Garbage Pail Kids Crapids-tacular!

Through dedicated trading in the mid-1980's, I was able to acquire the most famous of all the Garbage Pail Kids.

It's beat to crap with shingled corners, surface wear, staining and light creasing, but I do have a copy of the set's most famous card! Adam Bomb was the long time poster boy for Garbage Pail Kids. Appearing on packaging and promotional items for the first five series of sticker cards. But it would be several years into the GPK run before I secured a copy for myself.

When the first series of Garbage Pail Kids hit the market in June 1985, I wasn't on that bandwagon. In fact, I knew nothing about the cards until early January of 1986, when I was introduced to them by this guy...

Mr. Rux (shown in a Coon Rapids High School Photography Class project photo, from February 1991) brought some singles from series 2 to school one day, and I knew I'd have to find some of my own very soon.

As a loyal reader of Mad Magazine, cards of messed up looking Cabbage Patch Kids was appealing to me immediately. I thought those dolls were ugly from the first time I saw advertising for them. Before long, the Garbage Pail Kids craze was going full blast at Morris Bye Elementary School. Seemed that everyone was now bringing a small stack to class with them for trading during lunch and at the playground each day. Teachers HATED these cards!

This photo is from September 2006, but it really didn't look a whole lot different 20 years earlier. Other than the parking lot in front of the school. Which wasn't there when I had the misfortune of spending grades 1-6 here.

The first time I found Garbage Pail Kids for sale in a retail store was at Hanson Drug, in the Northdale shopping center. A box of loose series 2 packs sat in the candy aisle, and at a quarter a piece, it was affordable to buy a couple dollars worth. Back then $2 plus tax, netted you 40 cards. That would be a great introduction to the set.

Garbage Pail Kids series 2 was released in October, 1985, but I didn't find them until January, 1986. Soon, I was finding packs on sale pretty much everywhere around town.

I have no idea if any of these cards are from those initial packs, but at least some of these could be. Cheeky Charles was always a favorite, although I liked the name on his "twin" (65a) much more.

A card like this is a no-brainer...

About half of the card backs in the set were puzzle pieces, that formed into a large picture of Live Mike. A card that I would like to still own. Always liked the jagged edges and lightning. One of the better cards of series 2.

This name is so good, but I have to question the image chosen. Was this really the best fit of image vs name?

Card backs that weren't puzzle pieces had fake Garbage Pail Kids awards. Some were even slightly funny!

Classic!

Garbage Pail Kids weren't afraid to get political with a product aimed at 10 year olds. Unfortunately, my copy of this card has a good quarter of the sticker's border ripped off. Still an iconic card from the second series.

In addition to what I picked up at Hanson Drug, I found packs of Garbage Pail Kids at other storefronts in the Northdale Shopping Center, over the next couple of years.

Such as Ben Franklin...

I have no images of the old Ben Franklin store, so this scanned price tag from the back of a picture frame will have to suffice. It was purchased from the Northdale Ben Franklin, probably close to 40 years ago. And that counts for something...

Also, Jensen's Foods. Not the actual grocery store, but the newsstand next door that also did bill pay and money orders, back in the mid-1980's. I used to buy comic books and random magazines here, in addition to some Garbage Pail Kids and baseball cards. Not sure when that place disappeared. I don't think I stepped foot in any part of the Northdale Shopping Center between 1993 and 2018.

But let's go back to the beginning, the Garbage Pail Kids Series 1 cards from June 1985.

Adam Bomb and Blasted Billy

I gave up a great deal of Garbage Pail Kids and 1988 Junk Wax baseball singles, to acquire not only Adam Bomb, but also his "twin", Blasted Billy. This concept allowed Topps to double the 41 card run, by giving each kid a second name. Usually the stronger name got the A position, and the weaker was the B. Not always the case, however.

In 1994, the World Wrestling Federation debut their own version of Adam Bomb.

A man who allegedly gained his powers from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partial meltdown. 

Terrible by even pro-wrasslin standards.

But something doesn't quite add up here... 

If Adam Bomb (the pro-wrassler) is from Three Mile Island, with the implications that he mutated from the radioactive meltdown, this would make him only about 15 years old in 1994. And the most roided out, jacked up 15 year old the world has ever seen. Although that may be due to the nuclear accident around his time of birth. Now if that truly was the Garbage Pail Kid of the same name's back story (which is unknown, as far as I know), that would make him about 5 or 6 in 1985. As he appears to be on the card.

