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Garbage Pail Kids
Garbage Pail Kids—a series of collectible stickers produced by Topps in the 1980s—combined spectacular artwork and over-the-top satire. The result was an inspired collaboration between avant-garde cartoonists and humorists including Art Spiegelman, Mark Newgarden, John Pound, Tom Bunk, and Jay Lynch. A new generation of fans continues to embrace this pop-culture phenomenon as Garbage Pail Kids stickers are still being published. Now, for the first time, all 206 rare and hard-to-find images from Series 1 through 5 are collected in an innovative package, along with a special set of four limited-edition, previously unreleased bonus stickers. This exciting follow up toWacky Packagesis guaranteed to appeal to die-hard collectors as well as a new generation of fans.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2012
About the author
Art Spiegelman
175books2,949followersArt Spiegelman(bornItzhak Avraham ben Zeev) is New-York-based comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic memoir,Maus.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
April 11, 2012
ABRAMS has done a fantastic job of packaging this retrospective look at the 1985-1986 of these cards that came under fire from the creators of Cabbage Patch Kids for their realistic--or rather surrealistic--depiction of the popular dolls in "gross-out" configurations and depictions.
My friend, Aaron Boggs, who teaches Physics at our school and usually has his ear to the ground for these kinds of reading materials, brought this book to my attention with an email that simply read, "Can you believe we missed this?" And we weren't far off of the mark (this one released on April 1st--perfect timing for a book that reminds us that cultural icons are designed for satirical skewering--sometimes even inviting this kind of treatment).
Back to the packaging (I got to hold Aaron's copy today during a faculty meeting and I almost finished the collection before I had to give my attention over to other matters):
The cover is a thin paper that allows one to see into the hardcover of the book that gives the whole book the feel of a pack of trading cards.
Just like the originals from the 80's, the illustration on the cover is just a little off-center allowing colors to bleed over the bold outlines which just makes this book a perfect nostalgic piece. The back cover actually has a photograph of a rectangle of chewing gum that has hardened and broken into pieces. If the book had a scratch and sniff feature, ABRAMS could not have gotten this book closer to the look and feel of the original.
What Aaron and I discovered is that Art Spiegelman (MAUS, MAUS II) was a large contributor to the artwork and he is invited to write the forward to this collection. The card/stickers are in bold color and a second reference appears in the corner of each to share how the card/sticker may have been coupled with others in a mini series (Aaron had to explain this me)
Okay...I should probably say something about how one might use this in the classroom. Satire. Parody. Funny. There.
This one is really for the kid inside all of us who remember spending our hard earned monies (read change pilfered from parents) at the Stop and Go, the 7/11, or whatever gas station/convenience store was close to you.
My friend, Aaron Boggs, who teaches Physics at our school and usually has his ear to the ground for these kinds of reading materials, brought this book to my attention with an email that simply read, "Can you believe we missed this?" And we weren't far off of the mark (this one released on April 1st--perfect timing for a book that reminds us that cultural icons are designed for satirical skewering--sometimes even inviting this kind of treatment).
Back to the packaging (I got to hold Aaron's copy today during a faculty meeting and I almost finished the collection before I had to give my attention over to other matters):
The cover is a thin paper that allows one to see into the hardcover of the book that gives the whole book the feel of a pack of trading cards.
Just like the originals from the 80's, the illustration on the cover is just a little off-center allowing colors to bleed over the bold outlines which just makes this book a perfect nostalgic piece. The back cover actually has a photograph of a rectangle of chewing gum that has hardened and broken into pieces. If the book had a scratch and sniff feature, ABRAMS could not have gotten this book closer to the look and feel of the original.
What Aaron and I discovered is that Art Spiegelman (MAUS, MAUS II) was a large contributor to the artwork and he is invited to write the forward to this collection. The card/stickers are in bold color and a second reference appears in the corner of each to share how the card/sticker may have been coupled with others in a mini series (Aaron had to explain this me)
Okay...I should probably say something about how one might use this in the classroom. Satire. Parody. Funny. There.
