Current Word

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

Wacky Packages

More Nostalgia? Yep. My next purchase on eBay will be a complete set of the 1973 Wacky Packages trading cards, Except Mountain Goo, which I found in my old relics box I pulled down from the attic. I had the whole set at one point, not sure what happened to them. Seeing as how I now have a permanent storage locker here in Florida I can stuff tons of wortheless crap into, I might as well fill it it up!

From Wikipedia:

Wacky Packages is a series of editorial trading cards featuring parodies of consumer products. The cards were produced by the Topps Company beginning in 1967, usually in a sticker format. The original series sold for two years, and the concept proved popular enough that it has been revived every few years since. At one time the product briefly outsold baseball cards.

The cards have parodied a variety of well-known brands, relying on the talents of such comics artists as Art Spiegelman, Bill Griffith, Kim Deitch, Drew Friedman, George Evans, Jay Lynch and Norman Saunders. For example, one card featured “Blisterine” instead of Listerine and another had “Neverready” batteries rather than Eveready batteries.

The initial series was followed by a similarly designed Wacky Ads line in 1969. Wacky Packages was then brought back in 1973 for a highly successful run. For the first two years, these cards were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than its flagship line of baseball cards. They continued until 1976 through a total of 16 series.