Book Review: 'Wacky Packages'

This is the cover of the second printing from October 2008. It differs from the first printing thusly: instead of "interview with Art Spiegelman,"  the credit reads "introduction by Art Spiegelman." The bonus pack of rare and unreleased stickers is also different. I own a copy of the first printing from June, 2008. (C) 2008 Topps and Abrams ComicArts

If you were a kid in the early 1970s, you probably remember Topps' Wacky Packages, a long-running series of stickers that parodied the packaging of  well-known consumer products, including packaged foods, personal hygiene items, and (in later series) nation-wide publications.

In the hands of such artists as Art Spiegelman, Jay Lynch, and other comic book artists of the Sixties and Seventies, familiar brands were ripe targets for spoofing as Wacky Packages. Here, Quaker Oats' Cap'n Crunch is transformed into Cap'n Crud. (C) 1973 Topps Chewing Gum Company. 

In the summer of 1973, I was a third grader enjoying summer vacation when one of my neighbors, a kid named Patrick, showed me his collection of Wacky Packages stickers. I don't remember how many he had, but they were from Topps' first series, which included classic "Wackys" along the lines of Quacker Oats, Maddie Boy Dog Food, Gadzooka Bubble Gum, and Chock Full of Nuts and Bolts (The Heavily Coffee).

When you are a kid between the ages of eight and 10, Wacky Packages are bound to warp your sense of humor. (C) 1973 Topps Chewing Gum Company

For a kid who had returned to the States after living in a conservative Latin American country for six years, the subversive creations of cartoonists Art Spiegelman, Jay Lynch, Rick Varesi, Woody Gelman, Bill Griffith, and others were wickedly hilarious. And, like many kids my age, I just had to have them. 

"Where," I asked Patrick, "did you get these?" 

"Oh, at the 7-Eleven on 97th Avenue," Patrick said, in reference to a convenience store located just five blocks away from our houses on SW 102nd Avenue. 

Back then, kids didn't have to deal with "helicopter parents" or busybody neighbors who would call the 1970s equivalent of the Department of Children and Families if we walked to the nearby Coral Park Shopping Plaza or the aforementioned 7-Eleven store on SW 97th Avenue. Patrick, who was then eight, and his older brother Robert, who was 11, rode their bikes out that far and played outside - unsupervised!

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. 

Mom was such a good sport about my newfound hobby - collecting Wacky Packages - that she even spent several hours carefully peeling off the stickers from their sheet and placing them in a notepad that was just the right size!  And for several years, that "Wacky Pack Pad" was one of my most treasured possessions; I took it everywhere I went - even when I went back to Bogota to spend summer vacation with my grandparents. 

This parody of Hormel's Spam was a particular favorite of 11-year-old me. (C) 1973 Topps Chewing Gum Company

I collected Wackys for a year or so, then moved on to other interests as I grew older. My Wacky Pack Pad stayed with me till 1977; I'm not sure where it ended up....sometimes I think it got lost in the move from the house on SW 102nd Avenue to the townhouse in Fountainbleau Park late that year, But I also have a fragment of another memory...of 14-year-old me handing it to my favorite cousin, Silvia Cajiao Restrepo, at the end of one of her infrequent visits to Miami before the move. 

The Book

As the years passed, my collector's tastes switched from Wacky Packages to anything remotely connected with Star Wars, including Topps' Star Wars trading cards. Still, somewhere in a dark corner of my mental archives - say, the file cabinet marked Memories: 1972-1974 - some fond memories of Topps' Wacky Packages still remain, covered by the dust and cobwebs of time.

As I enter the third long year since my Mom passed away, I often find myself thinking about my childhood years, especially the happy period when we lived at the house on 102nd Avenue. I was nine when Mom bought that house and 14 when she sold it (a decision which I never really agreed with but had to accept, to be honest with you), and even though we had our share of troubles then, those were my happiest years as a kid. 

This, I suppose, is why I recently purchased The Topps Company, Inc.'s Wacky Packages, a 2008 hardcover volume published by Abrams ComicArts, an imprint of New York City-based Abrams, a publishing house that specializes in art-related books, especially those that delve into pop culture. 

