Original subtitles

What are Garbage Pail Kids?

Garbage Pail Kids are pictures of

people who are a little bit worse off

than you are... but only slightly.

Garbage Pail Kids were part of the kids counterculture

of the 1980s in a fine tradition

of anti-authoritarian stickers and jokes would be sold

with bubble gum for, I think it was a quarter.

They're a take-off on Cabbage Patch Kids dolls

as gross little characters on

bubble gum stickers

Remember, in 1985 we're still in the Cold War

and here was a card of a Cabbage Patch Kid

going nuclear. And I was like wow

you know this, this means something.

I knew that even then.

There's always a smile they have on their face

like something terrible is happening but I'm still good.

They're just jokes...

Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive,

a time of rousing wonder and heroic

achievement, as they said in the film Back to the Future,

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

If you don't like the subject of this next piece,

just think this too shall pass. Here's Jeff Greenfield.

Just come to any neighborhood school

and watch as the latest fad instantly sweeps

across a classroom and then across a continent.

Watch that is if you dare because

the odds are that what appeals to the

young is going to appall the old.

Latest case in point.

Are you ready for Garbage Pail Kids?

♪ Throw away like trash

♪ We party all the time

♪ I can see you

♪ The party in the corner having apple juice ♪

♪ Freddy Roberts on the guitar

♪ We are the garbage pail kids! ♪

♪ We are the garbage pail kids! ♪

Here we go...

You got it? Your sure?

I gotta get these out of my hands.

We just made it to Art's house, Art's studio.

Do you wanna hear that?

Yeah, I don't know, would it be funny to talk about it?

Hi, I'm Art Spiegelman.

I'm a comics artist.

Um, and for many decades I worked for Topps Bubblegum

Company making novelty items to be sold with bubblegum

and one of the more renowned of the projects

I worked on with Topps was Garbage Pail Kids.

And they were parodies of Cabbage Patch Kids

although attorneys would not like to hear

me say that. But they were parodies of a then popular doll

uh, that uh, allowed kids to destroy parents' refrigerators

and taunt each other and excoriate themselves for

whatever they'd been named, by having their little first names

underneath grotesque images of these cute,

little uh, doll kids.

And they became a fad

and Topps was essentially something that was

in the fad business.

At the top of the heap were the comic strip artists below those

were the comic book artist and somewhere way down right before

you hit tattoo artist

was the people who worked at Topps Bubblegum.

Topps was like, to me the end of the road in Brooklyn,

like the real southern end. And that was

probably about a 45-50 minute bus ride from where I lived.

Topps was in Brooklyn then, in a very, kind of,

romantic area - kind of - good background for a

Mafia movie, where they put people in cement and stuff

and throw them into the river. It was a warehouse street and it

was really cool. And when you would go

into inside the buildings it was like a bunker.

There were like no windows and I

don't know. It was just really strange.

These interminable, Xeroxed buildings that looked one like

the other going forever and every direction near

the waterfront. Inside one of

which on a kind of, cobblestone street there's

one building looking like all the others,

except it had, uh, detached doll heads in the street

that you had to step

on while walking and because a place called

Uneeda Doll was right on top of the bubble gum company.

The Uneeda Doll Company. And yeah, I mean you know on our way

to work with our coffee in our hand, we'd be walking down

the street and there'd be doll heads

like littering the sidewalk.

I'm sure worked it's way into our - into -

into our work the following afternoon.

When I first went out to Topps Bubblegum to meet Len Brown,

I didn't know what to expect. And

so I took the dingy subway, out to the dingy part of Brooklyn,

walked the dingy street to this weird factory building. I knew

it was Topps because when I came out

of the subway stop I smelled bubblegum.

It was unique in that the gum was made two flights above

our editorial business offices.

When you be approaching our building just like walking down

the street. You could be talking,

and the sugar dust would actually land on your tongue.

And you could actually taste the sweetness in

the air and smell it, you know from the manufacturing. You knew

you were approaching Topps. It was totally unique.

I'm Len Brown. I'm living in Bee Cave, Texas and I

worked at Topps for 40 years and the last 25, I was the creative

director in the New Product Development Department.

We started to come into the candy business

in a much bigger way. Bazooka uhh, was our big

bubblegum, I don't think I mentioned the name of it.

But Bazooka was probably the number one

bubblegum in the country

back then. It was such an icon up America

in the '50s and '60s.

They made as a staple bubblegum, not even the best

bubblegum eventually but they

made bubblegum and that allowed them a franchise

to move into these baseball cards.

And it was this man who would become incredibly important to

the history of popular culture

and certainly to me, named Woody Gelman.

Woody's job was to come up with trading card ideas.

Woody Gelman was of course the creative nucleus of Topps.

He had been a cartoonist.

He was a story and idea man first

for Disney and then for the Fleischer Brothers.

Going back to the earliest days, he helped create baseball

cards and hired all these

amazing artists to work on the Topps product that people from

EC, Norm Saunders later Robert Crumb, Len Brown. The list goes

on and on.

But then we started talking about different products that we

could be putting out.

And more and more, there was a need for what they called

non-sports cards. They felt that was a market that we weren't

really tapping into as best we could.

One of the first things that we worked on

collectively was a civil war series back I guess around '61.

We were instructed by the president that a company with a

civil war Centennial coming up let's put out civil war cards

and Woody and I both at first thought it was a terrible idea.

That it's educational. Kids get that in school.

Why would they want civil war cards for?

And Woody had the notion well, we'll make them want it.

We'll make them violent

and bloody battles of the civil war.

We'll show blood and guts.

And 'lo and behold it became a big hit.

And that was a forerunner of Mars Attacks.

And that was a forerunner of Mars Attacks.

Wacky Packs which was one of the very important

pop culture moments that Topps engaged in,

grew out of hanging out with Woody.

Oh, Woody was the world's greatest collector, I mean,

going to his house was a real treat.

It was like going to a great museum of pop culture.

Stuff that nobody could ever get to see like

all the Little Nemo Sunday pages. A lot of the originals.

Multiple runs of

Life Magazine when it was a humor magazine.

All the old Argosy, the old Amazing Stories pulps,

old runs of Saturday Evening Post from the '20s and '30s.

And what Woody did was

collected one run that just stayed as bound volumes.

Two runs that he could cut apart.

And then say OK- here's the Art Young file.

Here's the Harrison Cady file.

Here's the John Held file.

He'd like be organizing the stuff in a time

when nobody had any interest in this stuff,

I can't tell you how far outside the radar this was.

It wasn't a world of e-bay.

It was a world where finding it involved

meeting like-somebody just

happened to have a pile in their basement you know.

And one day he brings in a bunch of these things

to Topps on a day that I'm there

and shows me and he says

I love these things.

These are advertising cards

from like the 1890's and early 1900's.

They'd be things that would look like a tin can

or an ear of corn was one I remember...

an airplane... whatever.

And there'd be an advertisement

for something printed on the back,

on the front was this really beautiful rotary

printing on light cardboard.

He said you know we should be doing these,

says Woody. I think what he envisioned was

a pouch that a pre die cut ears of

corn and apples with a bite taken out and whatever

and something on the back.

They're beautiful. But you're saying

what? Like we would do a box of cornflakes?

Or a pea pod with some peas in it?

Well, yeah that would be good.

Well, wouldn't it be better to do it like the way Mad does it

and do parodies of these things,

rather than the actual thing?

I remember the back cover of one issue of Mad had a spoof,

a spoof of the cigarette Salem.

But I cut out the size of that package and showed it to Woody

and he liked it right away.

And either he or Art suggested that

and it should be little more illustrative.

Like a little funny guy doing something.

So there's a visual besides just

the word gag. And I felt that that was

the beginning of Wacky Packages.

Uh, Harvey Kurtzman, the guy who created Mad,

also had done these kind of humanistic, if not

anti-war, at least understanding

about the real horrors of war.

War comics at a time where the equivalent of Sergeant Rock

would be like pulling a grenade pin out of his mouth

and tossing it into a pile of nips and saying

Here's one from my Aunt Tillie!

Meanwhile the Harvey Kurtzman war comics

were cognizant of the fact these were kids that were

drafted into wars and were being blasted apart

not knowing what they had gotten into and their

lives were being cut short as a

real tragedy in war. This was the height of the Korean War

that they became very popular

but I thought that those war

comics which were never as popular

as Mad became which he'd created,

were the ones that taught you to question authority.

And I really do believe that they had a lot to do

with that 60's moment where a lot of

members of my generation said "Hell no, we won't go".

Or "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today"?

And stuff like that-all was born

from that Mad counterculture influence.

Because Harvey Kurtzman who created this thing

had created a new paradigm.

It was a kind of self-reflexive, ironic humor

that cut through the bland American 1950's.

