Just the other day I was putting away some books when I came across my copy of the awesome Wacky Packages archive that was put out by Abrams a few years ago. I don’t typically pick up many coffee table books, but this one was special as the design was just fantastic and I’m a big fan of Topps sticker cards (as evident in the Peel Here archives), in particular the painted non-movie parody sets like the Garbage Pail Kids, Weird Wheels, and of course Wacky Packages. I never got my hands on any Wacky Packs as a kid so the Abrams book was the perfect opportunity to acquaint myself with the first seven sets of sticker cards…
As I mentioned the design of the book is super cool, and it’s what initially sucked me in. The volume is hardback, but in a smaller scale (about the size of a premium format paperback), and has the coolest waxpaper dust jacket that evokes a fresh pack of Topps sticker cards. The book contains all the stickers from the initial seven series of Wacky Packages, one sticker per page (so each painting is presented about twice as large as the original printed stickers.) There’s also an interview with Art Spiegelman, who worked on this and other Topps card sets in the 70s and 80s. After flipping through the book about a million times I was hoping that Abrams would think about releasing similar volumes for other Topps products, in particular a series dedicated to the Garbage Pail Kids. Heck, I’d love to have a nice volume that just had the first couple sets of GPKs which would work as a nice reference piece as well as a great John Pound art book. Besides, the 1st series GPKs are pretty rare and expensive so it would be nice to have an affordable way of getting a nice close look at the artwork from that set.
Well, even though I haven’t seen any movement on that front, I was pretty jazzed to see that Abrams has a second Wacky Packages book slated to hit store shelves in April of this year. The new volume is called New, New, New and looks like it will contain series 8 through 14 and will feature an introduction by Topps veteran Jay Lynch…
There were a total of 18 sets of Wacky Packages produced between 1973 and 1991 as well as an additional 7 new series sets produced between 2004 and 2007 for a grand total of 25 sets. I’m hoping that Abrams puts together at least one more volume that contains the final 4 original series sets, though I’m sure a lot rides on the sales of this second book. You can pick up both volumes for around $30 which is still a great deal when you consider the price of the original out of print sticker sets on the secondary market. Still crossing my fingers that we’ll see some sort of Garbage Pail Kids book in the near future as well…