This one is really for the kid inside all of us who remember spending our hard earned monies (read change pilfered from parents) at the Stop and Go, the 7/11, or whatever gas station/convenience store was close to you.
January 15, 2017
Nostalgia trip. I had a collection from series two.
May 22, 2024
The Spiegelman foreword was a great read, but the rest of the book is really barebones. Just a collection of card scans, basically.
October 18, 2012
From my comments on "Wacky Packages": "Would it have killed Topps to include any sort of annotations to" [Garbage Pail Kids]? "Preliminary sketches, anecdotes, comparisons with real products, et al would have been much appreciated. The perfunctory foreword and afterword provide the only sort of context. Fansites already have all of the images, plus many of these extras. Superfluous."
December 26, 2023
I was so happy to receive this as a Christmas present. I loved collecting GPK stickers as a kid. Although there isn’t a lot to read, I just loving having the images to look at and remember, they are very clear, and take up a whole page. Very retro, and very cute, and there is a great surprise in the back also.
December 8, 2020
Interesting but I was hoping for a little write up about each card in addition to the images.
June 21, 2021
Cool little art book with reproductions of all the cards from the 1st few series - cool 'coffee table' type books for those of us who grew up with these cards!
December 31, 2017
This book was a ton of fun. I absolutely loved Garbage Pail Kid cards while growing up, even if my Mom didn't. After watching the excellent documentary on the cards this winter, I bought the book and really enjoyed going through the first five series and remembering which were my favorites, which I considered iconic as a 4th grader, and which were the hardest for me to collect.
The art holds up incredibly well and is a little shocking because of how sensitive our culture has become when it comes to kids. This is mostly crude, goofy humor with a very healthy dash of cultural satire and commentary to boot.
The book is simply about the card art. Nothing more or less. But it's worth it to revisit the cultural icon of these cards. I also highly recommend the documentary.
The art holds up incredibly well and is a little shocking because of how sensitive our culture has become when it comes to kids. This is mostly crude, goofy humor with a very healthy dash of cultural satire and commentary to boot.
The book is simply about the card art. Nothing more or less. But it's worth it to revisit the cultural icon of these cards. I also highly recommend the documentary.
July 21, 2018
I love everything GPK....I still have my old school collection and I have also bought some of the newer packs. I found the Funko vynal pops of GPK...my collection is huge and I love sharing them with my kids. This book was the icing on the cake when I came a crossed it on amazon and I had to get it. It looks beautiful sitting on my shelf. And I loved the 4 bonus cards in the back of the book that was never published.
Read
September 6, 2018As a child in the mid-80's, I of course had a collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards and it was fun to revisit them with this book. (Unfortunately, my actual cards--along with my Madballs, M.U.S.C.L.E figures, Hasbro Pogo Bal, etc.--were long ago tossed in the bin.)
June 23, 2012
Trip down memory lane. I was surprised by how many of the cards I actually remembered.
November 29, 2021
Great book showing all the cards from the 80s trading card stickers. I know I had a few of the cards but they have all been thrown away long ago. When they couldn’t get the rights to the Cabbage Patch Dolls and make a healthy profit they decided to do a parody. From a drawing from Wacky Packages there was The Garbage Pail kids and after a few drawings they found they could create enough to have a series. A great book for fans of the series.
January 20, 2020
I wish there was a 200 page history compendium to this and every iteration of every card ever made. The introduction by Art Spiegelman and the afterword by John Pound are awesome. And the art speaks for itself.
January 14, 2022
After reading the Mars Attacks book, I decided to check this one out. It is an excellent source for nostalgia. I do wish there had been more written about the history or development of some cards, but it is still a great collection of classic images.
April 28, 2019
The next best thing to having OS1 in mint condition
February 15, 2020
Totally Gross!
Loved it, this was my childhood. Inspired all my art, interactions, and writing. ask my mom and all my elementary school teachers
Loved it, this was my childhood. Inspired all my art, interactions, and writing. ask my mom and all my elementary school teachers
March 21, 2020
It was cool to read about how the GBK got started and see all the many ones that were drawn in the 1980s. As I flipped through I remember having a few of them.
