All This, and Bubble Gum, Too!

In the bedroom my brother and I shared as kids, there was a closet door covered with stickers.

"Covered" as in "every square inch covered", and not just with any stickers, mind you, but all the stickers 70's kids loved. 

Zany Rat Fink hot rods, hippy-trippy slogans like "Stop the World, I Wanna Get Off!" or "Keep on Truckin", the infamous, eternally-hilarious and vaguely naughty Wacky Package stickers and, of course, Marvel Superheroes.

Oh, sure...they featured the same kind of frozen stock poses you'd expect from superhero stickers, but it was the humorous commentary of the characters that made the stickers such a hit with the kid crowd.

Sure...not too funny by today's advanced standards of irony-soaked snarkery, but at the time, they were enough to get a chuckle out of a grade school kid. In other words..."mission accomplished".

As a "perfect marriage", of sorts, between bubblegum card kings Topps (the guys behind the Wacky Package stickers) and the "Crazy Uncle Hipster" vibe of Marvel Comics, the superhero stickers mirrored Marvel's flare for self-depreciating humor...never afraid to show their heroes acting a little silly or out of character (unlike DC Comics, their stodgy crosstown rivals).

I mean, come on....seeing the Incredible Hulk making a deodorant joke?  Comedy gold to a nine year old, pal!

To keep their legions of sticker collectors on track (and buying more bubblegum cards), Topps included a handy checklist card with every pack of stickers (showing all 40 characters in the set).

Better yet, the reverse side of each checklist card had a full-color section of a famous Marvel comic book cover. 

Collect all nine unique cover sections, and you had yourself a complete cover. The one I still remember collecting (and completing) was a puzzle of Fantastic Four #100, still one of the all-time great "crowd scene aniversary issue" covers (click image to enlarge).

Of course, that closet door of stickers has long since been cleaned up (not at easy job, as I recall), but man...that thing had more zany hilarity per square inch than an entire season of Laugh-In.

Comments

[Siskoid]

Those are ADORABLE!

[Mark Engblom]

Ain't they, though?

And these are just a fraction of the whole set!

[Richard Ian Bird]

Remember those stickers well had them on my beds headrest, and i still have the checklist cards that make up the FF cover.