Finally got a chance to post again, the day job has been sapping my strength. I thought I was going to post a follow up to the Mr. T sticker book from the last Peel Here, but I just caught something on eBay that I want to post with the follow up, so it’ll have to wait. Lets just say it involves crayons that smell like chocolate. Anyway, for this week I thought I’d do a quickie. Here’s a package of Inspector Gadget puffy stickers from 1983 (by Gordy International.)
Back of the package…
Gordy was the same company that brought us a million other puffy stickers like the Silverhawks, Mr. T (from the cartoon), and the Real Ghostbusters. If all the puffy sticker companies I think I dig Gordy’s work the most because the guys and gals they had designing them added an extra little bit of flair, typically in the form of a colored geometric shape that helps the characters really pop on the stickers. Other companies try for more basic designs with just artwork or pictures that are closely cropped. Granted the overall Gordy sticker lacks the nice little accent of being shaped roughly like the character it’s depicting, but oh well.
I haven’t been able to locate any additional Inspector Gadget puffy sticker packages, but Gordy also tended to release these in sets of four or five, so I’m betting there are some other designs floating around out there, hopefully with stickers featuring Chief Quimby, Dr. Claw, Claw’s cat, Gadgets car, and possibly a M.A.D. agent or two. At least I’d like to think so. As far as the show itself goes, I was smitten from the first time I heard Don Adams voice. I was a pretty big fan of Get Smart as it was playing in heavy syndicated rotation on Nick at Night while I was growing up, and I’m sure to my adolescent mind I just figured that Inspector Gadget was a cartoon spin-off, sort of like a reverse to the whole Pink Panther craze. Of course it didn’t hurt that IG was also played in heavy rotation on Nickelodeon, which was my fall back channel of choice since they concentrated on kid-friendly content for most of the day. If there were no shows on like He-Man, G.I. Joe, or the Transformers, I was always flipping to Nick to see if I could catch an episode of Inspector Gadget, Danger Mouse, or Count Duckula.
Besides Don Adams, I loved a lot of the conventions of the IG cartoon, from the self-destructing notes of Chief Quimby to the crafty way the producers and writers decided never to reveal what Gadget’s arch nemesis Dr. Claw really looked like (all you ever got to see what his gnarly looking gloved fist pounding on the arm of his chair.) I also loved and coveted Penny’s (Gadget’s niece) electronic book that she invariably used to uncover the schemes of Dr. Claw and his M.A.D. agents. Now that I’m thinking about it, I think Inspector Gadget was one of the first 80s cartoon properties to be re-imagined into a live action flick (at least later on down the road and not at-the-time like the ill fated He-Man flick.) I guess like all his gadgets, he was way ahead of the curve on bumbling pointlessness in terms of becoming a live action parody of itself. Sigh.
Next time, hopefully, there will be some 25 year-old chocolaty scented goodness, but we shall see…
