2015 Reading Challenge Book 004 Garbage Pail Kids

BOOK TITLE-Garbage Pail Kids
AUTHOR-Art Spiegelman and John Pound
FORMAT-Hardcover Book
FIRST TIME READING-No
COST-Traded some pre-record VHS for it.

When the Garbage Pail Kids stickers first came out in 1985  I was already a non sports trading cards collector.It was before school started and my friend Casey "Da Beaver" Weaver came over to the table I was sitting at."You have to see this!" and he handed me series 1 card 13a Ashcan Andy. I was already known as the Star Wars nerd at Orange Lake Elementary. So this trading card/sticker that made fun of Star Wars was right up my alley. And from then until sometime in 1988 I was actively searching out the GPK cards. I went to see the film opening night. I would draw my own original GPKs based on my various friends. With Robert Hobert being one I drew the most. I have no idea what Hobert is,but it rhymed with Robert and the other kids thought it was funny.

In the early 2003s when the cards came back I started collecting them. As a kid I just bought them. Never trying to build a complete set. Hell half the time I would peel the stickers off and put them on my notebooks and stuff. But in the fall of 2003 my local Target started getting them in. And each week when I got paid I would stop by the store and buy 20 bucks worth of the packs. Then I moved in fall of 2007 and forgot again about the GPK gang.

It was 2008 I was in Rite Aid killing time before I had to be at work. I asked the clerk if they sold baseball cards. He showed me area they were in. They had a full wax box of one of the comeback series. But there was no price on the box,packs or even on the shelf below where they were racked. I grabbed the box and brought it up to the counter. The clerk had no idea what to charge. He called for the manager. She checked and it wasn't even listed in their inventory anymore. I had about 10 minutes before I had to be at work,so I said "How about I give your 20 for the box with the packs."She said that was fine. And  I paid for them and headed to work. When I got home the following morning I had a blast busting open the packs and looking at the cards.

It wasn't much longer after that ,that through a movie forum I met my buddy Devin. He collects VHS. Mostly focusing on horror,science fiction and cartoons.One of my neighbors had recently been given 5 bins of pre-record VHS. They told me I was welcome to come over and get whatever tapes I wanted for free. I offered to pay them for the tapes but they refused. One afternoon I went over and ended up grabbing every horror,science fiction and animated VHS they had. Typed up a list and sent it to Devin. He was super excited to get all the tapes and we were trying to figure out what I was getting from him. He told me he had a big stack of assorted original run GPK cards. Plus the book pictured above.

The book is a collection of reproductions of the original artwork for the first 5 series of the cards. Pretty famous comic book artist Art Spiegelman does the introduction. Where I learned he helped create the GPKs.He explained how Garbage Pail Kids started off as a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids for the Topps  non sport hit card line Wacky Packs. Someone at Topps saw the prototype card from Wacky Packs and greenlit and entire series based on that premise.And they were a huge hit from the start. I have no hard facts to back my theory up,but from personal experience Garbage Pail Kids were a bigger hit with the kids I knew than Wacky Packs every were.

After the pages showing off the art of the first 206 cards in the long running series,there is an afterword from underground comix artist John Pound. Mr Pound did lots of the artwork on the GPK series. And he explains how lots of indy and underground comix artist did work on the GPK series.

The cover price of the book is right at 20 bucks. Which is a good price for getting to see the artwork of the first 5 series bigger and cleaner looking than they ever were on the cards.But it is the other extras that Abrams Comicarts did

. Like how the dust jacket looks,feels and even smells like the wrappers that were on the original run of the GPK cards.

Or how when you take the dust jacket off,the front cover has what appears to be a piece of that bright pink hard as a rock "gum" that came with every pack in the original run

.Then there is one added extra that I am sure is one of the main selling features of the book. Each copy came packaged with 4 GPK cards that you can only get by buying this book,

Yep in a tiny cellophane envelope at the end of the book is 4 original cards.

This is a very niche book. Outside of the forward and afterword there is no real reading in the book. And $20 is a bit much for a book that would take at the most 15 minutes to read. But if you are a Garbage Pail Kid fan this book is a must buy. I count myself lucky to not only have a good friend like Devin.But also lucking out and getting close to $500 in VHS for free.

Garbage Pail Kids gets a 4.95 outta 5.