 | |
| Formerly | Impel Marketing |
|---|---|
| Company type | Public corporation |
| Industry | trading cards |
| Genre | sports entertainment |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Defunct | 1995 |
| Fate | Merged with Fleer |
| Successor | Fleer/SkyBox International |
| Headquarters | , US |
| Products | trading cards milk caps |
| Brands | SkyBox SkyCaps |
| Parent |
|
SkyBox International Inc., formerly Impel Marketing, was an American trading card manufacturing company based in Durham, North Carolina started in 1990 and operated until 1995.
In 1990, The Liggett Group Inc., a U.S. tobacco company, announced it would change its name to Brooke Group Ltd. and split into two subsidiaries, Liggett Group Inc. and Impel Marketing Inc. Liggett covered the tobacco business, while Impel covered its non-tobacco activities. At the time of the announcement, the company had small businesses in collectible football and basketball cards as well as confectionery products, both of which used the same distribution channels as cigarettes. [1] Impel was to be headquartered in Durham, North Carolina and was expected to broaden the scope of the company's sports and entertainment business. [1]
Impel Marketing changed its name to SkyBox International Inc. in April 1992. [2] That same year, the company appointed Magic Johnson as its spokesperson. [3] In June 1993, SkyBox started making milk caps under the name SkyCaps beginning with DC SkyCaps. [4] Later that year, Brooke Group, Inc. spun SkyBox off as a NASDAQ traded public company. [5]
On March 10, 1995, Marvel Entertainment, a comic book publisher and maker of Fleer baseball and hockey cards, announced a purchase of SkyBox for $150 million which was completed two months later in May. [6] [7] [8] [9] Marvel merged SkyBox and Fleer as Fleer/SkyBox International and The company headquarters were moved from Downtown Durham, NC to Mount Laurel, NJ. The company was later sold to Alex Grass and his son, Roger Grass in February 1999. [10]
SkyBox produced many licensed non-sports trading cards, including sets for Disney (1995), [11] Star Trek (since 1993) and Marvel Comics (2010). [12] SkyBox also produced SkyCaps, its milk caps games brand. [4] Cap series included DC Comics characters, Jurassic Park, Batman: Knightfall, and a National Football League series. [4]
One of the first card companies on the Internet, SkyBox branched into multimedia, producing CD-ROM collectibles and games. With Skyborg: Into the Vortex , the company stated, "SkyBox is well-known for its marketing and technological innovations, of which this first-ever interactive, multimedia card line, which is also SkyBox's first CD-ROM product, is only the most recent example."[ citation needed ]
Marvel Comics is a New York City-based comic book publisher, a property of The Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman as Timely Comics, and by 1951 had generally become known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel era began in August 1961 with the launch of The Fantastic Four and other superhero titles created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and numerous others. The Marvel brand, which had been used over the years and decades, was solidified as the company's primary brand.
Cigarette cards are trading cards issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands.
A trading card is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing and a short description of the picture, along with other text. When traded separately, they are known as singles. There is a wide variation of different types of cards.
A baseball card is a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic. In the 1950s, they came with a stick of gum and a limited number of cards. These cards feature one or more baseball players, teams, stadiums, or celebrities.
The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter, Goodwin & Company, and Kinney Brothers. The company was one of the original 12 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. The American Tobacco Company dominated the industry by acquiring the Lucky Strike Company and over 200 other rival firms. Federal Antitrust action begun in 1907 broke the company into several major companies in 1911.
The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures trading cards and other collectibles. Formerly based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of baseball and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards. Topps also produces cards under the brand names Allen & Ginter and Bowman.
The Fleer Corporation, founded by Frank H. Fleer in 1885, was the first company to successfully manufacture bubble gum; it remained a family-owned enterprise until 1989.
Non-sport trading cards are a particular kind of collectible card designated as such because trading cards have historically prominently featured athletes from the world of sports as subjects. Non-sports cards are trading cards whose subjects can be virtually anything other than sports-themed.
Milk caps is a children's game played with flat circular cardboard milk caps. Players make a stack of these caps, and take turns to drop a heavier "slammer" object onto it, causing the caps to be disrupted.
The Upper Deck Company, LLC is a private company primarily known for producing trading cards. It was founded in 1988. Its headquarters are in Carlsbad, California, United States.
Allen & Ginter was a Richmond, Virginia, tobacco manufacturing company formed by John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter around 1880. The firm created and marketed the first cigarette cards for collecting and trading in the United States. Some of the notable cards in the series include baseball players Charles Comiskey, Cap Anson, and Jack Glasscock, as well as non-athletes like Buffalo Bill Cody.
Bennett S. LeBow is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of the board of Vector Group. After LeBow acquired the cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group in 1986, the company became involved in anti-tobacco lawsuits culminating in the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
Liggett Group, formerly known as Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, is the fourth largest tobacco company in the United States. As of 2014, Liggett Group was the fourth largest American tobacco company by gross revenue, though it was considerably smaller than the top three. Its headquarters are located in Durham, North Carolina, though its manufacturing facility is 30 miles to the west in Mebane, North Carolina. The company is a subsidiary of holding company Vector Group.
Marvel Entertainment, LLC was an American entertainment company founded in June 1998 and based in New York City, formed by the merger of Marvel Entertainment Group and Toy Biz. The company has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company since 2009, and was mainly known for consumer products, licensing, and comic books by Marvel Comics, as well as its early forays into films and television series, including those within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
An American football card is a type of collectible trading card typically printed on paper stock or card stock that features one or more American football players or other related sports figures. These cards are most often found in the United States and other countries where the sport is popular.
Loyalty marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives. Branding, product marketing, and loyalty marketing all form part of the customer proposition – the subjective assessment by the customer of whether to purchase a brand or not based on the integrated combination of the value they receive from each of these marketing disciplines.
A basketball card is a type of trading card relating to basketball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic. These cards feature one or more players of the National Basketball Association, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Olympic basketball, Women's National Basketball Association, Women's Professional Basketball League, or some other basketball related theme.
Prizes are promotional items—small toys, games, trading cards, collectables, and other small items of nominal value—found in packages of brand-name retail products that are included in the price of the product with the intent to boost sales, similar to toys in kid's meals. Collectable prizes produced in series are used extensively—as a loyalty marketing program—in food, drink, and other retail products to increase sales through repeat purchases from collectors. Prizes have been distributed through bread, candy, cereal, cheese, chips, crackers, laundry detergent, margarine, popcorn, and soft drinks. The types of prizes have included comics, fortunes, jokes, key rings, magic tricks, models, pin-back buttons, plastic mini-spoons, puzzles, riddles, stickers, temporary tattoos, tazos, trade cards, trading cards, and small toys. Prizes are sometimes referred to as "in-pack" premiums, although historically the word "premium" has been used to denote an item that is not packaged with the product and requires a proof of purchase and/or a small additional payment to cover shipping and/or handling charges.
SkySat is a constellation of sub-meter resolution Earth observation satellites owned by Planet Labs, providing imagery, high-definition video and analytics services. Planet acquired the satellites with their purchase of Terra Bella, a Mountain View, California-based company founded in 2009 by Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, John Fenwick, and Ching-Yu Hu, from Google in 2017.
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