Now, had the WWF claimed they employed the guy that the former Garbage Pail Kid grew up to be, they may have been onto something...

I've put way too much thought into this.

Unfortunately, the back of Adam Bomb's Garbage Pail Kid card provided no back story. Just a list of the 82 cards in the set. A previous owner of this card marked the ones they had. Which further reduces the value of the most valuable card in the run. But the checkmarks give it some additional character! Too bad I don't have all the ones that are noted here. Ruins the novelty of it being marked.

Yeah... None of these have been checked off...

Or these...

Good news! I do have Cranky Frankie and Joltin' Joe! But according to the checklist, I don't have Savage Stuart...

Here's a case where I'd much rather have the 37a card. Cindy Lopper is funny, but GuilloTina is much funnier.

The color on this card is appealing. Too bad it's so beat up...

Little risque for a product aimed at 10 year olds. But it made us laugh back in the day!

A case where the "b" name is better than the "a". Drunk Ken is way better than Boozed Bruce!

Guess I forgot to show a series 1 card back. Their were no puzzle pieces for series 1, so if your card didn't  have a checklist, it had one of these award cards.

Kinda relate to this one...

I wish someone would tag the word "smut" on something, just to honor this card.

One of my all time favorites.

Around the time of their peak in mid-1986 to early 1997, Topps produced a series of school folders with a blown up Garbage Pail Kid card on the front. The next card is the only Garbage Pail Kid folder I ever warned. Probably a good thing that I no longer have it though...

You'll see...

Sicky Vicky has the Coronavirus.

Give her space!

Social distancing is key, because we certainly wouldn't want Crater Chris to have any of those open wounds getting infected!

This was another highly sought after series 1 card to me.

It was not purchased from a store, but acquired in a trade at some point in 1987. 

I've previously written about Oak Park Plaza in Blaine, MN. In that story, I mentioned the old baseball card store named Extra Innings.

"That was as big as Dayton's" -Trav

Their store used to sit next door to Star Liquors, but I don't have a photo of that. Oddly enough, Extra Innings didn't survive that deep into the Junk Wax Era, permanently closing in early 1991. But in 1988, they had an enviable selection of uber-expensive first series Garbage Pail Kids cards in the display case. Just looking at that inventory was enough for me (well, it had to be, I usually only had a few bucks at most to spend per visit). Seem to remember an 82 card complete set of first series with a $200 price tag on it. Prohibitive then, but I'd think long and hard about a mint condition first series set today.

As mentioned, I've previously written about Oak Park Plaza for this site. A lot of that was taken from previously written, but unnamed stories written about Coon Rapids for a Wasted Quarter 5 part book project. That never happened. But this story allows me to share some more of those stories and images here, mixed in with a completely different subject.

For example...

Another source of Garbage Pail Kids in Crapids was formerly at the Village 10 Shopping Center.

The north wing of stores in the shopping center was torn down in 1991. Not that they needed more parking, these stores had been mostly empty for years. Bigalow Video was the last tenant to leave. They had occupied the large "anchor" store on the west end. In 1986, a baseball card and comic book store opened briefly in the north wing, where I bought a few Garbage Pail Kids cards after seeing a movie at the legendary Village 4 Theaters.

At the time of the Village 10 Shopping Center’s demolition, I was living in Colorado, and had to enlist the help of others for documentation purposes. My dad took the above photo in April, 2002.

Extra special shout out to longtime contributor Trav, who went above and beyond the call of duty in June, 2002. He entered the wreckage to photograph the demolition of Village 4 theater, from the inside! One could almost imagine sitting in the these seats, with a big tub of Coke and bucket of popcorn, watching a Police Academy movie on the big screen. Which is missing here, so you have to look outside instead. At the trees, that used to be where that medical supply place is now.

In his Village 10 Center demolition report, filed with Wasted Quarter in June 2002, Trav made special note that the floors of the Village 4 Theater were still sticky. Some five years after the theater permanently closed. To this day, I say that an abandoned movie theater with still-sticky floors is a much better use of this property than the Cub Foods currently standing on top of that land.

Back in 1986…

Mere weeks after finding my first packs of Garbage Pail Kids series 2, I found packs of series 3. Also at Hanson Drug. Series 3 was officially released January 1986, so it was probably shortly after that. Let's call it February. Since I know you're keeping score at home.

While there were more flops than series 2, series 3 still had some great ideas.

Hippie Skippy among the best...

