The closest social media analog of CB radio is probably Snapchat since its messages disappear after a short period of time. Citizens Band radio was indeed the social network of the Malaise era, to the point that many automakers offered CBs as optional equipment. But CB took some getting used to if you were unfamiliar with trucker lingo (or if the static was particularly bad).
One of the best ways to learn proper CB etiquette, short of becoming a trucker or a highway cop, was through buying Fleer’s CB Talk gum, which came with moderately humorous trading cards that portrayed CB life and malaise-flavored gum.
Hemmings’ Jeff Koch recently got his hands on a set of these, rediscovering them years after the memories of the “crappiest gum known to mankind” had blissfully faded, and he found them to offer a curious snapshot of CB culture that would probably seem foreign to millennials — or at least those who don’t drive trucks for a living or who haven’t seen “Convoy.”
Clearly, CB was the SnapChat of the 70s.
A lot of these cards, admittedly, focus on the back-and-forth boasts between truckers and law enforcement, and some others probably couldn’t be produced today because they’re politically incorrect. But by far the most intriguing aspect of these trading cards, at least viewed through today’s eyes, is that something like this could be produced and sold in the first place. Granted, that place is the computerless and Pokemon-free decade of the 1970s, when entertainment could still be served up with a side of bubblegum, and when disinterest in sports trading cards among male school students was viewed with deep suspicion. (Only a Soviet spy would not collect cards).
Head on over to Hemmings to see more of these, and scratch that ’70s nostalgia itch.
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