When I was a wee lad growing up in Dayton, Ohio, they used to have Trick or Treat on different nights in different neighborhoods. I’m not sure why or how that happened, but it meant that I could get twice as much candy!
While it was awesome to get Zotz, Clark Bars and Sugar Daddy’s, every once in a while some houses handed out something that made my nerdy little heart palpitate with glee – TRADING CARDS!
Back in the 70’s and 80’s there used to be an abundance of trading cards for not only sports teams (which I didn’t care about) but also pretty much every TV show and movie that had kid appeal. They came wrapped in wax paper with a with a brick-hard rectangle of pink “chewing gum”.
Of course, not all cards were a hit and around Halloween Topps would sell bags of less popular cards or over-printed cards in bags to hand out as treats!
Since 2008, Abrams ComicArts has been “treating” us to a series of books celebrating the art of the non-sports trading cards and so far, every volume packs a powerful punch of nostalgia!
The first 2 volumes celebrate Wacky Packages. These subversive stickers parodied popular products found on the supermarket shelves of the ’70s. The demented humor came from Underground Comic artists such as Art Spiegleman (MAUS, RAW) and Bill Griffith (ZIPPY THE PINHEAD). Stickers like CAP’N CRUD and NEVERREADY BATTERIES soon found their way on to Trapper Keepers and school lockers all across America.
These stickers caused such a stir among concerned parents and educators for their subversive content that they ended up on the cover of New York Magazine. Both volumes of the Wacky Packages books are beautifully packaged with dust-jackets that look and feel like the wax wrappers the cards came in. Volume 1 covers series 1-7 and Volume 2 covers series 8-14. You get very nice reproductions of each card so you can really see all the gory details in the artwork. Also, each book comes with bonus collector cards!
Garbage Pail Kids were to the 80’s what Wacky Packages were to the ’70s. These cards parodied the Cabbage Patch Kid dolls that once caused retail riots when demand for them caused shortages on toy shelves around Christmas time. Again, most of the twisted minds behind Wacky Packages were behind this series, as well. Garbage Pail Kids wallowed in the disgusting muck that young minds find hilarious. They oozed pus, snot and bile, quite the opposite of the rosy cheeked dolls they were based on.
Again, parents and teachers worried that these deranged, gross-out cards were rotting the brains of young America. It only made the cards more popular. Hollywood even made a movie based on GPK that was a musical and a Saturday Morning cartoon show!
The Garbage Pail Kids book has the same sort of waxy dust-jacket and has images of the first 206 cards released back in the day as well as a bonus package of previously unreleased cards!
I should mention that both Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards still exist and new series come out every year!
Keep your pillowcase open because I’ll be back with more trading cards in PART 2!
BookPeople 