It was basically saying

The whole adult world is lying to you.

And we here at Mad are part of the adult world.

Good luck kid. Figure it out.

It was like a zen koan to work with.

My name is Mark Newgarden.

I'm a cartoonist.

I am from Brooklyn, I was born in Brooklyn, I live in Brooklyn

and I'm one of the creators of Garbage Pail Kids.

One of the early trading cards things

I did was they were revising Wacky Packages

and this would have been around '83 or

'84, I think.

And I started working on those

pretty early on.

I remember, Len and I drove out to Toys R' Us

in Bay Ridge, one day - went up and

down the aisles looking fat toy things to parody.

And um, at that time, Cabbage Patch Kids

were a big hot commodity and it just seemed

like a very obvious thing to include

so, I did one that I entitled

The Garbage Pail Kids and that was sort of the

original coining of that term.

And the problem of the day around this conference table

was what are we going to do about

Cabbage Patch Kids?

What is going on here?

People are fighting over something that's become hotter

than Santa Claus. The Cabbage Patch Kids.

Cabbage Patch came out.

Cabbage Patch Kids and became enormous.

And we thought maybe we could

get the rights to do Cabbage Patch Dolls

on cards. You know

pictures of them with the names and all that.

And we thought would be a nice collectible.

And so they were asking an incredible,

formidable amount of money for Topps which was

anything above $5 I would think, for the license.

And the, the result was that wasn't going to work

because they were asking for too much money

and it was too far along in its own cycle of popular

culture of fad to be guaranteed hit.

If you could already get

the T-shirt, it wasn't quite as big a deal

to get the little sticker.

We were disappointed and I think Arthur Shorin

then said - Well, hell with them. Let's do it.

We'll make fun of them.

You know, we'll parody them like we did with Wacky Packages.

Arthur Shorin had a term for certain -

he had terminology for different types of products.

And one of his favorite types of products to make

were fuck-you products.

He said - let's do a fuck-you

product of Cabbage Patch Kids.

Stan Hart had been working,

going back to the 1950's at Topps and was married into

the Shorin family. Brother in law of the CEO and Stan was a

Mad Magazine writer and had done

a lot of TV show writing other stuff a Broadway play.

So at that point Stan, in a rather imperial way,

said Well, we'll just do the parody

version. We can do the fuck you version.

And then me and Len looked at each other

because very often these these cryptic

statements from Stan would leave us gulping.

And he was like Well Stan, what would that be?

Uh, well you know we would just do

funny versions. All right. Uh, And.

We had no idea how to do more than one.

I remember Art or it might have been Len.

I think it was Art running back into the meeting

room, the NPD room where

I was sitting working at something

asking for the painting for the Cabbage-Garbage Pail Kids that

we had sitting in the pile and he ran back into Arthur

and then maybe an hour later coming back to his room -

Okay, we've got to do a series of these now.

So that was from my vantage point.

And that was Arthur Shorin's edict that now

we've got to do a series of these.

And that team -that group which wound up being

Artie Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden, Stan Hart

was this big towering voice coming into the office.

Hello, hello, hello.

This big guy who worked on the Carol Burnett Show

and had his Emmys and all that.

And there was Len Brown as the creative director

kind of, you know pulling all these nuts together

and the various artists who are going to be involved on it.

And they would get together and have meetings

and discuss where they,

how they were going to develop this parody.

I was not a part of that.

I was never a part of the GPK team while they

were doing that. I was probably you know

writing and editing Howard the Duck cards.

God help me at that time.

So at that point the problem was how

do you make up a series of these things because there

wasn't much to build on except

this generic doll that indeed

did have adoption papers with it. And one of the things that

worked well back in the very earliest days

when I was at Topps was something called Ugly Stickers.

Before Garbage Pail Kids they

did a series of Ugly Stickers.

And the first ones they did were just ugly

Basil Wolverton characters that had the name of

supposedly kids on them.

So it would be like an ugly creature and it would be called

Fred or Art or Bob or something. Except

and it didn't work at first because they

use the names of the people at the Topps office.

So there would be these ugly

Stickers with names like Maurice.

You know. Nelly or I don't know if Nelly wasn't used

back as the name. They weren't

like names that norm, that an average kid had.

They were like names for people that were in their '50s.

So originally Garbage Pail in a real early stage,

Art sent to me a rough of a doll,

just a goofy lookin' doll, that said the name was Olga.

So you know it could have been that

But, Art came up with the idea of the

name plus an adjective to describe

what her vice is or what her grossness is.

You know, like Leaky Lindsay is a kid blowing

her nose. And that's what worked.

That's how come they were able to

do thousands of these things over the years.

We immediately tried to come up with a concept

that would work and now it seems like gee that

must have been fun and obvious but it wasn't at first.

So the style is all over the place and then

I kept doing idea sketches for them every few

months to refresh the idea pool.

And they kind of started evolving into pages

where I divided into comic panels that had no

connection to each other. And I just do the same...

I love one, I see where you're going with this guy...

So this room, three-fourths of it was the studio.

So Adam Bomb was born right here - in this spot right here?

Yes. And his 400 or 500 brothers and sisters.

So then in the fall of '84

one day the phone rings. And it is Art Spiegelman and him

saying "Hi this is Art Spiegelman from Topps and",

John, you know we know your work.

"Would you be interested in doing a few Wacky Packages?"

And one of them was Garbage Pail Kids,

a little rough that I think it was

Mark Newgarden's rough.

And, and a little doll in the box

and which was making him into a little bum

undershirt and a trash can and so on.

I was doing from '79 to about '84, I was doing these

fantasy paintings as well as comic book covers.

And I was starting...

There was a period a couple of things happened.

There was a gap in my jobs coming in

and I was also thinking I really miss humor.

Because doing fantasy art for me,

I was almost having to pretend.

In a different way than doing humor cartooning.

And so I just remember saying I wish I

could get some kind of humor job.

So John sent us in just sheets and sheets of ideas.

And out of everybody's work.

John was obviously the guy there was

just no question right off the bat.

It's like OK this is it. John. This is John's job.

I'd started working on it.

And I instead of getting

like six idea sketches I found myself writing.

It's like this stuff was coming into my mind almost these ideas

and thinking how about Little Monsters? I'd start listing up

all the monsters. How about body fluids?

I'd do a list of words and then I'd do some pictures.

Now and then, How about a walking dead one?

Because I'd done recently that year

I had done a walking dead cover for Twisted Tales.

And I had a little collage in my

sketchbook from somewhere

where it was a spoof on Ronald Reagan

sitting at a desk pushing a button. And I thought

Hey, how about a little kid pushing a button?

And in the background let's have an atom bomb

going off. So I sent them in.

There's a little pause for a while and

then I get a phone call saying

Hey John we got the job.

You think you can do all of 44 paintings in

two months? And this is like late 1984

and so basically I said Yeah I'll try.

You know I was a little unsure because

doing fantasy art. Everything was taking two to four weeks

to do a completed painting and this was

like a real change of gears.

But John was the one who had the chops

to make this thing look like a Topps product.

The problem with it was it had to be as grotesque

as the Ugly Stickers, but as sweet as these

Cabbage Patch things.

And that was a funny spot to hit

because if it's really ugly- it's not cute.

So it was trying to get

John to get cuter and cuter while getting uglier and uglier;

it was a complex zone. And finally something that,

again probably lawyers would not be thrilled to know

uh, if they're working to defend Topps

but at some point I said Could you take a look at these

damn Cabbage Patch Dolls?

They're much cuter than anything you've got.

Just, if you have to, just buy

one of the dolls and I'm sure Topps will reimburse you.

You know, and all of a sudden it came back right.

Part of one of the things I would do

come in on a Monday and I'd get the FedEx's

and I would open up John's FedEx.

I remember like taking out that

painting that was in the very first batch and thinking

Oh man, this is good.

This is really good.

And just having this gut feeling

we we're on to something special

with the series.

And then it was a matter of coming up

with other gags because one does not make a

series even two doesn't make a series

if you can come up with three

you can come come up as we proved with 300.

So I just thought I guess

I have to do a painting a day

and... and that means I had to get

methodical about it because I thought

if I just don't have myself very organized

this is going to get real sloppy everywhere.

So I thought, OK let's break down a painting a day.

OK - got to do the drawing.

Got it. I need to a color rough

so I know what the heck I'm doing for the effect.

So that's... that's a two hour chunk for pencil and color.

And then, then... let's say I was trying to be

humane to myself, So I said OK -

do, that means the actual painting

would take four hours.

So, you transfer it, do the flesh in one hour,

do the clothes in one hour,

do the props in one hour,

do the background in one hour.

And I thought I got it! There's a painting a day.

So by knowing where I was going for my color rough

I would have the white of the paper as my white

and just worked my way through light to dark.

