Topps

The Topps Company, Inc. is a company from New York City, which primarily manufactures confectionery and Collectibles. It has become known by trading card from the sports, film & television and animation. In Europe, the Group is represented by Topps Europe Ltd in Milton Keynes, UK. The products are sold under the brand name Merlin.

History

Topps Company

The company Topps itself was founded in 1938, the company's roots go further but the group founded in 1890 American Leaf Tobacco back. This company went through in its history two dramatic crises. For one, they were separated in the First World War by their tobacco plantations in Turkey, on the other hand, the company was a second time shaken badly during the Great Depression. This led to the decision to change to other branches of production, and the group eventually decided to restart as Topps and concentrated core business immediately on an emerging new product: the chewing gum.

Direct her first chewing gum Bazooka bubble gum was a great success, not least because of the wrapped collection images that are already beilegte the company's tobacco products. So it was decided also to market so-called Trading Cards 1950 instead of the hardcopy images, then came initially with Western and TV Star designs, from 1952, the first baseball cards. A single packet of this first Topps baseball series today costs the way around 5,000 U.S. dollars, which is that the company chartered a garbage boat in 1960 and a whole boatload of cards in this series in the Atlantic Ocean recessed to make room in the corporate headquarters.

Between 1972 and 1987 the company was transformed in several steps from the family to the capital company The Topps Company Inc. By the year 1988, when the Group Upper Deck began to conquer the market, Topps was the undisputed market leader. In order to counter the creeping displacement from the sports sector in the United States by Upper Deck, which the company Topps Europe Ltd was established, which has established itself on the European market. Once you could ward off a hostile takeover bid by Upper Deck in the amount of 425 million U.S. dollars in 2007, the company was sold a short time later at the investment company Madison Dearborn Partners.

Topps Europe

In 1989 the company was founded as Merlin Publishing Limited. Initially the focus was more on the English market, and later especially with sticker albums, later known as Card series, on the European market. Driving forces of the company were initially the series Gladiators, WWF (later WWE), The Beano, Dungeons & Dragons, and Desert Storm. An early attempt to take with football World Cup albums and national albums on the football field, for failed.

1994, the company acquired the collection images rights for the English Premier League and repressed by Panini in England largely by the market. There followed a long legal dispute over rights to images individual players, which resulted again and again that both manufacturers either association badges have been replaced by national colors in albums or players were not or ready only in T -shirts. In the World Cup 1998 Album Panini there were, for example, the Iranian national football team not as individual images, but only as unofficial sheet. In the 2002 World Cup Panini album players Ireland were included in later editions of the sticker bags, as only needed to be resolved due to the competing product Merlin Ireland 2002, the license rights.

A bust-up came when his Panini Premier League 2003 album had to withdraw from the market due to lack of rights. This album has been shipped already pulled in a product recall from the sale. Today, up to 100 pounds to be paid for such an empty album for complete albums in this series up to 300 pounds. Since 2000, the company also acquired a growing popularity in Germany, which is mainly due to the commercialization of the images Rights of Pokémon, Yu -Gi -Oh, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and SpongeBob SquarePants, which strong on the collective image market draft horses are.

In March 2008 Topps won for 12.4 million euros now the rights to market the images rights in the Bundesliga. Since Panini has been completed rights with the majority of Bundesliga players and also the clubs Bayer 04 Leverkusen and VfL Bochum have failed to terminate their contracts on time with Panini, there has been an agreement between Panini and Topps. Panini was able to also market the Bundesliga-2008/09-Album, with lengthened the upcoming term of the Topps contract by one year per album.