May 18, 2021
Nostalgia from when I collected these in the 80s!
May 23, 2021
This may be the best book that I own, and definitely the best "art book" that I have. If I could give it a rating higher than 5 stars, then I wouldn't hesitate to do so.
March 19, 2023
Excellent showcase on Series 1-6 with an intro by Art Spiegelman (MAUS) and an afterward by artist John Pound.
July 1, 2024
Yeah I'm calling this read. These cards are intense!
January 4, 2013
This review first appeared onThe Book Zone(For Boys) blog
If you are an adult who was 10 years old or above in 1985 then you don't need me to explain exactly who the Garbage Pail Kids were. If you are a teen or younger, and you have a devilish and macabre (some may say sick) sense of humour, then you have one hell of a treat in store for you with this book.
The Garbage Pail Kids originally appeared as a series of collector stickers, the first series of which appeared in 1985. Money was tight in those days as I come from a big family, so I was not able to become an obsessive collector of these stickers, but I had a number of friends who could afford them, and we would delight in their subversive and frequently disgusting images. I think they were eventually banned at my school, a story that was repeated across many schools in the UK and the USA. Parents and teachers hated them, ergo kids loved them!
The stickers came about as a reaction to the twee-ness of the Cabbage Patch Kids (and also, as explained in Art Spiegelman's introduction to this book, because Topps did not manage to strike early enough to get a cheap license from the makers of those dolls). Instead of images of those rather unnerving looking dolls, they featured horrible (in the best sense of the word) parodies. The artwork on these stickers was invariably of a very high quality, and they became so popular that they ended up running for a massive fifteen series, finally coming to a close in 1989.
Earlier this year the awesome people at Abrams Comic Arts published a retrospective book of the first five series. This book is page after page of artistic nastiness, with each page showcasing a different card in wonderful enlarged format, with every card in these series displayed. This hardcover book has a wax-coated dust jacket, designed to emulate the wrappers in which the stickers and accompanying strip of chewing gum were sold. We are also treated to a packet of four previously unreleased cards, although I haven't yet been able to bring myself to detach them from the inside back cover.
I think this book has huge appeal for today's youngsters, even though I know that there will be some teachers and parents who will frown at me saying so. Children's fiction has changed immeasurably since the late 80s, and kids are now able to read a plethora of books that just would not have seen the light back in those days. Author's such as Darren Shan, Lemony Snicket, Barry Hutchison.... the list goes on and on.... have taken great delight in making kids squirm, whilst also ensuring that the disgusting and macabre are laced with humour.
The Garbage Pail Kids book should also not be underestimated for its educational value. Bear with me whilst I explain.... The names of the various GBK kids are great examples of alliteration, word play and rhyming. A few personal favourites of mine include Adam Bomb, Drew Blood, Toothie Ruthie, Michael Mutant, Hugh Mungous, Brenda Blender, Stormy Heather and Gore May. And there are so many more I could mention.
If you are an adult who was 10 years old or above in 1985 then you don't need me to explain exactly who the Garbage Pail Kids were. If you are a teen or younger, and you have a devilish and macabre (some may say sick) sense of humour, then you have one hell of a treat in store for you with this book.
The Garbage Pail Kids originally appeared as a series of collector stickers, the first series of which appeared in 1985. Money was tight in those days as I come from a big family, so I was not able to become an obsessive collector of these stickers, but I had a number of friends who could afford them, and we would delight in their subversive and frequently disgusting images. I think they were eventually banned at my school, a story that was repeated across many schools in the UK and the USA. Parents and teachers hated them, ergo kids loved them!
The stickers came about as a reaction to the twee-ness of the Cabbage Patch Kids (and also, as explained in Art Spiegelman's introduction to this book, because Topps did not manage to strike early enough to get a cheap license from the makers of those dolls). Instead of images of those rather unnerving looking dolls, they featured horrible (in the best sense of the word) parodies. The artwork on these stickers was invariably of a very high quality, and they became so popular that they ended up running for a massive fifteen series, finally coming to a close in 1989.
