Recommended Reading: Wacky Packages!

Literally the minute I learned a Wacky Packages book was hitting stores in May, I pre-ordered a copy.

Why the uncharacteristic impulse buying?  Here's why: Although I was far too young to enjoy the 1967 debut of Topp's Wacky Packages stickers, I was the perfect age for their hugely successful revival in 1973. Featuring gross-out parodies of familiar consumer products, I can't emphasize enough how insanely popular these stickers were with my friends and I as we collected 'em, traded 'em, and (most of all) laughed at their clever humor. Well, clever to eight year-old boys, that is.

In the thirty-five years since then, "Wacky Pack" stickers have occasionally reappeared to crack-up and gross-out new generations...most recently in 2007...so with this kind of enduring popularity, a book celebrating their nostalgic nuttiness was a no-brainer addition to my bookshelf.

Well, the book finally arrived yesterday (as it turned out, the same day my copy of Kirby: King of Comics hit my mailbox), and Wacky Packages was exactly what I was hoping it would be. 

Weighing in at an impressive 240 pages, this 5" x 7" volume features all of the stickers from series one through seven (for a total of 223 Wacky Packages), many of them incredibly rare and hard to find.  Outside of a written introduction by artist Art Spiegelman and an afterward by humor writer Jay Lynch (both of whom helped create them back in the day), the pages are blessedly free of additional commentary and, instead, let the full-page Wacky Packages do all the talking.

As if large reproductions of these delightfully demented stickers weren't enough, the book has a few more pleasant surprises. The first one is the dust jacket. Printed on a paper stock with a curiously waxy texture, the jacket evokes the wax packets the original stickers were packaged in (along with those brittle slabs of bubble gum). The other nice surprise is a packet of four "lost" Wacky Package stickers that were produced but never included with the original sticker runs (perhaps because the humor was a little much for even Wacky Package standards). Throw in a handy alphabetized index and you've got yourself a thoroughly enjoyable survey of these mildly subversive classics.

Sure, there were a few negative points that bear mentioning. While the artists who illustrated the Wacky Packs were mentioned in Spiegelman's introduction, none of the sticker pages included art credits...which is kind of a shame.  I was also disappointed that the horizontally-oriented packages were printed horizontally on the page, which naturally made them smaller in appearance than the vertically-oriented packages.  Rotating the horizontal packages 90º would have allowed them to be the same size as the vertical packages, thus making the illustration details easier to see. Sure, the reader would have to rotate the book to view the rotated horizontal packages, but I wouldn't have minded performing the extra "work" to see them larger.

Still, those are some pretty minor glitches in an otherwise fantastic experience. If you're a fellow Wacky Pack fan, an aficionado of gross-out humor, or even a casual pop cultural observer (or know one), I highly recommend nabbing a copy of Wacky Packages (especially since the "lost" stickers are only included with the book's first printing).

Comments

[Dr.Retro]

I was 8 or 9 in 1973 and I remember these things well. The most memorable to me was the coffee called "Stanka."

[Brian]

I'll be curious to see what you think of the Kirby book-- I really enjoyed it, and if nothing else, it has pages and pages of gorgeous artwork.

[Hube]

Dr. Retro and I must be the same age!

I LOVED these things back in the day. I had the stickers all over my room, and me and my friends would constantly design our own!

Thanks for the memories, Mark!

[Mark Engblom]

Brian-

Overall, I like it so far. I'm pleasantly surprised that Evanier is more even-handed than I thought he would be. He's obviously in Kirby's corner, but there's not as much Stan-slamming as I assumed there would be. As for Kirby himself, the book paints a very complex picture of the man I'm still sorting through, so I'll have to wait until my review of the book before I expound on that. But, like you said, the artwork is an absolute FEAST that I'm enjoying immensely (especially the original art).

Hube-

You know, now that you brought it up, I vaguely remember drawing my own Wacky Packages, too.

[John Nowak]

Good lord -- I used to put these things all over my room too.

[Kyle]

Wow, wotta trip back down memory lane! We used to spend hours laughing over the newest Wacky Package acquisitions, and (as has already been mentioned by others) designing our own. The only original I still remember was, "It's snot butter: it's Sniffon!"

Wacky Packages: designed to gross out even the meanest big sister! I'm putting in my order for the book today!!

[Mark Engblom]

Yeah, it really is a wonderful book. Fully aware of its "junk culture" roots, it doesn't try to present these things as anything more than what they were: gross-out humor designed to make kids happy...which they succeeded marvelously at. Enjoy your book...and maybe order one for your mean big sister as well!

[jim yeomans]

Wacky Packs were a vital part of my elementary school days. I can't believe that at the age of 45 I plunked down $20 for this book, and I love it! We traded these in the schoolyard, and I vividly remember buying several packs at once so I could complete each series (remember the "checklist" on back of one card?)I once had a Wacky Packages poster, but I threw it out once I became mature and snobbish about such things. I wonder how much it would be worth now? Ah, the memories of a 70's childhood.