Donruss

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Donruss is a U.S. brand of bubble gum and trading card. Its Super Bubble is a popular brand of gum, and its line of baseball cards has been popular since its debut in 1981.

The name is a conglomeration of the first names of its founders, Donald and Russell Weiner, who founded it in 1954.

During the 1950s and 1960s the company grew, selling non-sports trading cards, before being bought by General Mills in 1969. Since the entertainment market was not stable, Donruss sought to enter the lucrative baseball card market. Riding the coattails of Fleer's victory in the courts ending Topps' monopoly on the baseball card market, Donruss secured a license in the winter of 1980 and rushed a set of baseball cards onto the market for 1981. Both the Donruss and Fleer offerings were riddled with printing errors, which caused variations for collectors when they were fixed.

Donruss' 1982 set was printed on heavier card stock and, given more time to market, a much smaller number of printing errors. However, even though both Donruss and Fleer printed their sets on higher quality bleached paper and with sharper photographs, Topps remained the industry leader.

During 1981 and 1982, Topps sought, successfully, to block Donruss and Fleer from selling baseball cards with bubble gum. Donruss responded by including three pieces of a 8.5" x 11" 63 piece jigsaw puzzle in its baseball card packs in place of gum starting in 1982 and ending in 1992. The Hall of Fame players featured on the puzzles are:

1982 Donruss: Babe Ruth
1983 Donruss: Ty Cobb
1983 Donruss Action All-Stars: Mickey Mantle
1984 Donruss: Duke Snider
1984 Donruss Action All-Stars: Ted Williams
1985 Donruss: Lou Gehrig
1986 Donruss: Hank Aaron
1987 Donruss: Roberto Clemente
1988 Donruss: Stan Musial
1989 Donruss: Warren Spahn
1990 Donruss: Carl Yastrzemski
1990 Leaf: Yogi Berra
1991 Donruss: Willie Stargell
1991 Leaf: Harmon Killebrew
1992 Donruss: Rod Carew

Also starting in 1982, Donruss began their very popular Diamond Kings subset. The first 26 cards (with card #27 being the checklist card) of each annual Donruss set from 1982 to 1991 featured artwork of one player from each of the 26 teams by artist Dick Perez. They started out with a policy of never honoring a player more than once, but beginning in 1987, they started honoring some players a second time in the Diamond Kings subset because by then they were clearly running out of suitable honorees. Starting in 1992, they became a separate insert set. In 1996, they began to be individually numbered out of 10,000 (thus DK sets from 1996 onward are usually more expensive than in pervious years), and in 1997, they reduced the set down to ten cards (thus, there was no longer one Diamond King for each team) and then up to twenty for the 1998 set. In addition, Donruss recgonized several "King of Kings" for extraordinary achievements. They include:

1986: Pete Rose, for his 4,192nd career hit, passing Ty Cobb's all-time record for career hits.
1990: Nolan Ryan, for reaching 5,000 career strikeouts.
1994: Dave Winfield, for reaching both 3,000 hits and 400 home runs.
1996: Cal Ripken, Jr, for his 2,131st consecutive game, passing Lou Gehrig's all-time consecutive games record.
1996: Eddie Murray, for becoming only the third player to reach both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

Donruss was also unique during the 1980s for their card backs. Unlike Topps and Fleer, which gave complete statistics covering all that player's seasons, Donruss only included the player's last five major league seasons and in most cases did not include minor league statistics. Also, Donruss used the same back design from 1982 to 1991 (with a slight facelift starting in 1985) with the only difference being the color and the letter font for the player's full legal name. The colors used for each year are:

1982: Blue
1983: Yellow
1984: Green
1985: Cream
1986: Blue
1987: Yellow
1988: Blue
1989: Orange
1990: Red-Orange
1991: Blue (Series 1) and Green (Series 2)

Finally, Donruss was unique in how they did their factory sets, which they released from 1982 to 1992. Instead of shrinkwrapping the set box (Topps) or sealing the set box with a sticker (Fleer), Donruss sealed the cards in their factory sets in shrinkwrapped 56 card "bricks" inside the set box (1983-1991; the 1982 factory set was not sealed in anyway). The 1991 and 1992 factory sets were shrinkwrapped, however.

In 1983, Donruss was purchased by a Finnish company, who also bought candy producer Leaf Candy Company and merged the two firms. For several years in the mid-1980s, the company sold baseball cards in Canada under the Leaf name that were identical to the Donruss designs except for being bilingual. During the same time frame, Donruss reduced its production, making its cards from the mid-1980s slightly more scarce than its earlier sets.

Donruss diversified in the early 1990s into football and hockey trading cards, and briefly discontinued its baseball card line during 1999 and 2000, returning in 2001.

Donruss also produces anime related trading card games. Among them have been Dragon Ball Z, InuYasha, and Yu Yu Hakusho.

In 2002, Donruss created a set of baseball cards exclusively for the All-star game and the "Big League Challenge" the day before. Dubbed 2002 Big League Challenge Materials, the set was among the first to ever have a pack of cards containing a pre-graded card. The cards were also produced in very limited quantities to ensure value.

During the year of 2005, Donruss produced to some collectors called the greatest year by Donruss. Donruss produced beautiful cards with stunning parallels, inserts, autographs, and game used items. Donruss dominated the Beckett Baseball Awards including winning "Product of the Year" for its Playoff Absolute Memorabilia release. In 2006, Donruss will not be allowed to continue to produce cards, as the Major League Baseball Players' Association did not renew their license. However, Donruss continues to produce National Football League Trading cards. They have been the leading seller in that category for a number of years. They continue to be the leader in both design and content for sports trading cards.

Donruss also produced kids' favorite Bub's Daddy Bubble Gum [1] also [2], available during the 1970s. The company also produced other unusual card series during the early 1970's including Odd Rods (Ed Roth inspired cartoon race cars driven by monsters - there seems to be some controversy as to whether Roth was the actual artist for the Odd Rods series or if others created the images), Baseball Super Freaks, Football Super Freaks and others.