Earlier this year the awesome people at Abrams Comic Arts published a retrospective book of the first five series. This book is page after page of artistic nastiness, with each page showcasing a different card in wonderful enlarged format, with every card in these series displayed. This hardcover book has a wax-coated dust jacket, designed to emulate the wrappers in which the stickers and accompanying strip of chewing gum were sold. We are also treated to a packet of four previously unreleased cards, although I haven't yet been able to bring myself to detach them from the inside back cover.
I think this book has huge appeal for today's youngsters, even though I know that there will be some teachers and parents who will frown at me saying so. Children's fiction has changed immeasurably since the late 80s, and kids are now able to read a plethora of books that just would not have seen the light back in those days. Author's such as Darren Shan, Lemony Snicket, Barry Hutchison.... the list goes on and on.... have taken great delight in making kids squirm, whilst also ensuring that the disgusting and macabre are laced with humour.
The Garbage Pail Kids book should also not be underestimated for its educational value. Bear with me whilst I explain.... The names of the various GBK kids are great examples of alliteration, word play and rhyming. A few personal favourites of mine include Adam Bomb, Drew Blood, Toothie Ruthie, Michael Mutant, Hugh Mungous, Brenda Blender, Stormy Heather and Gore May. And there are so many more I could mention.
August 3, 2013
My parents would not let me buy Garbage Pail Kids stickers when I was growing up. Consequently, I was fascinated by them. Anything my parents didn't want me to have � GPK, Big League Chew, Stephen King books � must've been really amazing. I saw this book featured on TV last week and knew I had to have it, if for no other reason than to gratify the child-of-the-80s in me who lusted after these sticker cards from afar.[return][return]Garbage Pail Kids was a spoof of the Cabbage Patch kids produced by Topps, and created by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Holocaust graphic novel, Maus. They were irreverent, creative, and really, really gross. Now, Abrams ComicArts and Spiegelman have released a hardcover book showcasing the first five of the 15 series produced by Topps. Each card, 206 in all, is given its own page, scanned from the original art, nice and big to give you a better glimpse than you've ever had of these truly beautifully disgusting kids. A very nice, informative introduction by Spiegelman and an afterword by artist John Pound round out the book.[return][return]It's a very nicely-produced book, with many very clever touches. The dust jacket is made from the same waxy material the card packs were originally wrapped in. The actual boards feature a minimalistic photo of the chalk-like gum stick that came in every pack. Four rare, never-before-released cards are included, as well.[return][return]I have only two complaints. One is that the card backs are not included, apparently not considered to be of the same artistic merit as the card faces. I tend to think they were an equally important part of what made GPK great, so they are missed. My other complaint is that the book features only the first 5 series � 1/3 of the total art produced. Hopefully, interest is great enough that Topps and Abrams will see fit to release additional volumes. I would love to eventually have the full set on my shelf. Then I can finally thumb my nose at my parents and my inner child will sleep soundly for the first time.
April 12, 2013
This book offered a delightful nostalgic glimpse to my childhood. I remember collecting GPKs, trading cards with friends, and trying to gross out my parents with the pictures. I didn't remember many names of the GPKs but I definitely recalled many of the pictures as I paged through this book. I also enjoyed the Introduction from one of the creative minds behind GPKs and the Afterword by the artist who came up with the original, overall "look" of the GPKs.
I learned that 15 series of cards were made during the height of GPKs' popularity in the 80s. This book contains the 206 cards from just series 1-5, though. Each page offers the original card with its "a" name and the alternate "b" name(s) provided at the bottom. For instance, card 105a was "Juicy JESSICA" and 105b was "Green DEAN." Some even had a third name, which apparently I had forgotten.
It really is a nice comprehensive collection of the era of GPKs that I remember. I recommend it for others who also collected and enjoyed GPKs but probably haven't seen them in years. It's a nice trip down memory lane.