Then I do the same for things like

the hair and the clothing and like the character

would usually, sometimes have a prop

maybe it's safety pins or maybe it's a bomb,

maybe it's a doll, a trash can, a gun, a steamroller

maybe rolling the character down.

I had time limits on myself and in drawing these things

so if it was something where I had to

make a trip-if I had to make a trip to the library

that's across town I had to figure -

can I afford the time to get references?

Or can I just make do with my clips file

or my imagination?

Art would usually call John

And, um, or he'd be on a conference call

and we'd kind of go through these

drawings you know, item by item

make this kid's nostril bigger.

Make this kid's ear lobe longer.

Make the fangs sharper.

Like one picture in particular is that

like Russell Muscle or whatever he is-number 51.

I had done a little muscular guy

and Art said well that's OK. But I mean that's kind of there,

but put muscles on his muscles.

And another thing he would say, you know

on particular pieces exaggerate more-

exaggerate-exaggerate.

Which, I mean, that's great advice and really appropriate

for what we're doing.

You know pump - pump it up more.

The doing the fantasy art had -

I was trying to go for drama and swagger in the work there.

And so when Garbage Pail Kids came along

I was still bringing that mindset to it.

I thought these are cute little characters.

But when I could think of an idea

or a pose that would work for the little guys

I was, I would try to go for something-

I, mean I didn't get it on everyone

but you know sometimes you just do a little character

Here I am! Tah dah!

I mean, literally, like you know,

many, many fine tuning comments as we went along.

And John was great. I mean you know

he really would always improve

what we were asking for and then go beyond.

On series after series sitting across

from Mark Newgarden where we'd glare at each other

unhappily until one of 'em would say

Well you know, One of us would say

what about a kid with his eyeballs dripping out?

What about a kid with uh, who's been ripped opened?

What about a-you know,

so just like trying to find possible hooks

for one thing after another.

And that was basically a full day

of sitting there and arguing

over the names endlessly.

I think it was a total balance of ideas

the way they would bat things back and forth one would

say something the other one would-it was like a comedy team

actually - Art and Mark.

And now we're on the track and at that point

it was working with what the backs could be

that could personalize it- well, like adoption papers

or other kinds of documents

that you could personalize -

because Topps had a series that wasn't successful

way before that of Dopey Diplomas

or Loony licenses - things like that.

The very first set of backs, as I recall,

Um, Len dug into the archives and found some old

series that Jack Davis had illustrated

that were sort of license plates and permits and they were

very deliberately a take off of like a early

1930s exhibit card series-

the kind that you would buy on like arcades.

You put a nickel into a slot

and you'd get like, you know, a back seat driver's license.

It was a very, old staple in sort

of lowbrow American humor.

Um, So Len pulled these things out. And he said

Well how about these for the backs?

And I said, ok, you want me to like

sort of like riff on these? And, he goes No, these.

And I literally hand-wrote out for

the first series every one of those backs,

making very, very minor changes

where I could just I want to try to update

them and made them funnier and then sketch out

whatever illustration might work in terms of the characters.

And that was the very first series of backs

and I think by the second series Len trusted me

to, okay, you know, you can write your own now.

Towards the end Jay Lynch was doing a bunch

of the backs.

He was um, he had been a contributor to Topps

projects for years. He was not involved with Garbage Pail Kids

at all early on.

Basically because he seemed to be working

for the competition which was Cabbage Patch

on a series of Cabbage Patch stickers

for another company.

So it was deemed that he was not um,

it was not ethical for him to be doing

both of these projects at the same time.

A series would run 44 images and that was based on the sheet

that these cards were printed on, in rows of 11. And 44 was

always the minimum you would ever want for a series. And with

Garbage Pail Kids they want to do the minimum because they were

double printing. They would have two names for every kid.

So in theory, a kid would not only be collecting 44 images;

they'd be collecting 88 cards altogether.

And that took off in a big way also,

almost the way a, you know, a decade earlier.

Wacky Packages had taken off. In fact those are the only

two products that Topps put in the history that I think we ever

did something like 13 or 14 different series one after

another. I mean we just kept going one. When one series was

done, we immediately started coming up with material for the

next series because it was just so popular.

As a result it immediately became every kid had to know

about it; Every parent had to censor it. They were being

confiscated in classrooms all over the United States and it

became a true fad phenomenon like Topps was always trying to

do, but mostly Wacky Visors was not one of the big hits,

but Garbage Pail Kids was, you know.

It's the hottest medium of exchange right now in classrooms

from Manhattan to Malibu.

Bubble gum cards featuring the

most grotesque caricatures imaginable.

Luke warm, Spacy Stacey.

Some are gross, some are neat.

They're like - beautiful to other kids

and sometimes gross to me.

They're really disgusting.

They're gross, that's what I like.

They're cards with drawings of grotesque parodies

of Cabbage Patch dolls.

Dead Fred, Acne Amy, Baby Barfy.

You get the picture. Kids all over the country,

buy them, collect them and trade them

like baseball cards.

I will trade you for.

Hairy Kerry, for Messy Tessy.

I all ready have Messy Tessy.

Ok...

♪ 80'S STYLE HEAVY METAL

♪ We're the Garbage Pail Kids! ♪ We're the Garbage Pail Kids!

♪ The chorus is repeated over and over ♪

When I first discovered Garbage Pail Kids cards

I was actually on our school bus heading

actually to school and I was sitting in the middle

of the school bus and saw these kids

with their knees touching in the aisle

and I was like why are they looking at?

So as we were stopping I was kind of making my way up

as we made stops

and I notice that they they're actually

going through these cards

and I'm like what are those?

And instantly when you look at them

it's almost like a parent not talking down to you

as a child. It just was right away

like almost adult material to me.

And she sent me this. This is Beth.

I still remember her name from when I was a kid.

I absolutely loved my Cabbage Patch Kids

just as much as my Garbage Pail Kids.

I saw all of the fans around the Cabbage Patch Kids.

And then the Garbage Pail Kids came out obviously

making fun of it.

And to me as a six seven year old.

That was hilarious.

I absolutely love it because Cabbage Patch Kids were

so sweet and innocent,

and little pacifiers and

little dogs that come along with them

and bunny rabbits and then you go here

and they're like ripping

the legs off storks,

and missing teeth, and witches,

and demonic and that was so hilarious.

And that was probably around that age where I realized

that I didn't just want to be around

sweet little girly things.

I wasn't a princess. I wanted to watch horror films

and collect really gory cards that grossed out my parents.

You know my parents can't find out that

I have this Garbage Pail Kids because:

they strictly forbade having them in the house.

I paid for them with their money

that they did not give me.

So I go to bed one night in middle of the week.

And I'm fast asleep dreaming the dreams

of a 10 year old of Garbage Pail Kids

and Goonies and I am jolted awake.

The blinding light is flashed into my eyes.

The bedroom lights are on.

The drawers of my dressers have all been opened

my clothes are strewn everywhere.

And my dad is now sitting at the

edge of my bed waking me up.

Brian. Brian. We have to talk.

Where are they? What? Where's what?

Where? Where are the drugs?

We know. This money's been missing.

My parents. Have been convinced

that their 10 year old son was a drug addict.

Um, Instead I turned over a big stack of

Garbage Pail Kids cards.

I remember growing up

and kids my age were always trading

baseball cards and keeping them in their little binders

in mint condition and I just hated

baseball. I didn't excel at sports.

That never spoke to me.

And then I remember vividly in second grade

someone had- I saw an Adam Bomb card

and my name is Adam and all of a sudden like

everything felt right to me and like here is a card

for people like me.

Um. I didn't really fit in.

I didn't play sports and it was funny.

It was crude; it was crass.

At that age I was already had aspirations

to be a comedy writer and I was like the

universe is right - Garbage Pail Kids.

I ended up writing Topps through one of the wrappers the address

and it somehow got to whomever

At Topps and she - you got the blanket letter back

from Topps-back in the day.

And then on the back when you flipped it

there was three hobby shops that you could contact for

if you wanted to purchase and so forth

and I wrote all three and Roxanne was

the only one that actually responded to my letter.

And these were also issued

the original time in the late 80s for Garbage Pail Kids.

They were folders for kids to, for real kids to take to school.

Put some of their work in, in the folders

and this doesn't have anything to do with

Garbage Pail Kids but it's a great piece.

This is Batman sitting on the toilet.

And this was done by Norm Saunders as a joke at Topps;

it never made it into mass production.

But some of us were lucky enough

to get hold of one of these cards.

During the time of Garbage Pail Kids

in the '80s was the busiest time

that we ever had. And I just, when I first heard

about them it was from Mark Macaluso

who was another mail order

dealer at the time and he called and told me about them

and I said to him, what is wrong with Topps?

Have they cracked up altogether

that they're going to put something like this out?

