Other Aston Villa Stickers
There is no clear way to identify when the first Aston Villa stickers appeared. In fact there were no sticker collections as we know them until the late-60s. At this stage, Villa were facing their darkest days, entering a period of eight seasons in Division 2 and - incredibly - Division 3, starting with the relegation season 1966-7. So, Villa barely featured in the earliest sticker collections published in the UK
Nevertheless we can go back to some early examples which paved the way for the stickers we know and love, but where to start? Collectors of cigarette cards will be familiar with sets such as the 1936 Godfrey Phillips cards, which had adhesive backs for fixing into books. Do these count? It depends how you look at it! The very early examples below were not cards, however, but an embryonic form of the regular paper sticker:
Nevertheless we can go back to some early examples which paved the way for the stickers we know and love, but where to start? Collectors of cigarette cards will be familiar with sets such as the 1936 Godfrey Phillips cards, which had adhesive backs for fixing into books. Do these count? It depends how you look at it! The very early examples below were not cards, however, but an embryonic form of the regular paper sticker:
CHampion COmic Cut-outs
An early prototype of the sticker album was pioneered by the boys' comic, Champion in 1930, with their Champion Album of Famous Footballers. (They released a couple of other albums too, along similar lines.) The comic would print the 'stickers' onto paper, the idea being that the collector cuts them out and glues them in the album supplied:
Around1967, from the same firm, the Lion and Champion Book of Soccer Stars was issued. There are two Villa players featured this time (note how the numbers are printed on the fronts of the 'stickers'!). Since Villa did not feature in FKS in those days, these are the only Villa player stickers from the era known to us:
Fleetway early sticker albums
Fleetway publications were issuers of 1960s comics including Tiger and Lion, both of which had regular football cartoon strips - Roy of the Rovers in Tiger, and Carson's Cubs in Lion. Again. the 'stickers' were printed on paper and had to be snipped out with scissors and glued in place. The album was reprinted in 1967 or 1968, with essentially the same stickers.
'stamps' issued by The Sun newspaper
The tabloid, The Sun, started printing football-related artifacts around 1970. Their "Swap Cards" came with an album to stick them into, and featured squads of players. Villa, being in the lower tiers, were limited to just a team card. The Sun also issued a "Soccerstamp Album" in 1971-2, featuring football stickers shaped like perforated stamps. They too had an associated album. Each team, including Villa, had team, captain and badge stamp, and there were also FA Cup winners' stamps and stars from the past. Altogether, Villa feature five times in the album:
ESSO (petrol retailer)
ESSO sold several items of football-related memorabilia from the late-1960s until the mid-1970s, including pocket books ("Squelchers"), photo-discs and FA Cup coins. Of interest to us is a series of self-adhesive foil club badges which appeared in 1971-2, and which came with a wall chart to mount them onto. Villa's badge sticker is shown below.
Extras from FKS
In season 1976-77, FKS issued a sticker collection called "Euro Soccer Stars '77". Villa had a team photo (below-left), sticker number 10 in the set. There was also an individual sticker featuring Leighton Phillips (number 77). Interestingly, each of these stickers exactly matches those from the season's standard album (Soccer Stars 1977-78 - see relevant page on this site), although in that case, the photos were captioned, unlike here:
Extras from Panini
One of the main issuers of the late-1970s, Panini, also issued sticker sets along different lines to their standard English League collections. In Panini's case, there was the sticker album, "Euro Football 78" which included a double page of players and teams from each European nation. Among those representing the England spread were Aston Villa, with yet another team photo. Good timing meant they had the 1977 League Cup in front of them. In 1982, they issued "Sport Superstars Euro Football 82", which featured a range of sports including football, and Villa were again afforded a team photo, once more with silverware in front of them (and plenty of it!).
Also in "Euro Football 78" was a section on Scottish football, and sticker 230 featured Andy Gray and Kenny Dalglish. Gray is wearing his Villa kit, so is worth listing here...
One other curious item is the Villa badge from Panini's 1978 set, Panini Jeans Fussball. This set of stickers featured an array of team badges, each printed on a jeans-type fabric. Villa's is pictured below...
Mobil sticker
Another sticker worth including, particularly given the ESSO connections above, is the following Villa badge issued by the Mobil petrol company in 1983. These were manufactured on some sort of silken fabric, and there were about 30 of them - plus a wallchart to stick them to. This is Villa's badge sticker:
Match magazine
Another popular football regular was Match magazine, aimed at youngsters. In the late-1980s, Match started giving away annual sticker books, which allowed one sticker per team. The 1986/87 album had a sticker for Luton's Mick Hartford, but equally prominently we see a Villa player, namely the fringe defender, Dean Glover. In the 1988/89 album, Villa had a sticker featuring Warren Aspinall, and the 1989/90 collection featured a sticker of David Platt. There could well be more of these in existence and we will add them here as and when we find details.
Match also issued FA Cup albums. Their FA Cup Diary of 1986 pictured Villa's Andy Gray as sticker [10], and their 1990 FA Cup Collection included a sticker of Alan McInally.
Our thanks to Mark Hughesdon for images and information on the Match stickers.