MEXICO 70 Pelé and Brazil lit up the first World Cup to be broadcast in glorious technicolour, while Panini brought their own brand of publishing magic to the table. After nearly a decade of making a name for themselves in their native Italy with the domestic football Calciatori albums, Panini now started thinking bigger. After all, if they could win the affection of football fans in Italy, why not also look further afield to other countries? They figured the best way to do this was through the biggest football event on the planet, the FIFA World Cup. Mexico 70 can be viewed as a soft launch because while the Italian album was heavily marketed and distributed, the International version (mostly available in West Germany, France and Spain, pictured on page 14) and the UK edition were much scarcer. Adhesive football stickers (with peel-off backing paper) were still in their infancy so Mexico 70 was mostly made up of cards,
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with only a selection of stickers for first-page tournament logos and branding (including mascot Juanito, the little boy dressed in a sombrero and Mexico kit); official posters for previous World Cups; and national flags and football association emblems for each team in the finals. Players’ pictures – 11 to 14 per team – and team group shots were all printed on card. The Italian edition of Mexico 70 has strong Panini branding – ‘the knight’ is seen wielding his trusty lance on the front cover – while the increasingly prominent bicycle-kicking exponent takes aim at a supersized football. There were no Panini markings on the International or UK covers. Instead there was a map of Mexico with the host cities pinpointed, and a football imprinted with iconography from the Mexican flag. On the
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