting characters. You can see classic characters like Burgerini, Fangburger (and his family), Where Wolf, Burgerilla and Crankenburger. Each character is featured in a baseball style pose.

The Burger Chef restaurants were famous for their Fun Meals and the great characters on them and the great premiums that came with them. These classic cards combine the great Major League Baseball players of the day with the Burger chef characters in true 1970's design style. I can almost taste the Fun Burger right now!

Comments

[Cliff]

I miss Burger Chef. I remember having those.

[Jim Ransdell]

Burger Chef was the best. It was a sad day when Hardee's bought them out in the early 1980's.

[Greg A.]

Those discs were produced by a dozen different food companies. The back vary accordingly, but they're not hard to find.

[Cardinals Writer]

Kids today don't know what they're missing. The crappy plastic toys they put in Happy Meals and Kids Meals these days are usually just promotional items for whatever crappy kids movie is out in theaters at the time. I remember these Burger Chef "cards" and collecting them with my friends. It seems like a lot of cards back then were only endorsed by the Players Union and featured those hats with the logos painted (that was a pre-Photoshop skill) over.