A friend who is helping out an older gentleman brought me these today asking if I knew anything about them. Never having seen them before I told him that I would ask the collective wisdome that resides here. I am sure someone knows something about these other than the obvious. How about age, number of different cards, collectability , etc…
The back of the card has the following printing…
Hey Kids!
you’ll get railroad trading cards in every box of Brach’s Choo Choo mix, made in america’s biggest candy factory.
Brach’s modern plant with 20 acres of floor space and staffed by skilled candy craftsman produces over 100 different kinds of candy. They’re made to taste better-try some soon!
Not sure about the cards themselves, but as for the pictures on them…except for the Rio Grande one (which appears to be a B&W photo that was hand-tinted) they look to be EMD design drawings. If you were buying a diesel from GM, EMD designers in La Grange would help you design a paint scheme, and do an artist’s rendering of the final version for the railroad’s approval. I suspect EMD leased the images to Brach’s for their cards?? Railfan and Railroad did a two-part story on EMD’s designers about 25 years ago, I can see if it has any reference to these cards.
Maybe it was—back then! I very fondly remember the big five pound boxes of chocolates my family always had at Christmas, later downsized to three pounds, only to disappear completely in the early '90s. They were premium chocolates at lower prices than the Big Brands, and nothing came along to replace them until a few years ago, when local supermarket chain started selling chocolates, made in Indiana if I remember correctly (Old Age: NO memory!), in one-pound boxes.
I’m old enough to get nostalgic about First Generation Diesels…