Having been a teacher,

I thought they were pretty gross

and I just didn't like some of the things in them.

I thought we always try to teach

children to respect our Presidents.

And here was Rapping Ron

and things like that. But then I started selling them

because I would sell

everything that was out at the time.

Well, mainly they wanted complete sets

and we would sort them. We would buy cases and boxes and

sort them and make sure that all the variations were in them.

Now when Series 3 happened I didn't know until much later

that they started bringing in

other artists like Tom, Tom Bunk

and a couple of other artists that show up

in the book here.

I mean, I didn't know til they were printed.

To keep John from burning out.

And then there was a talent hunt that extended

to and included some of the key artist were really

Tomas Bunk who I had met when he first came to New York

because he'd been from the German wing

of the underground comics planet.

And when I met him he had also been inspired

by the same Mad comics artist

that inspired me as a kid. We got along swell.

Well you know I'm not a politician.

I don't have anything to lose.

You can ask whatever.

Hey! Good seeing.

Yeah, get a good sound.

Here's one. Oh yeah, that's cool.

You used for reference?

Yeah, that's what I had. I had to hide it.

He's from the 80s, then?

Yeah he is from the '80s. Isn't that ugly? Oh my gosh.

So, Art said to me if I would do the fronts too

because I did the backs for the first three series

and the fourth also, and he said, if I would

do the fronts? And I was kind of like... You know,

I'm not really very ambitious. A little bit I am.

But I said, Oh I don't know if I can do that and stuff.

And uh, Yeah you can, you can try and then

I had to do it in the the style of

John Pond which was kind of difficult

because he used acrylics.

And airbrush. And so I have to learn airbrush and do

all the stuff so in the beginning it was kind of tricky

because acrylic also is very tricky to work with because it

dries it gets darker and I couldn't get like.

So I panicked often and so on.

But then, then it worked fine.

And then a guy named James Warhola.

As, a, it's kind of great to do.

I'm going back to these I loved doing them, but these are

Just, I usually use a lot of tissues working on tissues and

of course I'd get them to the point where

I'd sketch them up and fax them to

the art director and they'd give me the go ahead.

And then I'd go with the final artwork.

My originals were always done in oils back in the 80s,

mid-80s, '86 -'87. But then I went into

doing these in acrylic. And acrylic were for a short period

it was easier because they dried faster.

Paint never got on anything.

There's one of my color sketches that I'd done for

for the one with that was kind of

a take off on the World War II poster.

My name is James Warhola. I live here in New York

New York City and I do art work, I'm a painter

and I have a vast history in the illustration field.

I guess I've hit all corners of the field and I guess

you could say, one of the low points was Garbage Pail Kids.

Well... I talked to Art and Mark and I got to meet them

and they showed me what the project

was and it had to do with doing these gross,

disgusting images of Garbage Pail Kid cards they call them.

And I thought wow

that's kind of interesting. But on my trip back from Topps

I thought to myself I would never do these things.

I just couldn't face the fact that I was coming from,

you know doing some of the best writers in the

science fiction field like Heinlein and Asimov

and William Gibson and I'd be doing Garbage Pail Kid cards.

I thought no way. So, I told them I'd think about it

and I left the factory in Brooklyn

I took the long subway home and I

said "Gee it's just crazy. I don't think I can do it."

You know, and then I looked down on my shoe

and I had gum on my shoes and I said

Oh my gosh I even got gum on my shoes when I was there

Well in those days the deadline was all was yesterday

because it had to be done very quickly

because it was just such a hype.

So Topps wanted to throw one series

after another onto the market.

In terms of the quality of the series,

in some ways I feel like in some aspects they kind of got

better as they went along. In some aspects,

they lost something, they became a little bit more busier,

a little bit sort of more self-reflexive,

a little less iconic

than the first couple of series.

I couldn't wrap my head around how do you get

to do like Tom Bunk did and come up with all this stuff.

He's so generous with the detail.

And I thought, Oh, oh, here I am

trying to keep things kind of simple

and, and all of that and I guess -

I don't have to but, then I would feel lazy when I

look at his pictures. Oh shoot.

So he'd bring these cards in and have a big meeting

with Arthur Shorin and Arthur Shorin

was the CEO of Topps. For a corporate guy

he was... he had a very good sense of humor.

I've worked for a lot of other corporate guys

that I wish had Arthur Shorin's sense of humor.

Who... really took an Arthur Shorin

to be able to say not only - Let's do this

fuck-you product. But yeah I think it's funny to see that kid

blowing his brains out.

Show me more like that.

Not that Arthur's ideas themselves

were always that good. He was always saying

"Put in underpants. Underpants are funny."

And it's like "they're really not."

But we tried to include

underpants thing for Arthur every once in a while.

We always made extra cards.

Some of them we kind of

knew would probably never get printed

but we figured what the hell.

And sometimes we pushed the envelope a little bit

and sometimes we were surprised that

Arthur said "Great". And sometimes Arthur said "No way".

There was one with a little girl being

pushed off of a diving board into a pool

in a wheelchair which did not make the final cut.

There was a middle finger card, as I recall.

There was a number of cards that just

for whatever reason, never made it into the mix.

But that was something that we were sort of,

that we always knew that we'd have a couple that

we'd get a ""no"" on, so we would always

keep an extra couple in play

to sort of compensate for that.

Occasionally Art would say

Oh, We're meeting at my place on Canal Street.

So instead of going out to Brooklyn

we'd have a, have a meeting over at his loft on Canal Street

and I'd bring my things over and there

Mark and Art would kind of go over the art instead

of meeting out in Brooklyn at the Topps factory.

So that was a nice change.

But uh, there I got to see some of

Art Spiegelman's work that was aside from the

Topps bubble gum which is really

fantastic since he was doing RAW magazine at the time

with his wife.

Francois was there and I was introduced to the idea of

him doing MAUS at his apartment.

He was working on it while he

was giving us GPK jobs and I never realized it

would have become so historically important.

My Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel

about the Holocaust. Which has...

Certainly I'm grateful for what that book became,

but it was really immersive and deep, difficult

project for me while I was in the middle of it.

One of the real ironies though, was as Maus

number one is about to be published by Pantheon Books

who like every other publisher in

New York and New England had rejected

it as an impossible concept.

It's a comic for grown ups and it's about the

Holocaust and it uses cats and mice. Thank you.

You know, It just wasn't getting anywhere.

So it was rejected by everybody including

Pantheon books that eventually took it on on a second

submission through the art director who I was friends with

Luis Fealy who designed - was their top book designer

in New York publishing at the moment.

But one thing that they were

terrified about was that it would get out into the world

that I had done Garbage Pail Kids.

They said "You know how hard it is to put over the idea"

that this is a serious book about the Holocaust

using cats and mice?

This is really an impossible task.

If we also have to explain that you're doing

this thing that... is, are outraging

editorial columnists, parents, and educators, and psychiatrists

all over America we're dooomed.

That's just like all of a sudden

it's going to be Garbage Pail jews and it's over.

So many youngsters have become so obsessed

that the cards have been banned by some

school principles from the West Coast to the East.

Simply said If you have them fine, keep

them home, Monday morning I don't

want to see them in school.

You can't even play with at recess time.

What are you supposed to do just sit there?

I mean, really.

I think almost as soon as Garbage Pail Kids was out,

it was criticized by educators, parents, psychiatrists and the

like and had a few very negative

editorial op ed columns about what a danger it was to today's

youth. And that put it on the map.

♪ 80s Heavy Metal Music Plays

While at the time in the '80s

parents were very upset about it.

And I think it was just in

the beginning, where family life

was changing where - when you see

a kid with a knife or a gun it was like

Look it's just for fun. Kids don't do that.

But then around the mid-eighties those things were becoming real.

Instead of just something that

was made fun of, you know cupie doll with a knife

or something like that wasn't funny anymore

when you saw a real kid might be

using a knife or a gun, which was happening during the '80s.

Here's one from 1987,

Acne Amy Connect the Zits.

And find out what Acne amy found to eliminate her

acne problem forever. And if you connect the zits

you find it's a revolver aimed at her temple.

So there you go.

For a 12 year old kid that's really funny

and dangerous. So it's great. Still funny today.

We were doing this transgressive series

and the kid you know hit the mark. The kids loved it.

The parents hated it. That's where we wanted to be.

We were making things that Topps

that kids bought with their own money.

I would like 2 Garbage Pail Kids.

We we're not making things for librarians;

We were not making things for parents;

We are making things for the kid.

So that was, you know, it felt like we succeeded.

Because kids are kids and they just like to do,

to see things that their parents say they shouldn't.

And all that stuff: the bodily liquids

and all the warts, and snot.

All that parents say you shouldn't do and

then you see it there and it's so exciting.

Tom Bunk: This is Germany.

