1970-71 Esso NHL Power Players

By the winter of 1970 I was eight years old and the hockey card bug had bitten hard.

Not only did O-Pee-Chee and Topps have what I personally consider their finest set of cards ever printed but Esso gas stations in Canada were running a promotion where with a gasoline purchase, a mimimum of $3.00, you were given a booklet of six hockey stamps which they called NHL Power Players.

1970-71 NHL Power Player Stamp Packet

Inside Stamp Packet

These Power Players came with a little blue plastic wallet(shown below) to keep your spares in for trading purposes. There was also a soft cover album that came with some players already printed in the book and a deluxe hard cover edition that required you to collect all the trading stamps to complete. There were 252 cards in the set which came out to 18 players for each of the 14 NHL teams.

Soft Cover Album

Hard Cover Edition

Now, the idea was simple enough. Have Mom or Dad fill up their car at Esso and collect the stamps each time. Problem was what happened if they bought their gas at a competitors gas station?

For me personally I remember getting some Power Player stamp booklets from my Uncle David whos father owned the Esso station in town at that time. But it wasn't until several years later when visiting my cousins in a small northern Ontario community that I finally layed my hands on a complete set of NHL Power Players in a soft cover album.

1970-71 NHL Power Player Stamps

NHL Power Player Trader Wallet

                                

If you are old enough to remember collecting NHL Power Player Stamps you likely also remember the catchy commercials Esso had to promote the cards generally shown during Hockey Night In Canada broadcasts on Saturday Night. Below, you'll find links to some of Imperial Oil Essos timeless commercials, aired during the fall and winter months of 1970-71, that will take some of us back to a era when heroes were real.

1. NHL Power Players Promotion #1

2. NHL Power Players Promotion #2

3. NHL Power Players Promotion #3

4. NHL Power Players Promotion #4

5. NHL Power Players Promotion #5

6. NHL Power Players Promotion #6

The above commercials are provided to the public via Youtube by Glenbow Archives who feature Imperial Oil Esso television commercials from the 1950s to the 1970s.