Girls in glasses and braces are such a turn on….
If you grew up in the 80’s like I did, there is very good chance you are already pretty familiar with the topic I’m going to devote this week’s Flashback Friday post to. Yes, it’s the one and only trading card series intended for those younger minds who were still (and in some cases still are) fascinated with toilet humor… Garbage Pail Kids!
But it was CLASSY toilet humor!
Garbage Pail Kids were created by the Topps company, which is better known for making baseball cards back before the greedy big kids ruined that hobby for everyone two decades 
ago. The concept was inspired by the wildly…. and I mean WILDLY popular Cabbage Patch Kid dolls that had mothers fighting in the middle of toy store aisles every holiday season long before Furbys or Elmos ever came along. Topps had a similar sticker series aimed at kids at the time called Wacky Packages that parodied famous company brands and products, and according to the Wiki page for Garbage Pail Kids, the series began its life as an unreleased design for a Wacky Package sticker.
Br sure and tell ’em Large Marge sent’ ya!
The cards were released in series from 1985 through the late 80’s, with around 40 or so new Garbage Pail Kid designs per set. The cards contained a sticker on the front that was die cut to allow kids to peel off the main part of the image and stick them on their walls, books, Trapper Keepers, the dog, whatever they wanted. The artwork featured a child similar looking to a Cabbage Patch Doll (This would eventually get Topps sued by CPK’s maker Coleco for trademark infringement) in some disgusting, deformed, weird, and often just plain gross situation. There were two different cards issued for each design, with different names attached to each “twin”. The names were usually alliterative, rhyming, or a bad pun… some of which likely wouldn’t even be recognizable to the prepubescent intended audience of Garbage Pail Kids…
Mommy! Can I have some of you and Daddy’s whiskey?
Garbage Pail Kids appealed to the gross sense of humor that all good children of the 80’s had, and the more kids loved spending their allowance on cards, the more parents grew to loathe them. Some schools even banned the cards because they were a distraction (Like cell phones nowadays aren’t???).
Distracting??? Me!?!?!?
The series became so popular, that they even made a Garbage Pail Kids movie! I seriously wish I was kidding about this… the movie really exists. It was a huge flop, and I recall watching a bit of it once at my friend’s house, and it was dreadful even to my 12 year old self who loved the cards…
And kids thought Jason and Freddy Krueger were scary!?!?!?
After 15 series in the U.S., the lid was finally put on Garbage Pail Kids as the 90’s were dawning. The original fans of the cards were now in high school and more obsessed with hickeys than boogers… and as with pretty much anything good, the franchise eventually jumped the shark in the later series as it became less cutting edge and original in its grossness.
It’s time to nuke this series!
Of course, when 80’s nostalgia returned within the last decade, so did Garbage Pail Kids. Some new series were introduced along with classic “Flashbacks” that even contained funny Fakebook accounts on the back. But the original craze these fucked up characters caused will never be duplicated. All those quarters I threw away at the convenience store when I was 11 and 12 just for a pack of cards will always be considered well spent. Thank you so much Garbage Pail Kids for showing us that it’s OK for kids to laugh and enjoy gross and sick humor, and that our days of innocence all need to have those guilty pleasures that are going to draw that concerned look from Mom and Dad’s face. We here at The Nest salute your contribution to the green slime generation!
Tommy Gun died for our adolescent sins!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
OMP (oh my pig) that is so funny! Mom remembers those. She says she may even have some of the cards boxed up somewhere in the Hotel Thompson. She *has* to tell you her story about the Cabbage Patch doll one day – snort – so funny. I rolled around the floor laughing so hard on that one! XOXO – Bacon
I can’t wait to hear about the Cabbage Patch Doll story! I had four squirrel sisters, and each one of them got a CPD the year they were popular. They always looked funny to me. Glad you and Mom enjoyed the flashback!
Oh yes the flashback made mom smile and laugh. Mom *had* a CPD for maybe a week. Evil snort. I will post about it soon 🙂 XOXO – Bacon
Dude, are you sure we are not clones of each other? I am mean you have an outie and I have an innie….but anyways, I loved those cards, I had tons of them! I didn’t see the movie though.
You were fortunate not to have to witness the disaster that was the movie… but I knew you had great taste when it came to the cards themselves! (Lifting up shirt and checking) Mine’s an innie…
I always enjoy your Flashback Friday posts, as you well know. ( Pulling down pants.) Mine is an innie. 😉
My hubs had a whole collection. One day our kids found some while cleaning out the garage. They GET it. I pretend to be horrified and shocked but most of them are funny.
I don’t think I have any originals lingering around because I stuck them all on my wall… but I have some of the re-issued flashbacks. I’m glad kids today are getting to laugh at some of the same stuff we did when we were kids…. we didn’t turn out bad now, did we? 😉
Haha, I HATED seeing those when I was growing up! All the boys thought them so funny but I actually HAD a Cabbage Patch doll and loved her to bits so the cards didn’t exactly hold appeal with me! lol Plus I am one of four girls so we were a feminine house indeed (my poor dad! 😉 ) Thanks for the flashback, though!
LOL, I know all about those feminine households…. I had four younger sisters! All with Cabbage Patch dolls! Maybe these were my way of getting even with them… 😉
I don’t blame you! 😀 The 80’s were a VERY girlie time for toys! Here’s my flashback: http://atlantamomofthree.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/fun-fact-friday-80s-toys/
OMG! I recognize so many of those… The Little People were awesome back then!!! It wasn’t really a toy if you couldn’t possibly choke on it….
At some point, I’m going to do one of my Flashback posts on toys, and I’ll undoubtedly honor a lot of the stuff my sisters had since they outnumbered me. I’ve said here before, I still know more about Rainbow Brite and the Care Bears than I do about Transformers and G.I. Joe….
Hahaha!! I look forward to that post! 😉
As Professor Farnsworth (futurama) would say ” Oh My”
I noticed in the WIki article on this subject that the original Garbage Pail Kids were released in Australia as “The Garbage Gang”. Does that ring any bells?
Yes! Oh thank goodness I can stop pouting because we missed out on something!
Distracting? My son has to take an ipad with wifi to school every day! LOL!
Boy, it feels like I’ve been out of school for 100 years! Heck, I didn’t even get to enjoy an air conditioned classroom until I went to college….
My classmates and I were OBSESSED with these cards. The release of a new series was such a big event. I think I remember badgering my mother to drive me to a certain convenience store just because I heard they sold GPK cards.
We had two convenience stores in my neighborhood that sold them, one near my grade school and the other near my house. The latter was run by a sweet old lady who charged the standard quarter per pack… but the store near my school was run by a miserly skinflint who added a penny “tax” onto the cards (He also sold his penny candy for two cents… bastard!). I do recall the name of that convenience store was “Fran’s”, and he had the sticker for the “Fran Fran” Siamese twin Garbage Pail Kid stuck to the side of his cash register (or maybe some wiseass kid did that unknowingly). When my grade school closed down in 1989, his store went down the tubes…. served him right!
I remember some places would charge like 50 cents due to “demand.”
On one of the Storage Wars shows they found a bunch of these and I think they were worth enough to be worth selling. I guess my hint would be, don’t just throw them out!