Bubble Gum war.

Torture sells no matter where you go.

And, but they were forbidden and they didn't.

That was '88.

Oh, you go to jail if you're caught with them?

No, but the parents were just too, too powerful.

How do you feel about that? Are you proud of that?

I am proud of whatever is against all these parents-

all these guys. And this is so funny.

This German newspaper and this guy was against this

Jugendschutzer means he's a protector of young kids.

And look how he looks!

He looks like a Garbage Pail Kid!

JEFF ZAPATA He does look like a Garbage Pail Kids, one with glasses.

First I think that the kids could buy it themselves.

It was just cheap. Something that like - I didn't think much

about it. But when I went to look for

jobs for children's illustration and I showed them

Garbage Pail Kids - that was totally wrong

to show it to them because

children's books are made for parents. And this here

is made for kids. And because it

was cheap; it was like a forbidden territory.

And the parents and the schools

and all... people who are kind of limiting children

in their freedom, they were all against it.

So that made it even better, you know.

I had the good fortune of having a relative,

who is also interested in art and that's how

I think I became interested in doing art and

that was my uncle Andy, who was Andy Warhol.

And he was always on the cutting edge

of everything. But I remember

when I first started doing

the GPKs in like '86 - I showed him those. And he was totally

enthralled with the idea and he kind of suggested

that I should do these paintings really large.

Not as kid art or card art but

do them as large paintings.

He kind of saw them as an anti pop thing,

an anti-popular, kind of, against society in some way.

We were bringing the counter-culture to

a younger group of children. But of course

it was the candy counter.

We have some things in here like

the Garbage Pail Kids bop bag.

It's very heavy.

Not sure what character this is.

Here are some Garbage Pail Kids stick on pictures.

The phone calls that we got during the Garbage Pail Kid

craze drove us crazy because we

just couldn't eat a meal without the phone ringing.

In the middle of the night the phone would be ringing

because of people living all over the country

and it just was continuous

and it was it was hard.

You know the hardest thing in the Garbage Pail Kid

thing to collect I mean outside

of original art of course

is Bukimi Kun, the Japanese ones.

And I like that even in this day and

age of eBay and the Internet and

everything going on it's still hard to find something.

Like these things you just can't find.

You know because in Japan they

didn't have Cabbage Patch Kids.

So when they tried to release

Bukimi Kun it didn't make sense to them they had

nothing to compare it to.

So yeah all the foreign stuff all that stuff so hard to find.

I really enjoy the search.

You know, they're so wacky!

Like, look at this guy holding up these titties.

Yeah. And so now we get into the green border ones.

Green with soccer balls, yeah, So the Italian yeah...

You know and it's just so crazy...

they're putting a flag and a soccer ball on each one.

I really tried to get Garbage Pail Kids

from all over the world. And it was so hard.

And the one place that I really wanted them from was Israel.

And I remember speaking to one

of the people at Topps, Bill O'Connor. And saying, I have

to tried to get these they won't

send them to me because you won't let them

import them into the USA.What can you do for me?

He said there was nothing that he could do that

I said well then I'm just going to have

to go over there and get them myself.

I collect fun things all over the world.

Lets have a closer look at North America,

Canada, French Canadian albums.

Columbia, Brazil these are

all complete albums and seal packs.

There's a few wrappers in there.

Argentina, but all the albums are complete.

Germany, Belgium test set wrappers.

Still need the Dutch and German,

variation UK set because I'm in the UK.

French sets, the Spanish sets

with the really good double packs.

You know it's funny-even today

if you go to the FedEx Web site

you can't send Garbage Pail Kids

to Mexico because of its depiction of

children and degrading situations.

So basically you can't ship turtle hides,

marijuana, or Garbage Pail Kids

to Mexico, which is pretty great.

So very quickly it became a fad and a phenomenon.

It was beginning to make a lot of money for Topps

and this is when I got my lesson in etymology.

Bonuses were being passed out.

Every vice president at Topps, I wasn't one of those,

was getting literally a one million dollar bonus that year

for how well Topps had done. And the factor that it made

Topps that much money that year was not the ongoing

perennials of baseball cards or the bubble gum

that was coming out year in year out...

But the Garbage Pail Kids that had become this giant cash cow.

Like me and a few other people

had managed to bring down this dinosaur.

It got eaten to the last morsel

by the people who had nothing to do with the Garbage

Pail Kids who worked on the baseball cards

or God knows what else.

But at least some scraps were tossed to us.

At that point I got somewhat disgruntled.

The artist might have even gotten small bonuses

but I remember getting I think it was a

$25,000 or maybe it was even $50,000 bonus

which to me was all the money in the world.

But when I heard about the million

dollar bonuses that had been passed out, I understood

that the root word of bonus was bone.

I don't remember specifically

what series we were working on.

It was well into it maybe at the halfway point.

I do know that I walked into the office one day

and everything I'd been working on was just gone.

And I guess there was a discovery process,

and pretty much everything

on my desk was considered discovery.

So all of my piles of sketches

going back to series one vanished.

And that's how I heard that Topps was being sued by OAA,

Original Appalachian Arts

who were the Cabbage Patch people.

It's the gross vs. The cuddly,

the sick vs. The sweet.

It's an all out battle

for the hearts and minds of kids.

What may have started out as a joke,

is now a $30 million lawsuit.

There are legal issues that weren't as clean

in the Topps bubble gum world, which was to say that

comic books were the lowest form of literature

but by God they were literature.

Bubblegum cards weren't exactly

literature even because you were selling premiums.

You're selling something that's sold with gum

and added value to the gum,

but wasn't exactly an editorial form

because obviously the First Amendment

was designed not for bubblegum stickers and cards but

for dissident opinions in the form of newspapers.

And as a result it came up against a different body

of law that was beginning to tighten

the noose around Topps from the moment that even

Wacky Packs came out. Because now, it seems

obvious in a world where corporations are people too.

More so than people.

But at that time there was something even more important

than the First Amendment which was product disparagement.

Xavier Roberts's has filed a copyright

suit against the chewing gum company.

My point is it's not to take my product,

my creation, and tarnish it.

And that's really where I'm coming from.

Early on in working on series 1,

I was pushing, not pushing - I was just doing that the first

few designs as generic looking little dolls

because I thought you can't make

stuff look like a copyright or trademark design of

another company. This is asking for trouble;

this is asking for a lawsuit or something.

But they kept pushing me to make them

look more like, like Cabbage Patch.

You know and, and uh, so I mean, but

I can see that this is like a two edged sword.

It made, it more appealing and more -

it underlined that the title being a parody

more by making the designs look

more like Cabbage Patch. But I saw it coming.

It seemed like the parody laws

back in, you know back in that period

were a lot tougher

because we weren't even allowed

to parody Cyndi Lauper in a particular series.

We did that series called Hollywood zombies where we

clearly were parodying the

images of famous actors and actresses.

And back in the '80s and '70s we were told you cannot

do that. So things seem like they were much tougher then.

I never liked the fact that we couldn't do parody.

I mean Mad did it for years and I felt we

should have that same freedom that Mad Magazine had.

We were publishing artwork

and humor you know and why, why could Mad do this

this and we can't? And then we were told

well Mad's a publication and

there's different laws of parody.

Which have to do with undermining

the value of a trademark. And that trumped the

idea of the right to parody.

But when Wacky Packages were coming out

we would frequently get cease and desist orders from

Kellogg's cereal or Pepsi Cola.

And we had to stop. Because we were actually told

parodying the trademark is more serious than

parodying an idea or a concept.

Well we were being sued, you know...

by what we viewed to be a hostile court. This was a

Georgia company. And the trial was going to be held in Georgia.

In the suit we had to turn over all our early files to the enemy

camp. Ultimately I had to go down to Georgia

to give a deposition for the attorneys for Cabbage Patch.

And I was really strung out about that.

I wasn't looking forward to it.

Just fearful I would say the wrong thing. Albeit the truth

but yet get Topps in some worse trouble than

they seem to be heading into right then and there.

So the guys representing Cabbage Patch Kids

they just kept asking questions and they have a court

reporter typing out the transcript

of the... of the conversation.

John would submit rough sketches to us

then we would send it back for a finished

painting. And there was some note that somebody wrote

make it more, look more like, you know - Cabbage Patch.

And then they were digging through my papers and,

sure enough, they found something

that says make them look like Cabbage Patch Dolls.

And they thought, Ah - we've got him!

We felt that might have been like a smoking gun.

We're waiting for it to go before the judge for the case.

So we hear different things postponing it

and I'm sure this isn't right, but it sounded like

the judge has to get a haircut today so you guys will have to

take the day off. Or something came up so you know.

Then after at least a week there we hear

Oh, Ok they settled out of court.

So you guys can go home now.

