Today's Old School Design takes another trip down gumball helmet memory lane. We've all seen football gumball helmets, but these baseball versions are not quite as familiar. These great Major League Baseball gumball helmets were manufactured in the early 1980's, by Orange Products. The helmets are just slightly bigger than their football counterparts. The helmets have all of the stitching detail of the on-filed cap, but are made of plastic which gives them a batting helmet look. These old helmets feature some truly classic old school Major League Baseball logos, like the Orioles laughing bird, the original Seattle Mariners logo, a really old Chicago White Sox logo, and of course my favorite old style cap in the Astros orange "H-star".
The set contains some really great color variations for some of the teams. From this image you can see that there is an accurate version of the classic Astros hat, and a version the is based in red, not orange. In the top image, you can see that the Mets cap is featured in an extremely light blue color. There are also multiple versions of some of the teams' looks, like the Atlanta Braves hat with the old (and now current) "A" and the Hank Aaron era lower case "a".
One thing that makes this a truly great collectible set is that there was also a miniature plastic bat included for each team. The bats feature a wrap around decal of each team's logo. The logos on the bats also range from many different eras. Some classics you see here are the old school Expos, Phillies and Padres logos and an Astros logo that is pre-Astrodome.
These classic gumball baseball helmets and bats are a great window into baseball logos past.
Cool stuff! I wonder why they didn't treat the Expos hat like the Blue Jays and Orioles hat?
Posted by: J.R. | May 20, 2009 at 01:55 PM
JR-
There is an Expos hat done that way, it just isn't in the pic. Apparently they did different versions for some teams.
Posted by: Jim Ransdell | May 20, 2009 at 02:07 PM