Roy Bot is another good one.

Nice job on the U.S. Arnie image to mimic the classic Uncle Sam painting.

Right down to the faded out left arm paint strokes.

Card backs were again a mixture of puzzle pieces and new for series 3, a bunch of "Wanted" posters. These were all pretty lame. Topps didn't exactly have the best writing team back in the mid 1980's.

Not like they've improved much for today's baseball cards either...

Yeah, series 3 did have some great stuff in it!

Simple word play with celebrity names was a strong suit of the early Garbage Pail Kids series.

For example, these were so good, I kept both "twins"...

Lat September, Laura and I spent a week in the Washington DC/Maryland/Delaware area, including three nights at the ocean, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. About two blocks from our hotel, along the boardwalk, was a collectable toy store named Yesterday’s Fun. (Next door to Grotto Pizza, which was REALLY good!)

Yesterday’s Fun had a decent inventory of stuff that dated back to the 1970’s. According to the guy working there, a lot of the higher dollar stuff was at a store further into town. This was a smaller representation of their merchandise, aimed at the travelers who would patronize their beach-adjacent shop.

Affixed to the front door was a window decal advertising (featuring Adam Bomb!) that 4th series Garbage Pail Kids were available for sale inside. No packs, but they had a small box with about 50 loose cards inside, priced at 75 cents a piece. I flipped through what they had in the box (including a few 4th series cards) and debated buying some of them. But 10 cards would have been $7.50, and I didn’t feel there were any in the box worth that kind of price. Since there wasn’t any one card that I wanted enough to pay that price, I bought nothing.

Garbage Pail Kids Series 4 hit the public in May 1986. Unfortunately, it was probably the weakest effort of the run to this point.

Can’t go wrong with a big buncha weapons on what is supposed to be a little kid!

If Dressy Jessie wasn’t good enough for fans of cross dressers, let’s add some pop culture references to the package!

The Wanted posters are back. 

I’m a big fan of the idea of a snowman wanting to warm up from the cold, without acknowledging that if he does, he’s actually killing himself. It’s a clever idea that has been done many times.

Including a few months later, when They Might Be Giants used the concept as cover art for their Don’t Let’s Start EP on cassette. Only this time, it's a pile of burning money.

I ordered this tape from TMBG’s mail-in merchandise catalog in 1990, but the rest of my They Might Be Giants catalog (until 1996), was all purchased from stores at the Northtown Mall. Coincidentally, where a lot of my Garbage Pail Kids cards were coming from.

Including many from the Woolworth’s store. It used to be located behind the recessed aquarium in the south end of the mall. (So thankful to whomever uploaded this photo to the internets!) None of that stuff is there now. Today, Woolworths is a poorly stocked Best Buy. The aquarium dried up and became the flattened sitting and kiosk area.

Further up into the mall, there was a Kay Bee Toys until the chain went bankrupt in 2009. That store supplied a near metric ton of Garbage Pail Kids to my collection in 1986-87. But it wasn't just cards...

Topps, also being a maker of candy and gum, produced a special Garbage Pail Kids themed candy. It came packaged in a small dark green plastic garbage bag, filled with what looked like Flintstones chewable vitamins. Each colored candy was intended to look like a Garbage Pail Kid, but they were hard to recognize. In addition to the candy, each garbage bag had a blue plastic Garbage Pail Kid figure.

The bag I bought had an Alice Island Garbage Pail Kid figure inside. 

I don't have the card to accompany the figure, but it's basically a Garbage Pail Kid dressed up like the Statue of Liberty, holding a garbage bag instead of a torch. A much more appropriate statement of America today than it was in 1987...

Series 5 hit Kay Bee Toys, and everywhere else in August 1986. 

While I did buy a bunch of it, overall the 5th series was really lacking in good ideas...

Except for the rolling pin on the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Love that image!

And the face on the toilet paper. That's just cute!

The wanted posters of series 3 & 4 are gone now. Replaced by file dossier cards of biographical information of older Garbage Pail Kids. Some of these were kind of amusing, but a lot of them were just plain stupid. Even when you're 12.

Nice adaptation of a pretty famous cartoon image from back in the day. So they got a few things right.

Puzzle pieces were still present, and placed on about half of the card backs. Even though I didn't have the regular card, this piece of it still amuses me. I should have used it as the cover photo for this story...