There was some negotiation that went on between

both sides after that. And they made a

settlement. Topps ended up paying for the right

to spoof the Cabbage Patch series.

We agreed to pay royalties to the Cabbage Patch

people for all the past series we did. And then going forward,

we would be paying royalties.

Plus, we had to make changes

where it couldn't look quite as much

like the original Cabbage Patch.

We had to change it to look a little bit different.

I think they they paid till it hurt, but it didn't hurt bad

enough to stop us from going forward.

That lead to finally have a logo being changed

for the Garbage Pail Kids and the little arc lettering

being turned into a banner and a few other changes in the

physiognomy of kids to make it what it was which was now a

phenomenon in its own right.

I guess Tom worked up a model sheet -Tom Bunk of several,

you know, several designs that show the

new characters. They had to be hard plastic

instead of soft cloth dolls and have

different number of fingers and had to

have little jug ears.

The proportions were slightly different.

They would have some random plastic cracks

in them to make, everybody - make it super-clear

they were hard sculptured dolls.

So I just thought these aren't going to be as cute.

I didn't like I didn't want to paint ugly

dolls. I mean that sounds funny because we were

trying to make them gross.

But I wanted them to look, I wanted them to be real

appealing and lovable despite the negativity of anything that

they might have to do or encounter.

I didn't like putting cracks

in chunka joints you know.

But that was it was the agreement

probably. I felt that maybe Topps

might have agreed to too much as far as

changing the GPK look.

I don't know how many we ultimately

did with that design how many series we did

but we did a fair number of designs.

They were still selling. They're always selling enough

for Arthur to walk into the room and say

"Yeah we're going to do another one."

And I think we ultimately did 15 or 16 series.

The changes were subtle but it was enough to

kind of, to kill the whole concept I think.

♪ If your teacher says you're bad ♪

♪ And sends you to the principal ♪

♪ You can be a Garbage Pail Kid! ♪

♪ If your parents say you dress like ♪

♪ You should be in a carnival ♪

We heard there was going to be a movie.

Naturally, we wanted to be involved creatively involved

and we were told we were not going

to be creatively involved.

Hey we're the the Pepsi generation!

We met with Rod Amateau who was the producer of it.

As I recall we had a meeting at Arthur's office

one day where he asked us a bunch of extremely

general questions about Garbage Pail Kids.

It didn't really seem, he didn't really seem to

understand what they were.

But he knew they were hot.

And I think he had a contract to fulfill so this

was going to be his project.

So, I think we sort of showed him stuff we were working on.

He would ask some very sort of vague

general questions about like this character

or that character. But, it was, it was basically

a very non communicative meeting as I recall.

But it was the worst movie ever made.

And Rod Amateau I think has admitted that the

reason he wrote that was that he had a contract

to write a certain number of movies

and this was, you know, the thing that would end his

contract which he wanted to do and that's why he did it.

Well, I was working pretty regularly on a show

called The Facts Of Life and had a career going,

if you will. And it was the summertime and along

came a film that I was able to audition

for the lead in.

And I was super-excited because

there was so much attention on the cards at the time

and I figured it would be incredibly popular

and a great opportunity and I got the part I fit

the bill for the character of Dodger.

Little did I know that it would end up being quite

the film that it was.

I believe one of the

memorable quotes from the critics is

they called it "a stunningly inept and utterly"

reprehensible film" - which it is - which it is."

And I don't actually remember the audition

but I was glad that I got the role of Valerie Vomit

as opposed to some of the other characters

because I can't stand bodily functions.

I don't like them to be talked about.

When I got called for the role I was called by a friend,

I believe it was Phil Fondacaro.

He said he needed, uh... uh the production was

looking for six to seven little people to play

some characters. And it was the Garbage Pail Kids.

When I got cast for the character

we went down to Atlantic Entertainment

and met with John Buechler and Rod

and they kind of looked at us and said

You're this character. You're this character.

I don't recall the exact casting process

but I was honored to play Windy Winston.

That was a fun character.

In fact, I brought in a little of my New Orleans flavor

some R&B, some Jazz, and some attitude you know.

And that's how I developed the character.

I like the counter culture of the opposite

of the Cabbage Patch Kids.

When you're my size,

you don't get to play the neighbor.

You don't get to play the lead.

Very, I don't know why. It's just it's just one of those

things... It would be nice if that happened.

But we get to play some very

colorful characters.

Like Ali Gator - I'm green. As an ewok - I'm brown.

So I was thinking of what different character

of what he would do, maybe he'd be from like

New York. A little bit of deng, deng...

They said not that type of a character.

Get it down a little bit more like dat -

a little bit down and deep.

So I started doing the voice of getting like dat.

That was how I really started getting the

voice. A little tough guy.

Ooh, I'm spitting all over the place.

Actually it was only my fourth or fifth audition in Hollywood.

I heard of the Garbage Patch or

Cabbage Patch dolls.

But I was 22 years old when I auditioned for this.

And all that stuff was well in a different world as far

as I was concerned. I had no idea what it was about

I had no clue.

So my fart direction was actually a body movement

or like a like a working it, working it

And like finally going whohaaa.

Ahhh, uh, Aaah.

There you go - one more. Ahhhh...

And I would knock the people down.

You know - they like - be like - Oh my God! That stinks.

I hung out with the director,

Rod Amateau, the late Rod Amateau.

And there he was the ringleader with all these crazy,

little guys wearing these

ridiculous looking Paper mache kind of heads.

And he's like, you know, I don't have to do this movie

you know... it's not in my contract to do it...

Oh, that's, that's interesting. That's inspiring,

a very confident building statement.

And of course the movie wound up being pretty pathetic.

But I guess it's become something of a

cult movie over the years and some people like it.

As far as the movies I remember getting in

piles of like, snapshots of some very rough maybe

armatures for the costumes and that kind of stuff.

Obviously, you know, we were, somebody, Arthur

or whoever was just approving anything

and they were not soliciting our specific opinion.

I know the makeup guys would need a lot longer time

to sculpt the heads and then

the different things because of the Topps

would come in and say "no you can't do it this way"

because that looks too much like a

"Cabbage Patch Kid."

And so they would have to change that up.

So artistry that was tough on trying

to make the heads and

things like that of the different characters.

Let's talk about the vomit.

Luckily I wasn't in the head when the vomiting took place.

It was like a projectile - it was a head -

a different head with an enlarged mouth.

That had like a spewing device I don't

know what it was that pushed out the vomit.

But it was pretty, pretty gross.

I went to the premiere in Times Square.

I was one of three people in the audience

and there was a guy living in the second row

and that was the premiere of the Garbage Pail Kids movie.

You know what is it that is that is so breathtaking?

Part of it, I think stems from it being a terrible

execution of a terrible idea.

You know the, the power of those cards

is in the cards.

You know, it's the each indvidual - the artwork.

That's that's the strength of thing.

That's why they sold.

That's why people were in to it the ideas behind the artwork.

And to try to put that on film,

it just, it didn't work and it was a catastrophic failure

in attempting to do so.

The thing that's so fascinating

about the Garbage Pail Kids movie is,

as a as a writer now

and a producer, someone who's had family films made.

The fact they made that movie

is so amazing because it goes against

everything you would do in a family movie.

In a way, it's like one of those movies you look back

Mac and Me - there's these certain

movies where you're like that was just a really weird

period in the '80s where you could get away with doing stuff.

And the filmmakers went for it in a really weird way

and they committed and we're left with this

really bizarre piece of family cinema.

That I don't think there'll ever be anything like that again.

You know hindsight is a powerful thing.

So at the time I didn't have any idea.

I thought I was making the Goonies.

Well the popularity of the Garbage Pail Kids led to CBS

wanting to air a produced

Garbage Pail Kid cartoon on Saturday mornings.

The American Family Association

didn't like the sound of that.

You know, here are these gross cards

of kids farting and blowing up and killing each other.

This is terrible for the children.

The children won't like this. So of course

They start writing letters

and getting it out there you know.

Boycott CBS. Boycott their sponsors!

Boycott the advertisers!

And this, you know scared the crap out of CBS.

And for the very first time in history they actually cancelled

a show that they've already produced,

that was ready to roll.

Just because of a public protest

so it never aired, not here in the U.S.

I very specifically remember being in a meeting

where Stan Hart announced

to us "That will never be put on the air."

And he was dead right.

Six months, a year later,

it got up to the point of being listed in TV Guide

but when that Saturday morning came and the

kids tuned in for that show, it was not there

and it never aired.

So Stan definitely had the inside track on that one.

Interestingly enough, John K,

of Ren and Stimpy fame, you know, before he ever

did that, did some presentation materials

for his version of a Garbage Pail Kid

cartoon which, God would have

been awesome! You know, so, oh well.

