SkyBox International Inc., formerly Impel Marketing, was an American

trading card A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other t ...

manufacturing company based in

Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...

started in 1990 and operated until 1995.

History

Impel Marketing

In 1990, The Liggett Group Inc., a U.S. tobacco company, announced it would change its name to Brooke Group Ltd. and split into two subsidiaries, Liggett Group Inc. and Impel Marketing Inc. Liggett covered the tobacco business, while Impel covered its non-tobacco activities. At the time of the announcement, the company had small businesses in collectible football and basketball cards as well as confectionery products, both of which used the same distribution channels as cigarettes. Impel was to be headquartered in

and was expected to broaden the scope of the company's sports and entertainment business.

SkyBox

Impel Marketing changed its name to SkyBox International Inc. in April 1992. That same year, the company appointed Magic Johnson as its spokesperson. In June 1993, SkyBox started making milk caps under the name SkyCaps beginning with DC SkyCaps. Later that year, Brooke Group, Inc. spun SkyBox off as a

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

traded public company. On March 10, 1995,

Marvel Entertainment Marvel Entertainment, LLC (formerly Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and Marvel Enterprises, Inc.) was an American entertainment company founded in June 1998 and based in New York City, formed by the merger of #Marvel Entertainment Group, Marvel Ente ...

, a comic book publisher and maker of Fleer baseball and hockey cards, announced a purchase of SkyBox for $150 million which was completed two months later in May. Marvel merged SkyBox and Fleer as Fleer/SkyBox International and The company headquarters were moved from Downtown Durham, NC to Mount Laurel, NJ. The company was later sold to Alex Grass and his son, Roger Grass in February 1999.

Products

SkyBox produced many licensed non-sports trading cards, including sets for

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

(1995), ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

'' (since 1993) and

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is a New York City–based comic book publishing, publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin G ...

(2010).Marvel 70th anniversary trading cards
on Scifihobby.com SkyBox also produced SkyCaps, its milk caps games brand. Cap series included

DC Comics DC Comics (originally DC Comics, Inc., and also known simply as DC) is an American comic book publisher owned by DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC is an initialism for "Detective Comics", an American comic book seri ...

characters, ''Jurassic Park'', ''Batman: Knightfall,'' and a

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

series. One of the first card companies on the Internet, SkyBox branched into multimedia, producing CD-ROM collectibles and games. With '' Skyborg: Into the Vortex'', the company stated, "SkyBox is well-known for its marketing and technological innovations, of which this first-ever interactive, multimedia card line, which is also SkyBox's first CD-ROM product, is only the most recent example."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skybox International Publishing companies established in 1990 Defunct manufacturing companies based in North Carolina Trading card companies 1990 establishments in North Carolina 1995 disestablishments in North Carolina Publishing companies disestablished in 1995 1995 mergers and acquisitions