Another local supplier of Garbage Pail Kids cards would have been located in the Coon Rapids Shopping Center (demolished in 2004). This photo is a very poor representation of Snyder Drugs. Which was the name of the drug store that occupied the corner store, in the 1980's. When it first opened in the 1950's, Snyder's was known as Leeds Drugs. I didn't feel like using any of the internet images of Leeds that I've collected over the years.

So use your imagination!

In this photo, Snyders would have been on the right side of this picture. When I took it, there was a construction trailer parked in front of the empty store. And in 2004, using a crappy 35mm camera, my abandoned building photography wasn't as honed as it would get over the next decade. And the widespread reduction in price of digital cameras.

After leaving the Coon Rapids Shopping Center, family shopping trips would usually have to head west towards the Target and Family Center Mall area of Crapids Blvd. Do what you do there, then Crooked Lake Blvd. took you north. Towards highway 10, and the soon-to-boom part of town, north of the highway.

Along the way, you'd pass this small gas station.

In September 2011, it was open as Marathon. Throughout the years, this independently owned station has identified as a Mobil, Clark and Conoco (I think). It has also been closed up for a few stretches. The store is about the size of a large walk in closet. A car wash was added to the building in the late 1980's, and removed between this photo and now. Back in the late 1980's, the gas station by the library was a Getty, before that, a Skelly... (I think?)

Point being, this little gas station was the first place where I found series 6 of Garbage Pail Kids, in November, 1986. Immediately standing out that there was no more Adam Bomb on packaging.

One of the first cards in the series that I pulled from a pack. I liked this idea.

Some more great word play...

This one just amuses me...

Yes, it's really stupid, but the giant eyes in a wheelbarrow also amuses me!

New to series 6 is the Garbage Pail Kids comics, based on the format of Bazooka Joe comics (also made by Topps). And just like Bazooka Joe comics, these are just as painfully unfunny!

I'm not sure if Topps added more artists to make the Garbage Pail Kids paintings around this time, but series 6 just felt different than series 5. Overall the cards appear brighter and busier, but the textures are too smooth.

Kinda surprised this idea wasn't used earlier. Seems like it would have been one of the first "double meaning" type of names you'd come up with when submitting thumbnails for new stickers. Still like it though...

Todd... Always the name of the local motor head...

Again, I liked series 6 a lot more than series 5.

However, as an overall card line, they were starting to feel a little redundant and forced. 

How long will this product have legs before I lose interest?

After all, the old photo album I'd been using to store the cards is was completely full!

This size album held pages made for 3.5" x 5" photos, or two Garbage Pail Kids cards, side by side. Perfect for both "a" and "b" variations. Unfortunately, it was the constant placing and removing of these cards from the album, that destroyed most of the corners and caused layering to the cardboard. Novice collecting mistakes that would be corrected by the time I moved onto baseball cards.

Series 7 debut in February 1987, and was still pretty strong...

Have A Nice Dave became an instant favorite. 33 years later, that image still rules!

Another fun idea that probably should have been done earlier.

Smarter reference that a lot of 10 year olds probably didn't get.

Series 7 brought back the dossier file card backs. On the whole, they weren't any better. 

This one is just too cute.

Playing card is smart...

Great and timely!

I liked this card mainly for the black to green gradient background. 

Shortly before Series 7 was released, a story about the lawsuit between Original Appalachian Artworks of Cleveland, GA (makers of the Cabbage Patch Kids line of toy dolls) and Topps over copyright infringement, ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The stickers were a legit pop culture sensation in 1986, so I could understand the Cabbage Patch people squawking about everything Topps was doing.

Basically, Topps had to settle the lawsuit. Few could deny the visual connection between the two products. One would assume Topps was given their specified time to continue selling the product, because of (likely) several series worth of images and cards in various stages of production in 1987. Settling would come far cheaper than a dragged out near certain loss in the future. After that period was up, Garbage Pail Kids could no longer look like the dolls that inspired the line. From the logo, to the kids' bodies and faces, everything had to change. Making a joke that was already getting old, mandated to become something completely different.

The Star Tribune story was cut out of that day's newspaper, and taped inside the cover of my Garbage Pail Kids album (shown above). Just in case I'd need to scan it to write about 33 years later.

Series 8 was released in April 1987, and did not reflect any of the changes outlined in the settlement. Likely because the cards would have been printed and packaged during the window of time that also contained the lawsuit. For now, Garbage Pail Kids would look the same, but it was anyone's guess as to when they wouldn't.

