New Garbage Pail Kids book

If you were a kid junior high age or younger  in the mid-'80s (when my son was just that age) you probably remember Garbage Pail Kids. They were a gross and funny satire of the popular Cabbage Patch Dolls. The new book, Garbage Pail Kids, tells of their genesis at the Topps Gum Card Company, lead by Len Brown (who also produced the infamous 1962 Topps series, Mars Attacks) and Art Spiegelman (who wrote and drew the award-winning graphic novel, Maus). Garbage Pail Kids were perfect for the age group at which they were aimed. They were funny and grotesque. Just what kids love.

This is the new book, with all the cards through the first five series.

If she’d seen them my mom’s mind would have gone into meltdown, as it did in my own early teen years when I was reading Mad and Famous Monsters of Filmland and she was playing censor. I went the other way with my boy, allowing him to pick his own interests. (I believe if you think your parents were unreasonable with you, when raising your own children think of how your parents would have handled a situation, then do the opposite.) Besides, I liked the cards as much as he did.

With my son visiting us this weekend, just when the book arrived in the mail, I brought out his old Garbage Pail cards, of which I am now the caretaker. We looked at them and had a laugh. But for David it was a long time ago when he was a kid, and now he is concentrating on his career and raising his own children. That’s good, and I’m proud of him for it.

What I was left with after we looked at the cards is that he has progressed into adulthood, and while I’m thirty years older than him I have stayed in an adolescent stage he long ago left behind.

You can see what I mean by looking at some of my favorites from the collection: