For those of us who have sat through the beloved train wreck that is 1987’s Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie, all I have to say is, cheer up, because there is a much better GPK film in the works! As much as I love that cheesy original flick (well, hate…yeah…no, love, well, love/hate) the idea of trying to bring a fictionalized version of these rad sticker cards to the screen was sort of doomed conceptually. Maybe it could have worked as an animated feature, though as an owner of the unreleased cartoon series on DVD, yeah, maybe not. Either way, the bottom line is that for those of us who love and collect Garbage Pail Kids it’s not about seeing these cards brought to life in another incarnation, it’s about, well, collecting the darn cards and loving the artwork and jokey concepts. It’s as simple as that, which is what I want to see out of a film, a documentary that chronicles these gross out stickers from their origins in the 60s era Topps Nutty Awards, through the Ugly stickers, Wacky Packs and on through the phenomenon of the original 15 sets and beyond. The Abrams book featuring the art of the first few sets was a great start, but a film would be really awesome. Well guess what? Some really dedicated artists are trying to do just that with the 30 Years of Garbage project!
Spearheaded by director Sean Tiedeman and co-produced by Krystle-Dawn Willing, Jeff Zapata (artist and Topps GPK art director 2003-2011), and artist Joe Simko and partner June Gonzales, the film is looking to dig into the world of GPK with interviews with the original Topps artists, writers, and designers, as well as a bevy of current artists both inspired by the original stickers and working on the newer sets today. They’ve already lined up folks like Art Spiegelman, Tom Bunk, Len Brown, Jay Lynch, Mark Newgarden and one of the most important for me, John Pound! They’re also going to showcase rabid collectors and the next generation of artists like Brent Engstrom and Joe Simko…
(Brent Engstrom and Joe Simko posing on set)
The crew has created a kickstarter campaign to help fund this film, and I really want to see it reach it’s funding goal because I kind of NEED to see this film. Seriously, just take a look at the great work being put into the set design…
Simko has donated a lot of of personal work as varying rewards (including cereal box packs of Cereal Killers sticker cards series 2 and his amazing kid’s book The Sweet Rot), and there is even a series of GPK artist cards featuring parodies of themselves! So if you’re as much of a fan and collector as me head on over and make a pledge today and let’s get this flick funded pronto. Here’s a look at some of the rewards…
There’s also a facebook page for the flick where you can keep up with news and talk to other fans. So what are you waiting for? Go like that page, pledge in the kickstarter and help make this thing a reality.