Which is good, because I like Walter Sport as he is. 

Sling Scott and Teddy Aim Fire are two of my favorite named images, regardless of series.

Bowen Arrow is clever.

And Leather Heather is just a fun image.

As is Fritz Spritz...

I have to wonder if the next two cards were an answer to the lawsuit, in kind of an "end is near" sort of way?

Side by side, probably my favorite two cards in the entire Garbage Pail Kids run.

Which reminds me of another iconic Coon Rapids business that was a source of all sorts of candy and cards for the kids and simple necessities for the adults. Just a fun bike ride away...

Ted’s Store was located inside a tiny shack, maybe 12’ x 12’, outside the parking lot for Crooked Lake Park. Years back, there used to be a pair of gas pumps out front. Walking up the small stairs and entering the tiny store, you saw shelving and coolers and merchandise packed from floor to ceiling. Seemingly unorganized, although it really was. Bread racks, old chest coolers and freezers, shelves which stocked bread, buns, Hostess products and live bait, for people to fish on Crooked Lake. Only a small square to walk around inside the place. A limited produce section set under the store counter, the top filled with small candy displays. Behind the counter was more candy, batteries, small household necessity items and cards! Including baseball, football and hockey cards, plus some Garbage Pail Kids. Which is why this story is most appropriate here!

After Ted died in 1983, Millie ran the store up until her death in February, 2009. 

When I was a kid, Millie stocked a large variety of small candy for a nickel or dime a piece, and single cans of pop for a quarter. My parents would stop there to buy a few things after doing the regular grocery shopping just to support the store. In a lot of cases, it was easier to get those things there as Millie knew what people in her base wanted, and stocked it. In our case, Ambassador hot dogs by the pound (weighed out on the ancient scale she kept next to the register). There were also a few rides up there with my dad, while he picked up a carton of Old Gold cigarettes.

Some of my earliest lasting memories involve Ted's Store.

My mom took this picture of the makeshift memorial that appeared at the front door of Ted’s Store, shortly after Millie died. A year later, the store briefly reopened, and was run by Millie’s daughter and her husband, but that didn’t last long.

Back in the day, something I liked to do as a kid was to pool together my spare change and bike up to Ted's Store, to see how many packs of baseball cards I could get with it. Back then, you got 15 cards for 40 cents (these days it's more like 10 cards for $3 -at the cheapest!). I could ride my bike up there with four dollars in assorted nickels, dimes and quarters, and come out with a nice pile of worthless cardboard for my effort! Mr. Rux and I once bought an entire box of Garbage Pail Kids cards with our pooled together change (packs were only 25 cents each). After getting back to -early- Basement World, we sat on my bed, split the cards and looked through them all. Dr. Demento playing in the background, as was normal in that era.

Once purchasing your haul from Ted’s, you had a choice of where to go next. We used to ride our bikes around the park paths, weaving between the former beach change house, tennis courts and playground. The playground once had a really awesome spinning swing, mounted to a giant fiberglass kite. With someone pushing the swing itself, you could really get some air when you jumped off. Of course this was removed when the park underwent a major remodel in the late 1980's. The old and fun playground was replaced by a cold, sterile "Tupperware" safety swing set. Those are the standard at every playground today it seems. It may be safer, but that sure takes a lot of fun away.

Crooked Lake Beach has been opened and closed many times (including September 2006, when this photo was taken) over the years. For a time, it was due to high levels of water toxicity. 75 to 100 years ago, people who lived on the shoreline of the lake used to drain their sewage directly into the water, and the water never really recovered. Fountains were placed in the lake at some point, to promote better oxygen circulation in the water. I did go swimming here a few times, and always remember the water being very murky, but as a kid you don’t really care about that kind of thing.

A couple blocks east of Ted’s Store on 131st Avenue, is the bridge over Coon Creek. When I didn’t feel like going to the park, I opted for hanging out and reading the graffiti underneath the Coon Creek Bridge. Paths on both sides of the creek would allow area kids and teens to walk down the side of the bridge and underneath. Large rocks, sand and cement foundations from the previous bridge were accessible under the road. With plenty of room to sit and hang out. Before this area was surrounded by houses, it was a calm and peaceful place that few bothered to check out. It doesn't look like anyone hangs out under the bridge anymore. The paths leading down to it are all covered up by trees, weeds and bushes. They’re not even visible through all the growth.

