Sunday Fun-Day Fun-Facts

The Fleer Corporation was founded by Frank Fleer in 1885 and was the first company to successfully manufacture bubblegum. Fleer originally developed a bubblegum called Blibber-Blubber in 1906 but it was never marketed to the public. In 1928, Fleer improved the Blibber-Blubber formula to produce the first commercially successful bubblegum, Dubble Bubble.



Fleer produced two benchmark sets in the 1980s. In 1984, Fleer was the only card manufacturer to release a Roger Clemens card in their 1984 Fleer Baseball Update Set. The update set also included the first card of future Hall Of Famer Kirby Puckett.

In 1986 Fleer helped to resurrect the basketball card industry with their 1986-87 Fleer Basketball set which included rookie cards of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. This set is considered by many as the "1952 Topps of basketball."

In late May 2005, Fleer suspended its trading card operations. Upper Deck won the Fleer name, along with their die-cast toy business, at a price of $6.1 million. Oddly enough, just one year earlier, Upper Deck tendered an offer of $25 million which was rejected by Fleer.

Since 1992, Fleer has been owned by the Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. and now Upper Deck.