This book about Topps' Star Wars trading cards is also from Abrams ComicArts. (C) 2015 Abrams ComicArts and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Wacky Packages—a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging—were first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards. The series has been relaunched several times over the years, most recently to great success in 2007.

Known affectionately among collectors as “Wacky Packs,” as a creative force with artist Art Spiegelman, the stickers were illustrated by such notable comics artists as Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, and Norm Saunders.This first-ever collection of Series One through Series Seven (from 1973 and 1974) celebrates the 35th anniversary of Wacky Packages and is sure to amuse collectors and fans young and old. - From the dust jacket blurb, Wacky Packages

Wacky Packages is, in essence, a professionally designed and executed version of the Wacky Pack Pad my mom made for me over 40 years ago. It features the wickedly funny images of the first 323 stickers in the first seven series, including some that are now rare and difficult to find "in the wild," as collectors often say. 

Unlike Topps' volumes about Star Wars trading cards and stickers, there is not much text in this volume beyond the "interview" with Art Spiegelman, a comic book writer and artist who worked for Topps from 1969 till 1989 and was the chief artist assigned to create the Wacky Packages series. (The tagline "Interview with Art Spiegelman" was only used in the first printing; subsequent editions now read "Introduction by Art Spiegelman.")

Spiegelman, as many comics fans know, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the graphic novel Maus, which tells the story of his parents' traumatizing experiences during the Holocaust and its aftermath. But in 1969, two years after the first iteration of Wacky Packages was rolled out, Spiegelman was a young college student who desperately needed to stay in school to avoid being drafted to fight in Vietnam. 

His introduction explains how he got a job with then-Brooklyn based Topps and his assignment to improve the not-so-popular Wackys. Spiegelman also tells the reader how he recruited other comics artists to come up with zany stickers along the lines of Weakies cereal, 6-Up soda, and Horrid deodorant spray.

Other than that, the book presents the irreverent Wacky Packs, one per page, in all their subversive, poke-fun-at-consumerism glory but sans commentary from Spiegelman or the other artists. 

This isn't a deal-killer for those of us who loved the Wacky Packages when they were at the height of their popularity. Spiegelman's introduction is detailed enough; he even explains how some products - such as Chuckles chewable candies - lent themselves easily for spoofs, while others - 7-Up soda - were more difficult to give the Wacky Packages treatment to. 

Some products, like 7-Up, were almost insoluble puzzles to return to over and over, hoping to find an amusing angle that might work. We settled for the uninspired 6-Up since these were not ideas one would brood over for weeks - they were things one would work for full minutes, hoping one's inner dolt would turn up something suitably irreverent. It was all done as Part of a Day's Work, much like the way the early comic books were made: they certainly weren't made as art, they weren't sold as art, and they weren't thought of as art. Wacky Packages just formed an island of subversive underground culture in the surrounding sea of junk. 

The book itself is well-designed and produced, despite the lack of captions or commentary on the pages with reproductions of the classic stickers. It's compact yet durable (it's a hardcover), and it was lavished with attention to detail. 

For instance, Abrams ComicsArt made the book's dust jacket with paper that mimics the look and feel of the wax paper packaging Topps uses to store its cards, stickers, and stick of gum in. Even the way the blurb is printed on the inside flap is done in the same font and style as in the wrapper. 

Also, Topps is not above making fun of its own products; Bazooka bubble gum is parodied in a Series One sticker, while Wacky Packages becomes Wormy Packages in the hands of Art Spiegelman and Co. 

If you or someone you love grew up in the 1970s and want to take a nostalgic trip to the past, then run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and get the two volumes of Topps' Wacky Packages books. It's cheaper - and easier - than chasing sets of the stickers in the wild, and you don't have to invent time travel to zip back to 1973 and re-experience the era of Vietnam, Watergate, inflation, and the weird fashions of the decade. 

Here's Art Spiegelman's take on General Mills' Weathies cereal, which usually feature famous athletes on the box cover art. Here, a poor chump gets hit by a baseball below (I think) the waist line! (C) 1973 Topps Chewing Gum Company