Book Review: 'Wacky Packages: New New New'
 |
| (C) 2010 Abrams ComicArts and Topps Company |
 |
| When I was a lad of 11, I thought that this parody of Cheer detergent (a brand my mother often bought) was the epitome of hilarity. (C) 1974 Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. |
Of course, at that age I didn't think in terms of Oh, Topps is satirizing America's consumer culture. Adult-style analyses such as that would only occur to me years later. 10-year-old me thought the parodies of products one would find at a nearby supermarket or drugstore were simply laugh-out-loud hilarious.
As I wrote in my review of Abrams ComicArts' 2008 Wacky Packages:
Back in 1973, a single package sold for a nickel. For five cents, you'd get:
- two Wacky Packages stickers
- a puzzle piece with a checklist
- a piece of Topps Chewing Gum
When Wacky Packages became a national fad that year, most kids, me included, would often buy five packs at a time (a quarter's worth), although older kids who mowed lawns or got larger allowances would often buy 20 packs for a dollar, or if they timed it right, the whole box for five bucks! (I ought to know...I eventually bought an entire Series Five box when it arrived at that 7-Eleven in late 1973.)
My mom was raised in Colombia in the 1930s and 1940s, so she was immune to the charms of Mad magazine (or its competitor Crack'd), the slapstick comedy of the Three Stooges, or the digs at America's consumer culture in the Wacky Packages. She did love me (to her dying day), so she was willing to indulge my obsession with the stickers and either bought them for me herself or allowed me to risk life and limb (97th Avenue was, and still is, one of Miami-Dade County's busiest north-to-south thoroughfares) to go to the 7-Eleven with my neighborhood posse.
 |
| Hex-Lax. Because you never know when you'll get hit by a voodoo spell. (C) 1974 Topps Chewing Gum, Inc, |
When Series Eight through 14 of Topps' Wacky Packages were released between 1974 and 1975, I was still an avid fan and made regular - if rather risky - trips to my neighborhood 7-Eleven. Every now and then I'd buy a Slurpee or a comic book, but I would not leave that convenience store without at least a quarter's worth of Wackys.
Eventually, Topps discontinued the Wacky Packages stickers, although the company revived them several years ago with new designs and new targets to parody for a new century. And once the initial fad died down, my interests moved on to bigger and better things, such as sexy women, Star Wars, and classical music.
My mom - who passed away almost three years ago - dutifully placed each Wacky Package carefully in a page of what I called a Wacky Pad to preserve my collection. I kept it for a few years after Topps stopped producing the stickers in 1975, but I no longer have it. It either got lost during our last move to a townhouse in Fountainbleau Park in 1977-'78, or I gave it to one of my cousins shortly before that.
Still, I remember the Wackys fondly, so recently I purchased Abrams ComicArts' Wacky Packages (2008), which covers Series One through Seven, and its 2010 follow-up volume, Wacky Packages: New New New.
The Book
Wacky Packages: New New New is a follow-up title to the hilarious and colorful Wacky Packages, first published by Abrams in 2008. This new collection presents all the Wacky Packs from Series 8–14 covering the years 1974 and 1975. Featuring humorous and often grotesque parodies of common household brands like “Windaxe” cleaner and “Smoochers” jam, Wacky Packages: New New New offers a tongue-in-cheek critique of consumer culture and marketing subversion.
Created by a host of comics artists including Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, and Norm Saunders, alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, Wacky Packages; New New New is a colorful, edgy, and intensely creative collection of illustrations. Packaged with four never-before-seen stickers and a wax jacket, Wacky Packages: New New New will please fans and collectors alike. - Publisher's blurb, Wacky Packages: New New New
Published on April 1, 2010, Wacky Packages: New New New is essentially a professionally designed version of the Wacky Pad my mom made for me many, many years ago. It's a compact 224-page hardcover volume designed by Abrams ComicArts' Neil Egan and edited by Sofia Gutierrez, the same creative team behind 2008's Wacky Packages.
 |
| Topps' management apparently had a good sense of humor. This sticker was a parody of the company's Planet of the Apes trading card/stickers series. |
Because Wacky Packages: New New New is a continuation of an earlier work, the basic concepts are the same. The book is designed to resemble an oversized pack of stickers; the dust jacket is made of faux wax paper, and if you remove it you will see a pink stick of "Topps chewing gum" printed on the book's cover. (This design feature can also be found in Abrams ComicArts books about Topps' Star Wars trading card series.) Even the line art, the publisher's blurb, and other text on the dust jacket mimic the fonts and graphics used on the Wacky Packages wrappers.
Unlike the Star Wars trading card books, the book's text is limited to the usual credits/copyright pages, an index, and a four-page long introduction by Jay Lynch, a freelance artist who, in addition to working for MAD and Crack'd magazines, was one of the "mad geniuses" behind Wacky Packages and, in the 1980s, the Garbage Pails Kids series, also produced by Topps.
In the introduction, Lynch writes about what it was like to work alongside other comic book and comic strip artists, such as Maus creator Art Spiegelman, painter Norman Saunders, and Topps creative department exec Len Brown. He also explains a little about the creative process that went into the design and gags of the last 1970s-era Wackys, including second-bite-at-the-apple parodies of products Topps had already given the Wacky Packages treatment to and ideas for a new product line, Wacky Magazines.
Around the time of the tenth or eleventh series of Wacky Packages, Art, Len, Woody, Rick Varesi (the designer behind the wrappers and display boxes), and Bhob Stewart (the Topps editor who created "Weakinson Blades" as well as many other Wacky gags) held a meeting at Topps. It was then that the aforementioned Wacky brain trust came up with the idea to do a separate product called Wacky Magazines. In this new series, the idea was that Topps would do parodies of the covers of popular magazines instead of parodies of grocery products. Wacky Magazines never got off the ground as a separate product, although the regular Wacky Packages artist, Norman Saunders, had already done final paintings for most of the gags we wrote for the Wacky Magazine series. So starting with series eleven in 1974, Wacky Magazines became part of Wacky Packages. Consequently, magazine cover parodies became part of the usual Wacky Packages repertoire.
 |
| When I was 11, I had no idea what Iou Magazine was spoofing. |
 |
| A few years later, I found out.... (C) 1982 Oui Magazine and Playboy Enterprises |
 |
| Of course, even an 11-year-old knew what THIS was spoofing...or else something was wrong with you! (C) 1975 Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. |
The rest of the book is devoted to the 200-plus stickers of the last series of Wacky Packages Topps created in 1974 and 1975. Each page contains a Wacky Packages sticker from Series 8 through 14, some of which are new takes on products parodied in the first seven series. Some of the gags are cute yet unthreatening, while others (like the Playbug one depicted above) have a creepy Stephen King-meets-1950s-horror movies vibe.
I remember Wacky Packages fondly, partly because this was one 1970s fad that I actually enjoyed with most of my friends and peers at school. I often traded "extra" Wackys for those that I didn't have, and we'd often laugh at the gags on the stickers till our sides ached and tears streamed down our cheeks. And, of course, I remember the Wacky Pad that my mom made for me...and I wonder where it is now.
Maybe that's why I've found the two-book series of Wacky Packages books so enjoyable.
Comments
Post a Comment