The wife and I were browsing one of our local antique malls recently when I stumbled on a new booth with a couple bins of ephemera.  I usually strike out when I find stacks of magazines and paper as the stuff I’m interested in, kids stuff mostly, just doesn’t seem to register as profitable.   But something caught my eye that got me to stop, a bit of Mylar sticking out from the stack that looked really familiar.  Sure enough, it was the outer packaging of a sticker collecting set put out by Diamond back in 1987.  This particular set contained a G.I. Joe sticker collector album and ten packs of stickers…

I’ve talked about this fad before with a set of Jem, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling, and the Filmation Ghostbusters stickers, but basically in the late 70s through the early 90s there were a handful of companies (the main one is called Panini) producing sticker collecting sets that took a cue from the excitement surrounding baseball and bubblegum cards.  Instead of releasing sheets of all purpose stickers, companies like Panini and Diamond would put together mini collector albums, these magazine-like books that you’d fill with specific stickers to illustrate a story or to fill out sports team rosters.  The hobby is mainly a European one which is still going strong today.  I haven’t really seen is stateside since the 90s though.

  

What’s a little sad is that while inspecting the set I noticed that there was a little piece of wrapping paper tapes to the back.  This had been intended as a Christmas present for someone back in 1987 and it was never opened.  For 23 years this sticker set has been laying around unloved, and I planned on righting that wrong.  I never had the G.I. Joe set growing up (I only had a handful of Topps branded baseball sets and the Transformers the Movie set), so I was really excited to get this home and see what was inside…

My biggest fear was that the stickers wouldn’t stick to the pages after all this time.  Of all the stickers in my collection, there are only a handful that could probably still be used as intended.  Most, including just about all of the Topps, Donruss, and Fleer sticker cards have bonded semi-permanently with their backing, and even if they can be peeled up, they just don’t have any stick left in them.  With a sticker book like this it would be a shame if they didn’t work anymore, but my fears were assuaged.  The stickers stuck just fine!

One of the things that I love about this set is that it featured a bunch of stickers which utilized the packaging art from the figures.  I love this art and it’s really cool to finally get a hold of some for characters that I hadn’t seen in years like Chuckles and Jinx.  I only managed to get 4 of these pieces in the 10 packs which is kind of a shame.  It makes me want to rush over to eBay and see if I can’t complete this set…

   

These album sets were also fun because they typically featured some sort of activities on the pages to go along with the story and the stickers.  The gimmicks in this set are hidden printing on the pages, much like the McDonald’s calendar I shared a while ago.  The set comes with a little red cellophane decoder screen that filters out the obscuring red ink overlays to reveal secret messages, character file-card info, and the answers to puzzles.  Below you can get an idea of what these games were like with the mismatched hats of the following four Joe team members (which I’ve digitally un-obscured with the modern magic of Photoshop…)

It’s also kind of neat that Diamond took the time to print out the sticker images on the majority of the spots where the actual stickers are supposed to be applied so that kids who couldn’t track them all down had a chance to more or less follow along with the story (again with their trusty decoder strip.)  The one time when they refrained from this was with the images that required multiple stickers to complete.  These are considered top secret, which is also kind of neat as it enhances the collectability factor.  I know I always relished the feeling of completing a four-sticker image.  The artwork in the album is pretty decent as well (even though the cover of the book is kind of fugly.)  In particular I really dug this hidden image of Zartan posing as a government agent.

Again, through the magic of Photoshop we can see both images clearly probably for the first time in 23 years…

  

My favorite piece of art by far is on the back cover.  It features a bunch of the season two (of the cartoon series) Joes as well as a kid with a walking stick against going into battle against a single B.A.T. and a bunch of Crimson Guard soldiers.  The painting also features a rare moment where Lifeline, the medic in red at the front of the charge, is strapped.  Odd considering the character is a pacifist and all…

I also thought it was interesting that the company featured a sticker trading policy where anyone could trade any two doubles for a specific sticker they desired.  I wonder how many kids took advantage of this service?

If nothing else, I had a lot of fun peeling these stickers and placing them in the collector’s album.  Even if it sat for 23 years, this book finally got some of the love it deserved!