We just kept going on it. Working on, up through series 16

and I didn't know till after work was done on the 16th series

that - hey, they weren't going to publish it.

And the thing I heard was just that sales

were low enough that they didn't want to do it.

That's the story I got at the time.

And then abruptly it just stopped.

And that was in late 88.

Another person that was working at Topps

was a gentleman by the name of Len Brown who was

a mentor of mine at the time.

He was one of the guys who plucked me out

of obscurity and said Hey, why don't you,

you should do more card sets.

The next thing you know,

we kept on saying we want to bring back some of the old

brands. Should it be Ugly stickers?

Should it be Wacky Packs?

Which one we should do?

And... we started and, well let's bring back

Garbage Pail Kids. Let's bring it, it's time.

And a lot of the executives at the time

were sensitive to the lawsuit.

And because of that we were very

sensitive about how we were going to go back

to doing Garbage Pail Kids.

And where were these artists?

It's almost... we had to go find everybody again.

So the idea was to do an

All new series of Garbage Pail Kids.

No wait, did they call it "All new"?

Yeah OK. All new That's the right title.

And it was basically going to take

the unpublished 16th series. And then they wanted

to add in, I guess it was six paintings per artist for

myself and Tom Bunk to do new work.

And Jay Lynch provided some very, very

thoughtful, clear drawings and he's wonderful

to get ideas from.

And when we restarted the engine to this beautiful car

that's called Garbage Pail Kids,

20 years later or whatever it was.

We still had the same card, the same rules and all that.

We knew like we have to do something different.

And it took us a while. I... I... I...

Once you started art directing and editing Garbage

Pail Kids you really appreciated what they did

in the, in the original series.

And I actually used to dab a lot into the well

of the old timers.

Call them up, "Art, what would you do? And... Jay"

Lynch, what would you do? Len Brown, what would you do?"

I think there was a surprise after doing the work

that they were printing, printed differently.

Technology has changed

in whatever the time was like - 20 years

from, from '84 to 2003 there. And I thought, oh this

is shiny paper and the colors so much more detailed.

And it's like we had to kind of get a feel for it.

We were doing Garbage Pail Kids,

the second series and I didn't like some of the artists

we were hiring that I was forced to hire.

That were... and it wasn't that I didn't like them

I just didn't think that they were right for this series.

So I said you know what I think I could paint

just as good or better than them and I went

but I am not a painter. I'm not a good painter.

I'm not - I don't think I'm good.

So I did a piece,

not saying it was from me,

and it got approved and all that stuff.

And then I said Hey, that's...

I actually painted that, I drew that.

And now it's Armed Arnie.

That's how Armed Arnie came to be.

And but at least it showed that I wanted to show them like,

Hey I'm not a good painter and

if we're hiring this we have to get people better than me.

And that was when we got Brent.

Out of college, I was flat broke

so I moved in with my older brother actually and was

living out of his basement.

I'd been getting a lot of rejection letters

from different comic book companies.

And, um, but I was getting

steady work to make it worth my while to.

So then finally I submitted to Jeff

and he sent me an email and then

asked if I wanted to try out and paint a Garbage Pail Kid.

And it was a Jay Lynch concept. It was really

stressful at the time.

Like I felt like I was finally making it or something

Here's Pat of Gold here.

This one is Leafy Larry.

Oh, geez I can't remember this ones name.

I think this one is Roll-up Ralph.

That's this one - Roll-up Ralph.

Jeff said "Hey, you know..."

we're looking for GPK artists and also

Wacky Packages artists. Do you think

"this is something that you'd be interested in?"

And you know, inside I was just jumping with joy.

I had to have my poker face on because

again I collected GPK and Wacky Packages as a kid.

And at that time I didn't even know

that the Garbage Pail Kids had came back, You know,

I just thought it was just an '80s thing.

The first set I worked on was 2005.

But definitely remember drawing my own garbage pail kid

and showing them to my mom - stuff like that

and trying to fool her

that they were real Garbage Pail Kids.

So I remember that.

And I just always remember carrying them around with me

in a big stack with like a rubber band stack of

cards and always just looking at them wherever

I went and bringing them with me.

And they gave me a really cool character:

Split Kit, which was one of the original designs,

which was like a normal kid and then just put down a half and he

was like this little juvenile hoodlum.

I think he had a gun actually.

Which is funny because we can't paint guns anymore.

When we get take the classic characters

and put them in modern situations I enjoy.

Because that's when it's really

getting back into like OK, this is what I grew up with.

I am now literally painting the Garbage Pail Kids I saw.

Whenever anybody finds out I'm a Garbage Pail Kids artist

the first thing they say is "you have the coolest job ever."

So that's exciting.

And I have been asked to go to my son's school

to talk to the kids and I had them come up with their own

Wacky Packages ideas and Garbage Pail Kid ideas.

And my kid, and my son... he has his friends come over

and they've been asking me

to do Garbage Pail Kids for them.

So it's pretty cool that

all the kids around the neighborhood,

are always trying to come in there and give

me ideas or get their name in there

or try to do something with that.

Topps is one of the few places

I worked at where you actually, physically will paint

something. Most most companies I've worked for they want

like a digital, something digitally colored.

Really rare to actually be able to do an

actual painting that is like actual airbrushing.

Like physically airbrushing it.

I like having to wear a respirator

so you don't inhale fumes.

It's a lot different than sitting on your computer.

So my mother had passed away when I was 10

of cancer and my dad raised three boys:

myself, two younger brothers.

I mean I was 10 years old

and Garbage Pail Kids came out in 1985

and that was it. I was into that.

And yeah, my dad was very accepting.

He was just, as long as we were happy

and we kept to ourselves.

It was good for him. And it was good for us.

So, and it made us get along a little bit -

between the times that we were watching professional

wrestling and beating each other up, so.

What's great about Garbage Pail Kids,

each artist has a sensitivity to what sort of

humor they're putting into it. And it really, when the viewer

sees it, there's a lot of that artist's interpretation of the

gag. Because you could come up with the gag

of, you know, of some kid jumping off a roof,

or whatever, but it's the way that the artist draws it

and makes it where it's not dangerous,

it's funny and he put's a sensitivity to it.

I think that's what people get out of it.

And they look at it and they have for a split

second when they're reading it,

they have a little contact with the artist who drew it,

and that artist's interpretation of that event.

You know, that's the performance of it

and the artist never hears the clap.

But I think hearing the chuckle here and there

is worth the price of admission.

Blanche, down.

After high school I moved to

New York to go the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

I took a major in cartooning which is a real major,

believe it or not. We had a lot of professors that

were in DC Comics.

They wrote and illustrated for DC, Mad Magazine.

So we were trained by a lot of those guys

in basic storytelling too.

How to tell stories, how to come up with themes and

so it was kind of like we were being trained as writers also.

Which helps with doing the Garbage Pail Kids now

because it is like, half of it's writing.

We have to write a concept or a gag.

You know come up with not just you know doing the artwork

but come up with an idea.

I still collect the children's writing-

Children saying "I bought this and my dad and.."

and I love the children letters because I'm like I'm glad kids

are buying it because I remember when I was a kid and it meant so

much to me to buy these things.

So when I hear from a kid it's sorta really nice.

I saw my first Garbage Pail Kid card

in 2012 at Target. I was shopping at Target.

And then I looked at this pack of cards and I said.

"What are those, mom?" And my mom said,

"They are Garbage Pail Kids; they are gross cards.

But, would you like them?"

I said "Yes." I was so excited.

I can't wait.

So I opened them in the car and I thought

they were the best thing ever.

I found out about them,

I got into them, and I did not know there

was old series. So I looked at YouTube

and I learned there was more older series.

So there's a lot of really neat GPK web sites out there.

When I came up with GPKCustoms

there was already Aaron's site

GPK World which I actually used to discover the artists.

There was GPK Underground which is a wonderful forum

where you can meet other people

who are interested in collecting

and trading Garbage Pail Kids.

So there so many different nuanced groups that you can find

of any aspects of the GPK toys

or the Cheap Toys or the pop-up toys.

It seems to be something for everybody that

loved GPK as kids.

And I found these wonderful web sites that

had documented every single one.

And that's when I looked on e-bay and realized they are

actually worth a lot now.

That a lot of people hadn't kept their cards

in such a pristine condition as I had.

Well, you know the cards themselves

now have a lot of value as well. I mean it's

amazing what's happened, to find a sealed box of series one,

first of all is very difficult to find. And if you do, it can

bring anywhere from three to five thousand dollars.

As far as the prices going up on original series boxes,

they're not around that much. So prices have to go up.

The individual cards graded, which of course, is kind of

a more recent kind of thing.

People buy a card and then they get it incapsulated

and graded by a third party authenticator.

And if it comes back a 9 or 10 on

a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being - gem mint.