Until its replacement in 1978, the bridge used to be a narrow, one lane rickety death trap. I don’t remember it well, but I do remember two vehicles barely able to cross at the same time. A temporary bridge was made from rock while construction went on through that summer. The new bridge is much wider and longer, level with the rest of the street, instead of dipping down.

Plaque on the bridge, noting its 1978 construction. 

Garbage Pail Kids Series 9 hit the streets in June 1987. Shortly after it debut, I dropped about $5 in coins at Ted’s Store for whatever that bought me. Afterwards, I went to the tennis courts at Crooked Lake Park to flip through my new found cardboard bounty. I regretted buying them.

Effects of the Cabbage Patch lawsuit had still not taken effect, but the cards were quite the let down. Sure, there were a few cute ideas scattered around...

But a whole lot of what I found in the new release was recycled variations of the same characters.

Add some snot, blood, puke, pus or piss and repeat...

With a few exceptions, the set was tired and just plain trying too hard.

Although for whatever reason, the phrase: “Zits spelled backwards is Stiz” made me laugh. That stupid statement was deemed so memorable that it was immortalized on Wasted Quarter List. For any of you who have read that.

After the buying those first packs at Ted’s store, and seeing a big bunch of nothing appealing, I was pretty much done with Series 9.

The next nail in my personal Garbage Pail Kids coffin came in the form of this abomination...

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was unleashed on the unsuspecting public in August, 1987.

A live action heap of steaming crap!

Maybe if they would have animated this, it wouldn't have been so incredibly awful. With a cartoon, you could do pretty much anything and it, and it would fit the spirit of the trading card line. But for whatever reason, it was decided the Garbage Pail Kids Movie would be live action. Featuring dwarf actors wearing layers of latex body animatronics.

Bringing to life these horrifying characters:

Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?

To try to summarize the plot -even briefly- is an exercise in madness. Basically, these "kids" came from outer space and crashed into the Earth. They escaped the can and met up with a teenage loser (played by Mackenzie Astin) trying to impress a fashion designer named "Tangerine". To help the loser dorky guy, the Garbage Pail Kids sew a bunch of clothes for him to impress the hot citrus chick, who is with a bad guy that has a gang. The Garbage Pail Kids themselves are trying to find more of their kind, but get locked up in the "State Home for the Ugly" (yup...) on the night of the big fashion show. Where the loser dork beats the gang guy, and peels a tangerine while the Garbage Pail Kids sing and dance in the creepiest of ways. Then everything gets wrapped up nice and happy because that's how these movies always go.

(You know, this reads almost exactly like the crap I made up for the fake movie reviews I did for the How Not To Make A Movie podcast, 5 years ago...)

But if that plot doesn't sound stupid enough, fill it with tons of poop, farts, pee, vomit and songs about believing in the power of friendship!

Wow... This is quite possibly the worst thing ever made in film history... 

Wretched animatronics!

 

Pretty sure I saw that awful movie at the Northtown Theater (demolished in April, 2001).

Thanks Mom!

Although, it could have been at the Apache 6 Theaters. 

Shown here closed up in September 2006, demolished a year later.

Where I saw Mallrats! On opening night!

As if that movie (not Mallrats) couldn't have done more damage to the Garbage Pail Kids line, the bill from the lawsuit came due around the same time. The different logo in the movie poster offered up the first clue that changes were afoot in the garbage pail...

The cards change...

In September 1987, I was at Brookdale and found the new Garbage Pail Kids Series 10 cards had come out. 

Advertising point: "NEW LOOK!"

Yeah... Not a good one either... 

Overall, the jokes were forced, Topps was just trying too hard and I lost all interest. Whereas the old pre-lawsuit Garbage Pail Kids bore a close resemblance to the Cabbage Patch Dolls (once you scraped the blood and mucus away), the new Garbage Pail Kids looked like a cheap knock-off of a cheap knock-off of Garbage Pail Kids. Then doubled down on the extra body fluids and nonsensical body cracks.

That makes complete sense if you compare the two side by side. Which I can't do because I threw all my Series 10 cards away nearly 20 years ago.

But, I did keep one...

Stupid new face aside, that's a cool idea for a picture!

Garbage Pail Kids went all the way to series 15, which was released in December 1988. I didn't bother. I was completely done with Garbage Pail Kids. They were tucked away in a dresser drawer until late 1991, when I held a mass purge of a buncha things that I probably would still like to own today. Among the bags of stuff brought to the actual garbage, was close to 1000 Garbage Pail Kids cards. I'd pared down to a collection that numbers pretty much just what I've shown here.

