Search is now located at top
right
| |
|
|
|
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
'70s Spoofs 'Wacky
Packages' Are Back
By
LUKAS I. ALPERT
Associated Press
Writer
NEW YORK-
Somewhere, in a a junior high school locker, sits a faded
sticker: "Weakies, the Breakfast of Chumps."
Time to scrape
it off, and make room for a new generation of pop culture spoofs.
"Wacky Packages," the hot 1970s fad parodying popular household
products, is revamped and ready for the 21st century.
In May,
the Topps Co. will rerelease Wacky Packages with one eye on the
nostalgia market and its other on kids brought up in the computer
age. The company hopes its product can transcend time and the
generation gap.
"Poking fun at things, making parody, is a
long accepted form of entertainment and one we think transcends
generations," said Ira Friedman, vice president of new products at
Topps.
"But the question remains: aside from the adult
market, will it resonate with younger kids today? We hope
so."
Born in 1967, the "Wacky Packages" were hand-drawn
parodies done with Mad Magazine style-humor, placed on punched-out
cardboard with a lick-and-stick back, and sold like baseball cards
in a pack with a piece of gum.
Early artists included
pulp-novel cover master Norman Saunders, who also created the Mars
Attacks series for Topps, and Art Spiegelman, who later won the
Pulitzer Prize for his illustrated holocaust narratives "Maus" and
"Maus II."
Everything was fair game. Jell-O became Jail-O - a
metal file hidden in a jello mold and billed as Sing Sing's favorite
dessert. Gravy-Train Dog Food became Grave Train, with a picture of
a dead dog and the grim tag line, "Your dog will never eat anything
else."
Topps even took swipes at its own products, turning
Bazooka gum into Gadzooka.
Initially, the cards were not
successful but when they were brought back in 1973 as stickers they
quickly became the biggest thing since white rice (or Minute Lice,
as the stickers would have it).
"Anyone who was 7 years old
in 1973 who wasn't really square was into this stuff," said Greg
Grant, a University of Pennsylvania research mathematician who also
runs an elaborate "Wacky Packages" Web site. "It was just life back
then."
With their booming popularity, New York Magazine put
them on the front page, The New York Times gave them a large spread
and kids all over the country affixed them to school desks and
lockers.
"It's an inherently common pastime for kids to take
a printed sticker and - as a form of expression, mind you - put it
on something," said John Williams, the creative series manager at
Topps. "It's kind of like graffiti, I suppose, just maybe not as
messy."
By 1976, Topps began running out of ideas, and called
it quits after printing the 16th series. Briefly in early 1980s and
again in the early 1990s, Topps came out with new "Wacky Packages"
series but they never took off.
Grant said the ones from the
'80s and the '90s were "just too far into gross-out
humor."
Oddly, the Topps folks decided on the rerelease after
the success of last summer's encore of the uber-gross
Wacky-Pack-successor, "The Garbage Pail Kids."
The new series
will feature art from some of the original artists and with takeoffs
on modern products like baboon-flavored "Chimp Stick" (Chap Stick),
"Mr. Coffin Casket Liners" (Mr. Coffee coffee liners), and blue
snazazberry flavored "Bling Pups" (Topps' own Ring
Pops).
Completing the consumer angle, the backs of the new
stickers will feature fake coupons offering savings like $2 on
"Vinnie's Brooklyn-English Translator" or seven cents on an
"Extremely Complicated Straw."
---
On the
Net:
Topps, Co.:
Grant's Web site:
| |
 |
|
|
|
.gif){kind=small}
