Happy Halloween from Cracker Jack! This neat gift set featuring Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow book came out circa the mid-late 1980s. It appears to be pretty scarce for several reasons I'll detail momentarily. I first discovered it several years ago on eBay, and a friend was bidding on it, so I deferred, though I don't believe they won the set. I was determined to find the set and set up an eBay search alert. Another set - not the same as the one that sold several years ago - came up for sale several weeks ago and was snapped up quick and then resold to me. I do not know who won the set from several years ago, no one in the series book community has posted as to having it in their collection.
The set from several years ago - see last 3 images in this blog - featured the Sleepy Hollow book plus Nancy Drew Ghost Stories and then the Hardy Boys book #63, The Mummy Case featuring a later cover art that came out around 1987. My best guess, therefore, is that these sets date to around 1987 or 1988 possibly. My set, featuring the first four images of this blog, has the Hardy Boys Ghost Stories instead of Mummy Case along with the same two Nancy Drew/Sleepy Hollow books from the other set.
Some clues about both sets - the packaging is identical. The number on the back - CJ 55 is the same on both. They appeared to be possibly box sets online, but there is no full box - it's only a thick paper/cardstock fold over with images of the Cracker Jack sailor boy/dog/pumpkin and cat and the ghost/etc. So, the bottom, top and the spines of the books are all uncovered. Sleepy Hollow is sandwiched in between the other two books. Both the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew ghost stories are not Wanderer imprints, they are Minstrel imprints further adding clues to the likely date of around 1987 or 1988 since Minstrel came after Wanderer. I do not know if there's possibly any paperwork or advertising inside this set since it's shrink-wrapped and I prefer to keep it that way so it's minty as it came. Following in Nancy Drew's footsteps, in looking inside with a flashlight and magnifying glass all around, I do not see any other inserts or pieces of paper unless they are underneath the fold over and can't been seen.
I'd never heard a word from any other Nancy Drew collectors ever about this set before, nor any Hardy Boys collectors, so I decided to reach out to a Cracker Jack expert, one expert to another ;-) I found Alex Jaramillo, who has published a guide titled Cracker Jack Prizes, and he was very kind enough to reply back with a little bit of information that was helpful in understanding what this might be.
He wrote that this was likely a regional promotion, which would explain why he didn't ever know about it and so few seem to turn up. Since the books vary as to the Hardy Boys in both sets, it's possible it was in several regional areas. More than likely kids would have opened this up and the Cracker Jack fold over wrapper would have been discarded. Sometimes Cracker Jack would do seasonal or baseball promotions like this and sometimes they would be regionally offered. So that could explain very easily the scarcity of this item.
My next goal is to find out how they were advertised - possibly on boxes in stores or perhaps in some kind of publication as advertising. Since I like to collect to tell the story and find all the puzzle pieces involved, finding the original advertising or a box featuring the promo would be fantastic, so everyone BOLO! If you have seen this before, have one of these, or have seen the advertising, please e-mail me with more details and clues at nancydrewsleuth@aol.com.
UPDATE: See image above, a fellow collector, Scott, found this ad in a Newspapers.com search - it doesn't appear to be for this full set of 3 books, you could just order the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys ghost story books individually and there was a Monsters book rather than the Sleepy Hollow book, this ad running in 1988. So, perhaps the ad for my set and the first set was run around 1987 or sometime soon after where a whole set could be acquired. But we're on the right track to finding the actual advertising! Very excited to see what else turns up!