Over the next 20 or so years, the collecting focus was strictly baseball (and occasionally hockey) since 1988. I'd sometimes see old Garbage Pail Kids for sale at Shinders...

Both Roseville...

And Blaine.

First and second series cards had some value, and I'd occasionally find them as complete sets in the big Shinders glass case, that you have to ask an employee to look at. First series sets were still priced at well over $100. While cheap wax boxes of Series 5-15 were often found for under $10.

Not that I ever paid attention to them.

Years later, I'm driving home from Minneapolis to Denver, and had a chance encounter with Garbage Pail Kids, that sparked a brief new interest. I'll get to that. Just gotta show off a couple of pictures first! The drive home to Colorado for a few years, had to include a stop in Redwood Falls, MN, to visit my ex-girlfriend's family. Along our way to the Jackpot Junction Casino Hotel in Morton, we'd travel through Franklin, MN.

Home of the Big Squirt Car Wash! (Photo from January, 2009)

The coolest part of Redwood Falls sits a few miles east of town.

Old highway 19 sits abandoned next to the new highway 19, with a great steel covered bridge crossing the Minnesota River. A new and much wider bridge made this old one obsolete.

In May 2008, the old highway still was somewhat open. The road was crumbling, but not blocked off. I exited the new highway and drove on the old highway, across the bridge and then had to turn around when the old highway became impassable. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't want to hit something that would pop a tire out here.

Just last week, I found this photo from Sun Lion Imagery, of the same bridge online. This photo is from 2015. The bridge has now been barricaded closed to vehicles. The road to the north has mostly grown over by 2015. Nowhere near as wide as it was when I drove it 7 years earlier.

Now I really want to drive out there and check out how that sweet bridge looks today. 

But I don't want to go to Redwood Falls... As I did in May 2010...

During the couple of days we were in town, a supply run the Redwood Falls Walmarts was needed. I checked out the card aisle while the other people did other things. Not finding any baseball cards that struck my fancy, I picked up a pack of Garbage Pail Kids Flashback Series. According to the wrapper, it was a set re-releasing the old Garbage Pail Kids line with today's bells and whistles. At today's prices!

Intrigued, I grabbed a few retail jumbo packs. I don't remember how many card that were in each, but it was less than the similar 2010 Topps Baseball jumbo packs. Both priced at $4.99 each. Far exceeding 5 cards for 25 cents...

That yellow checkerboard border gets rather obnoxious as you look at these cards. However, it does capture the spirit of the original run. Without the handicap of re-imagining each face to satisfy terms of a lawsuit.

The color is cleaned up over the first series, making them look better, but not different.

Card backs were a mixture of ideas, including the fake certificates from the first series run.

That's my name!

Couple more classics from the second series.

Other card backs featured cartoons. Somehow worse than they used to be. 

Come on Topps, were you even trying?

The original sticker was used in my Retro Honkass story waaaaaaaay back in Wasted Quarter issue #23. 

Guessing Moe Skeeto is from Minnesota, while Moe Bile is from a refrigerator in Milwaukee.

Another card back featuring a few other old Garbage Pail Kids, not worthy of being featured on their own full card.

Always liked this one!

If this is also from the original series, I don't think I ever had it...

Mars Attacks! crossover?

I like how Topps took this old sticker and made it into the 1986 Topps Baseball style for this card back.

Another classic from the old days that didn't survive the great purge of 1991.

Cool! It's Cheeky Charles better named "twin", Shrunken Ed!

Deadly Dudley is just fun to say!

Something else new in the Flashback series is the Where Are They Now? subset.

Tee-Vee Stevie was a first series card that I always wanted, but never landed in trade. Topps decided to make a card that would show how Stevie grew up, and what he was doing today...

Well, in 25 years, Stevie turned into a wrinkly old TV loving guy. Camping next to an Atari and some other 1980's icons. Changed ever so slightly to not draw another lawsuit. (Does this prove that Garbage Pail Kids age faster than regular humans? If so, that makes former pro-wrassler Adam Bomb suddenly all the more plausible!)

So that's what happened to Split Kit!

Butt face is never not funny!

Rappin' Ron's "twin" Ray Gun is finally where it needs to be. In my collection, with a complete sticker border. 

Which is another note I'd like to make. Each card is still a sticker, but have been coated in a heavy layer of Gloss UV. Making them a lot sturdier than what Topps put out then. For a whole lot more money.

