Did you collect baseball cards as a kid? Most American boys (and maybe some girls) did when I was growing up in the 1960's and '70's. While today cards are generally purchased at baseball memorabilia stores, baseball card shows and on-line merchants that sell baseball collectibles, back when I was a kid, you could get them usually in three primary ways: Buying them in a pack with bubble-gum, getting them directly out of those candy-dispenser contraptions at the grocery store, or as a prize in a cereal box.
Getting baseball cards when buying gum was kind of cool, since there was two things enjoyable about the purchase. You might want gum and buy the pack and get the baseball cards as a bonus, or vice versa. Nevermind that the gum was usually a flat, stale brittle square of pink material with the texture of dry-wall; once it was in your mouth with a few chews, it was as good as any other gum. The cards had that nice bubble-gummy smell about them for awhile as well.
If you didn't want the gum, but just wanted to get a card, they often had those candy dispenser machines that were full of stacks of cards. Instead of a little scoop with a swinging metal door-flap that would be on a candy machine for dispensing the candy, there would be a thin horizontal slot where the card would be pushed out when you turned the crank. Sometimes the card would not dispense properly and get stuck, and then you'd have to tug on it in order to try and get it out, with varying success. Nothing's worse to a 10-year-old kid than seeing that prized Frank Robinson card sticking out slightly, but not far enough to get a good grip to pull it out. Luckily, this was rarely a problem, and the cards mostly came out fine. However, getting the cards of the really good players that were your favorites was a difficult task at times. It always seemed that you never got the Hank Aaron or Willie Mays card, but over time you invariably had about 6 Walt Hrniak cards (no offense, Walt, if you're reading this...).
Getting a baseball card out of a cereal box was fun because the cards were not the usual Topps cardboard cards--they were usually a vinyl-like, hard yet flexible plastic card that often had some ususual gimmick like 3-D or a holographic effect built into the card. Plus the fact that they didn't have all the players like Topps did, they only had about 20-30 of the best players represented. So when you dug into the bottom of the Lucky Charms, you were sure to get somebody like Harmon Killebrew or Carl Yastrzemski. And lastly, who doesn't like to get a freebie out of a cereal box?
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