A card like Nasty Nick, 1A, can be $3000.

I do other genres besides Garbage Pail Kids.

I do Marvel stuff. I also work on another

brand for Topps, Mars Attacks as an artist.

And there is nothing

that comes close to the secondary market of

sketch cards or original art as it goes to the Wacky

and Garbage Pail Kids stuff.

The original series- that art goes for thousands.

The original art of these magnificent cards

or you know only 5 " by 7"

which is kind of interesting that they're not

much bigger than the cards themselves.

They're about 2 up. When you see them in person.

They're so colorful and the techniques

and everything used to to create these images.

It's very impressive.

I've been impressed myself by the prices they've achieved.

Certainly, first series paintings can go anywhere from

you know 20 to 30 thousand dollars depending

on who or what it is. Which particular card it

represents and was used for.

Second series you're starting to see

you know go somewhere in the $15,000 range

$20,000 range again depending on which card.

And third series, already at 10

you know $10 to $15,000.

So you're really seeing

you know heavy duty action on these things

as works of art not just a collectible

but people are looking at it in a different way.

Now, Adam Bomb, the most iconic of all

the Garbage Pail Kids obviously. In my opinion

is the Mona Lisa of trading card art. Right?

I mean you think about it, When you think about,

the 1980s pop and culture in general,

that is one of the iconic images.

No question about it.

So you know if I were asked to appraise the Adam Bomb painting,

I would look at it in a very different light than the

other paintings. And I've given it a lot of thought and you

know if someone had it and wanted to insure it,

I wouldn't insure it for anything less than

a quarter of a million dollars at this point.

Well one cool thing about being a GPK

artist is that we get these

these fan commissions and to some of the fans

you know, money is not an object.

You know, they'll be willing and ready to pay

for whatever commission that they want.

Hey Joe!

James! How's it going?

Nice to meet you in person. Come on in!

Absolutely! Thanks man.

So some of the artists that I initially found

were those that just had Web sites.

So Brent Engstrom and Tom Bunk were some of

the first artists that I originally commissioned.

Initially it started off pretty simple just

single characters and then I realized that

the thing I think everybody wants at some point.

Is to have a Garbage Pail kid of

themselves. And so I got a painting of my whole

family as Garbage Pail Kids. And then from that I was

like wow you can do a lot more when you have a full painting

than these little cards.

And so I started to think of what would I want to see.

Well I'd want to see all the Ghostbusters!

Well do you just want them all standing around?

They've kind of gotta be doing something.

So what are they going to do?

So I started to imagine these vignettes.

My wife is very supportive of my Garbage Pail Kid collection

but she's not a big fan.

But both my kids love Garbage Pail Kids.

And do you like to draw or make your own Garbage Pail Kids?

Well, I kind of have an idea in my head.

I already got the name:

Stapled Stan and he's like stapled everywhere.

His mouth is stapled together.

You know how some the Garbage Pail Kids have like

their tongue sticking out?

His tongue is like stapled.

Hands, fingers stapled together, he's all stapled.

He's all stapled together!

The Garbage Pail Kids are jokes.

Look - a cow jumping over the

moon spilling milk.

They're really funny to me. They're super dupe.

It's a too-many headed baby.

When I first got Garbage Pail Kids,

shortly after that I was actually diagnosed

with cancer non- Hodgkin's Burkitt's lymphoma.

And so while I had the first series I didn't have any

of the other sets because I was in and out of the hospital.

And my mom knew that they would become a big thing.

So she bought me more and more cards.

Like there's a kid there with no hair

and looking sickly and kids don't know

if you can't catch cancer or not.

They're just see - somebody sick

and kind of run away.

But I had these cards everybody really wanted

so they were willing to approach me because they knew

that, hey if you want to trade to get a Nasty Nick

there's the only guy who's

going to have one so you better go over

and see what you can get.

So, yeah it was a way that, that I didn't feel shunned and

or an outcast at all. I actually felt like

people wanted to be around me.

I would never, never sell this card.

This is part of my childhood.

This is what makes this whole business

of collecting happen, you know, is that attachment

to things that you had, things that you lost,

things that you never had, but wanted

and now you can afford. That's what this is all about.

So yeah, this one I'm holding on to.

Aaron Booton: And I was like WOW these are sensational

the artwork, the level of artwork to me was,

that's what really got me.

I don't know if there ever will be anything

like Garbage Pail Kids in the '80s!

30 years later, are they talking about Willow?

Nah, they're talking about Garbage Pail!

That's what actors live for is for-I'm going to get

teary-eyed - people appreciating their work.

That's just the cherry on the icing on the cake!

So thanks, you guys!

But I did actually spend some time in a treatment center

in the early part of this decade. It was great because

I worked my shit out and that was good. Part of the treatment

was that you go to you see a psychologist

three times a week. And that was actually

extremely, extremely helpful. It's part of a rehab

facility where we talked to a psychologist and one day I,

I pulled up a clip from YouTube of the Garbage Pail Kids to

show the psychologist. And I swear they were this

close to offering me a drink.

I think one of the things that kids are

missing out on today. There's so much access to

information there's not really that phase in their lives where

they can sort of explore that, that sort of adolescence

that Garbage Pail Kids allowed you to explore.

Where sure it's maybe not exactly

what your parents wanted but it's not awful.

It's just a little bit of dirt. It isn't dirty.

But my dad said I am the patron saint

of the '80s and Garbage Pail Kids.

So I keep trying to go on and on to

to get more people to like these cards because I think

more people should have them.

GPK has two things that I feel that kind of make up the brand.

It's gross humor. And then there's also

social commentary. And I think those two things,

you're always going to have people that like gross out

things. And then you're always going to have people who like

art you know social commentary represented in art.

I always felt it needs to be funny.

If you make cool stuff you have to make it funny.

So to keep the balance and this balance is

I think was what was so good about it.

That was... and we could have gone even more so.

Because I'm... I'm left anyway.

You always have to question the whole establishment.

It is the establishment of this you know.

If you don't question it, you'll get Adolf Hitler soon.

It really did have an independent life after

the giant success of Cabbage Patch,

Garbage Pail became a giant success In its own.

It earned its wings as its own phenomenon.

Howard the Duck didn't make it, but I'm glad

something did well for Topps.

It feels good. I'm a little puzzled at sort of the

obsessiveness that some of these people have about the series.

I mean we were making these for a mass market.

We were not making them for collectors. We were

not making them for the zealots. We were not making

them for completeists. We were making them for kids.

And I think a little bit of that is lost now.

It's much more sort of fan-focused.

It's more narrowcasting than broadcasting.

As being an art director for Garbage Pail Kids,

part of it was being a psychiatrist. Every artist

has their own problems, their own dynamics and

me taking over such a brand. That had such a history.

Being able to talk to the original artists that

I grew up with and admired and finding out how great they

are and also they helped teach me to be a good editor.

I'll never forget it. I consider John Pound

like a father figure to me. And if I get a little teary

eyed, excuse me. But he's... without him

I could never have done it. So, thanks, John.

I just loved doing the work and I felt proud of it

and loved that they had a place in the pop

culture arena and in the market place.

And that I had work in print.

And that it was funny stuff and silly stuff.

I'm proud of being silly!

Philly Non-sport card show.

We have our manufacturers here this morning

as well as seven artists.

Please come by and say hello to all of them.

I started to hear back in the 1980s

that trading cards were no longer a factor with kids that

they were moved on to video games, computers,

all sorts of other things, and they just didn't care to

collect pieces of cardboard any longer.

The turn of the century we had Pokemon and Yugioh

and all sorts of products that made it big time

on trading cards.

So I still say trading cards are always going to be with us.

It's the property you have to match up

successfully on a trading card and kids will want it.

It's cheap entertainment. It doesn't cost a lot.

And kids love having

stacks of trading cards of something that they love.

So I, I think going forward in the future.

Garbage Pail Kids could be around 20 more years

from now with it's 50th, silver anniversary coming up.

If you're making a graven image somebody might worship it

as a false god. So the role of the

cartoonist satirizes stuff and takes something

that's contending for false-god status

and drag it down to reality and

show that it has feet of clay,

that they idolize a feet of clay. That would be the

job of the cartoonist; that would be the appropriate

job of the cartoonist.

So now you know, the thing you've gotta watch is,

is that the images of the Garbage

Pail Kids stop becoming satire and start becoming holy icons.

That just exist in and of themselves.

I see the same thing with Mad Magazine;

It's become it's opposite. They'll print one issue that

has different covers. And so the collectors will have

to buy all the different variations.

And originally they were a thing that was out there

to mock consumer-culture and to

get people to think about such things.

And now it's a part of consumer culture.

Things naturally evolve into that.

But I try to avoid it. But then again I got to make a living

so I don't know what I'm saying.

Do you have fun with those?

No...