Recognize this sticker from series 2, but I'm not sure the message behind the tag line. After all, if he's been killed by a rock flying through his abdomen, kinda makes it hard to keep fighting...

Big fan of this one!

Since the base cards have a yellow checkerboard border, card collecting logic dictates that you change the color of the border for different scarcity levels. In this case, it's bright green at one in every other packs. Or something like that. As for the card itself, that's a pretty good image.

As is this...

And Crater Chris's "twin".

Maybe a little of an overstatement Topps... 

Wait a minute!

How come I don't remember a 1980's card commemorating Garbage Pail Kid first degree homicide?

Anyways... 

I didn't buy any more Garbage Pail Kids Flashback packs after leaving Redwood Falls in May 2010. In fact I've never been back to Redwood Falls since May of 2010. But a little less than a year later, I found out that Topps can't beat that horse dead enough. Of course I knew they've been doing this with their baseball lines for years, but why not keep bringing Garbage Pail Kids back from the dead?

During a Spring 2011 supply run to River Point Super Target in Sheridan, Colorado, I found packs of 2011 Garbage Pail Kids Flashbacks. So I added a few jumbo packs to my usual purchases. I miss this Target...

The yellow checkerboard has given way to a crossword puzzle looking border. It looks better than the checkerboard, but not by a whole lot.

Lotta Carlotta is really stupid, but for some reason, I always liked that image.

Puzzle pieces are back. This time it's the ultra lame follow up to the classic Adam Bomb character from series 7, Adam Boom. See, now he farts nuclear explosions... Get it?!?!

While no less juvenile, this is a far superior image.

Card backs in the 2011 Flashback series included a bunch of mock facebook pages, as made by classic Garbage Pail Kids characters. And these couldn't possibly be less funny.

Another of my favorite images from the first series. The lightning bolt, frizzled hair and the look on her face is just classic.

This card sparked a debate with a friend over how to pronounce Geoff. He insisted it had to be a hard G, but my claim was a soft G, like a J sound. As if the name was spelled Jeff. Which reminds me of people today that debate the proper pronunciation of the word Gif.

Randomly inserted in the 2011 Flashback packs are "Lost" cards in the Garbage Pail Kids series. These were originally slated for the Series 16 release in 1989. Some of these made it as far as being printed, but was never packaged of released to the public.

I pulled two of these cards from the 2011 Flashback Series:

This one is pretty good...

But I LOVE Bad Art!!!

The 2010 Flashback set had limited green bordered parallels. So 2011 has pink ones. 

Fair enough...

But the prize of the 2011 Garbage Pail Kids Flashback Series was this:

A Dead Ted 3D lenticular motion card! 

These fell at 1:12 packs. So while not super limited and not particularly good for scanners, it's pretty damn awesome card if you ask me. And you kind of did. So, yes, it's awesome.

Let's wrap this up with the full card that featured that chunk of puzzle face that I liked and talked about about 87 years ago. I've been writing this story for way too long, so it's time to stop and go do something else.

I still see new Garbage Pail Kids stickers in the card aisle of Targets and Walmarts all the time these days. So the product line has continued going strong for Topps. But 2011 was the last time that I bought any of them. They just do nothing for me, so my collecting dollar goes elsewhere. Exactly like it did, transitioning from 1987 to 1988. Baseball beats garbage any day!

This story is actually part 2 of a 2 part series about mid 1980's Crapids that I've been working on during the pandemic.With breaks of being an essential employee.

So what is part 1 about?

Here's a hint...

But I have no idea when that story will be finished.

As I was finishing this story, I found out the Denny's restaurant in Englewood, Colorado, has permanently closed. This really saddens me. The Englewood Denny's was a constant in my life from when I first moved to Englewood in October 1996. It became the place to go after a night of drinking, after a night of giving rides to pizza, before going to art school after a 2 hour nap! The late 1990's were a magically insane time!

Here is the Englewood Denny's of June 15th, 2014. Completely open. 

A good portion of Wasted Quarter issue 59 was written at this Denny's, between May 2005 and July 2006, before the indoor public smoking ban took effect. Changing boothrotting forever.

Englewood Denny's will be greatly missed. Even if I'm not there to miss it...

That's all for now. This story spun waaaaaaay out of control from what it was originally intended to be. I just had an abundance of material that somehow needed to fit inside of it.

Now, why you gotta be so mean!

I'm not THAT bad...