I learned that 15 series of cards were made during the height of GPKs' popularity in the 80s. This book contains the 206 cards from just series 1-5, though. Each page offers the original card with its "a" name and the alternate "b" name(s) provided at the bottom. For instance, card 105a was "Juicy JESSICA" and 105b was "Green DEAN." Some even had a third name, which apparently I had forgotten.
It really is a nice comprehensive collection of the era of GPKs that I remember. I recommend it for others who also collected and enjoyed GPKs but probably haven't seen them in years. It's a nice trip down memory lane.
March 7, 2016
Corría 1985 y estaban de moda unas estampitas llamadas "Garbage Pail Kids" que parodiaban en un estilo bizarro, irrverente, sucio, y gore, a los (también en ese entonces de moda) "Cabbage Patch Kids". Conseguir las estampitas era una proeza pues se compraban en el mercado negro en tianguis ya que por su nivel de "violencia" estaban prohibidas en las escuelas (en la secundaria donde yo iba hasta una circular a padres de familia de amenaza de expulsión si hallaban a los alumnos con ellas). Recuerdo que compré varias sin saber dónde quedaron. Ayer domingo de calorcito, y yo echando la hueva en bermudas y sandalias que me meto a la librería "El Péndulo" y que me topo con esta joya, una recopilación de TODAS las estampitas, impresas en fino papel, empastadas en pasta dura, y envueltas en papel corriente homenajeando a los sobrecitos donde venían con un chicle (de hecho, el libro trae ¡un chicle!). Al llegar a casa puse una lista ochentera de Spotify y hojee TODO el libro A CARCAJADAS. Si les gusta la irreverencia, googleen a los "Garbage Pail Kids". UNA JOYA.
April 9, 2012
This book features stunning full-page illustrations of classic Garbage Pail Kids cards from Topps' Series 1 through 3. There is interesting foreward and afterword by Art Spiegelman and John Pound, respectively, but I would have liked to hear from all of the artists and designers in more detail. Also, while the card art looks great, why no rough card art or sketches (John Pound has them all over his site, so they do exist)? The book is pretty much something you can see at one of many GPK fan sites. Finally, I'm sort of split on the dust jacket. While it tries to replicate the GPK wax packs of the 80's, I can see it tearing very easily.
January 21, 2013
I love GPK cards as a kid, but it was rare that I actually got to buy any because my parents kept me to buying sports cards and comic books. These were a treat that I traded baseball cards with my friends for (ahh, the good ol' days). It was great seeing these cards again, but I was hoping for more behind-the-scenes information, which you just don't get. It may have also been interesting to get some commentary on each of the cards, but instead you just get the bare bones of the cards reprinted for your viewing pleasure along with a short forward and afterward.
September 18, 2012
Fantastic visual history of an 80's pop culture staple! An extremely enjoyable trip down memory lane, including the history of how they came to fruition, which only added to my appreciation of the art and creativity. More surprisingly, I somehow remembered every single one of these nostalgia-inducing trading cards. Funny to think how these were banned from school back in their heyday, until you notice some of the racier ones, which would never fly in today's schools.
June 7, 2016
I collected Garbage Pail Kid cards when I was a kid. A few years ago I sold my collection because they took up too much space. So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this book. I enjoyed the into and the brief history on the GPK card story. However I most enjoyed the collection of cards encompassed in the book series 1-5. This book allows me to keep the memories of trading cards with friends and cousins and doesn't take up much space.
February 28, 2013
Doesn't have the backs of the cards. Very disappointing.
I guess what I really want is my old Garbage Pail Kids cards back. I had a ton in elementary school -- I remember there being a very active schoolyard market for them, everyone was always trading-- but then one day, my mom threw all mine away! Such a travesty of injustice
I guess what I really want is my old Garbage Pail Kids cards back. I had a ton in elementary school -- I remember there being a very active schoolyard market for them, everyone was always trading-- but then one day, my mom threw all mine away! Such a travesty of injustice
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews