Originally published at: This video features some excellent Wacky Packages stickers | Boing Boing
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I was too young to get these. I had no idea where they came from – maybe some mysterious store that only older kids got to visit.
My cousin had a clubhouse (in reality an aluminum garden shed that was also used as a change room for swimming) and the walls were filled with these. At least half the gags were over my head but I still spent far too long staring at them.
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I think it makes them better that all the packaging is too old for a youngster like me to recognize. It’s more Dada that way.
I wonder why Topps never reissues these things. It’s not easy finding a whole new set of stickers every time I replace my computer.
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I’m old enough to have collected these, and dearly loved them. I put them on a sheet of poster board, but it got lost in a move many years back. A couple of hardback books collecting these images was published several years ago, and might still be available on Amazon. There was also a modern version of the stickers released about 15 years ago that were almost as good as the originals – you could buy them in places like Target. I tried to get my son to collect them, but he didn’t find them as funny as 10 year-old me had.
The great Norm Saunders was a major contributor to the art in the original 1970s run of Wacky Packages. I still refer to many products by their Wacky names.
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I still have hundreds of these, going back to the originals. I framed a 2013 set and hung it in my university office. I get a lot of head-shaking when people see them.
Me too.
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made between 1973 and 1977
Is that accurate? I remember collecting them in the early 80’s.
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You are my hero.
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I’m pretty sure those dates are correct. I collected them in the mid-70s, and remember looking for them later in the '70s and they were not to be found.
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In our elementary school, the trend was to plaster your lunchbox with the stickers. The person with the most exotic stickers was held in high esteem.
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[quote=“Les_Pane, post:5, topic:216334”]
me too. i have a few still, but some are smaller than the original baseball card-sized ones: Wormy Packages, Beastball, Virginia Slums, Bald, Glutton Mustard, Daffy Baking Powder, Snarlamint, Smoocher’s Sticky Jam, Clammy (the fishy-smelling soap), Broomo Seltzer, Achoo Brand Sneezing Powder, Mop & Glop, Clank Bar candy bar, Ivery Snow, White Fowl Cigars, Jerkyfruits, Nertz garlic flavored breath mints, Rice-A-Phoni, Chumps Candy.
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Oh yeah! Make the new name up on your own or repeat one from wacky packages or Mad Magazine. Doing that on a mass scale really helped me have a little fun during my time in the retail grocery industry.
ETA Mad Magazine.
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My bedroom door was covered with them in the 70s but at some point I removed them all. I can’t imagine why my parents let me do that.
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I just checked my stack of nearly complete (of 198 cards) stickers. They are some of the “originals” and have a 1980 copyright. When I was a kid I wished I had gotten in on the earlier 70s sets. Things were so much weirder in the 70s but 5-year olds do not have the best financial sense, nor the ways and means to have the cash flow when encountering the rare store that sold them.
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I remember having the Brillo Pads parody sticker back in the '70s. I had no idea what they were, but that’s what I got in the pack, along with the stick of pink “gum”. Slapped it on the robot my friend Eddie and I nailed together after Star Wars came out. Good times!
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Yup. Started collecting from the first series in '73. Got them at a local five and dime, along with Mad magazine.
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I feel like Wacky Stickers and Mad Magazine were my gateway drugs for National Lampoon and Monty Python.
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