A Year of Topps Designs: 1984

Topps followed up their popular 1983 baseball design, with an action photo and inset headshot, with a very similar look for 1984, squaring up the previous round design. Presumably without another action photography to pull of that look in football, Topps went with an angular design that was itself rather unique.

After a year off from hockey, Topps came back to the sport with another attempt to follow up on the popularity of the '83 baseball set.

1984 was a big year for non-sport sets at Topps. They always seemed to put more effort into the design of their music cards than they did for their movie cards. The Michael Jackson set had a typically busy design.

Among the movie/TV sets released that year, the Gremlins set probably had the most interesting design. The jagged design has been done a few times, but at least there was a logo in the design so you knew what movie this was a set for.

Topps didn't put logos on any other movie/TV sets in 1984. Such was the case with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with a design very similar to the previous year's Return of the Jedi.

No logo on the Masters of the Universe set either.

Finally, another logo-less set was the Supergirl sticker set. If Supergirl is not in costume, you'd have a hard time knowing what set this was. As it was a sticker set there wasn't much design consistency other than the yellow borders, and many of them look rather amateurish.