1976 Phillies Safelon Lunch Bags

After years of seeing these white plastic bags with drawings of Phillies players on ebay - and not knowing much about their origins, I recently added one to my collection. Measuring 6"x13" the bags are extremely thin. So thin, it's difficult to imagine that they could actually successfully function as a lunch bag. Now that I had one, I figured I better find out what they really were...Here are some findings:

Production Year: 1976

Produced by: Safelon Corporation

Players featured:

Larry Bowa
Dave Cash
Jim Lonborg
Greg Luzinski
Tug McGraw
Mike Schmidt

Note: Each bag contains the image of two different players. The one I purchased was a Mike Schmidt/Jim Lonborg, but after looking around online I was able to find at least one other Schmidt version (paired with Tug McGraw). My thought is that there is one bag version for each possible player combination - though, this is unconfirmed.

Packaging: Bags were packaged 40 to a package, with one cardboard player disc (per package). The discs are identified by the Safelon ad on the back.

Front/Back of Mike Schmidt, Safelon MSA disc

As mentioned earlier, the Phillies Safelon bags are frequently available on the secondary market, and not necessarily a rare item. I'm not sure I will be collecting the full set, but the added knowledge that there are multiple player pairings provides me with an interest in continuing to at least collect different Schmidt variations.