Editing Topps (section)

===Non-sports trading cards===
[[File:Little Richard 1957.JPG|thumb|upright|A 1957 Topps trading card for recording star [[Little Richard]]]]
As its sports products relied more on photography, Topps redirected its artistic efforts toward [[non-sports trading card]]s, on themes inspired by [[popular culture]]. For example, the [[Space Race]] prompted a set of ''Space Cards'' in 1958. Topps has continued to create collectible cards and stickers on a variety of subjects, often targeting the same adolescent male audience as its baseball cards. In particular, these have covered movies, television series, and other cultural phenomena ranging from [[the Beatles]] to the life story of [[John F. Kennedy]].  The many ''[[Star Wars Trading Cards|Star Wars]]'' card series have done well, with a few exceptions.  Future screenwriter Gary Gerani ("Pumpkinhead') joined the company in 1972 and became the editor/writer of almost all movie and television tie-in products, most notably the numerous ''Star Wars'' sets, while also creating and helming original card properties such as 1988's ''Dinosaurs Attack!''.

Many Topps artists came from the world of comics and continued to work in that field as well. The shift from sports to other topics better suited the creative instincts of the artists and coincided with turmoil in the comic book industry over regulation by the [[Comics Code Authority]]. Beginning at Topps when he was a teenager, [[Art Spiegelman]] was the company's main staff cartoonist for more than 20 years. Other staffers in Topps's Product Development Department at various times included Larry Riley, [[Mark Newgarden]], [[Bhob Stewart]] and Rick Varesi. Topps's creative directors of Product Development, Woody Gelman and Len Brown, gave freelance assignments to leading comic book illustrators, such as [[Jack Davis (cartoonist)|Jack Davis]], [[Wally Wood]] and [[Bob Powell (comics)|Bob Powell]]. Spiegelman, Gelman and Brown also hired freelance artists from the [[underground comix]] movement, including [[Bill Griffith]] and [[Kim Deitch]] and [[Robert Crumb]]. [[Jay Lynch]] did extensive cartooning for Topps over several decades.

Drawing on their previous work, these artists were adept at things like mixing humor and [[horror fiction|horror]], as with the Funny Monsters cards in 1959. The 1962 ''[[Mars Attacks]]'' cards, sketched by Wood and Powell and painted by [[Norman Saunders]], later inspired a [[Tim Burton]] movie. A tie-in with the ''Mars Attacks'' film led to a 1994 card series, a new 100-card ''Archives'' set reprinting the 55 original cards, plus 45 new cards from several different artists, including Norm Saunders' daughter, [[Zina Saunders]].

Among Topps's most notable achievements in the area of satire and [[parody]] have been ''[[Wacky Packages]]'', a takeoff on various household consumer products, and ''[[Garbage Pail Kids]]'', a parody of the [[Cabbage Patch Kids]] dolls. Another popular series was the ''[[Civil War News]]'' set, also with Norman Saunders' artwork.

Earlier, particularly in the early and mid-60s, Topps thrived with several successful series of parody and satire cards for a variety of occasions, usually featuring artists who also worked at ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'' magazine.  There were several insult-valentine card series, plus a series of insult epigram cards called Wacky Plaques, several series of well-known-product advertising parody cards, a set of cards featuring the 'mad car-driver cartoons' of artist [[Ed Roth|Big Daddy Roth]], and a card-sticker series of fanciful bizarre 'rejected aliens' from other planets, among other semi-subversive outrageous over-the-top concepts designed for the semi-rebellious adolescent boomer market.

Although baseball cards have been Topps's most consistently profitable item, certain fads have occasionally produced spikes in popularity for non-sports items. For a period beginning in 1973, the ''Wacky Packages'' stickers managed to outsell Topps baseball cards, becoming the first product to do so since the company's early days as purely a gum and candy maker. ''[[Pokémon]]'' cards would accomplish the same feat for a few years starting in 1999. In the absence of new fads to capitalize on, Topps has come under pressure from stock analysts, since its sports card business is more stable and has less growth potential.

In 2015, Topps started to expand its non-sports category by adding more TV shows, as well as sci-fi with its brand-new ''[[Star Wars]]'' line (expanding into its own Topps virtual card app, similar to [[Topps BUNT]]), as well as ''[[Doctor Who]]'', with regular autographs as well as vintage cut autographs, screen-worn relics, and more.<ref>{{Cite web |title=2015 Topps Star Wars Illustrated: The Empire Strikes Back Trading Card Box |url=https://www.steelcitycollectibles.com/i/2015-topps-star-wars-illustrated:-the-empire-strikes-back-trading-card-box |access-date=2022-05-17 |website=Steel City Collectibles |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=2015 Topps Doctor Who Hobby Box |url=https://www.steelcitycollectibles.com/i/2015-topps-doctor-who-hobby-box |access-date=2022-05-17 |website=Steel City Collectibles |language=en}}</ref>