For this post we are going to go back to my earlier childhood, back when I was in primary school (1982 – 1989). I went to St Clare’s Primary School in Fulwood, Preston in Lancashire, and during this time we had many fads and crazes that meant us bringing in toys or games of some kind and playing with them for a few months until the next thing came along. The funny thing is many of these fads are still around today in some form or another.
One of these fads was the old Nintendo hand held games that came on one or two screens, such as Donkey Kong and Zelda, I will be talking about those in another post. As you can see from the picture above this post is about the ‘Garbage Pail Kids’. This fad hit our school in around 1987/88. It consisted of us buying small packs of cards that had these kids on them that were deformed or repulsive in someway and were supposed to be a lampooning of the Cabbage Patch Kid dolls that were huge at the time. The great things about these cards were that they were my first introduction to collectable cards were you could trade and barter for new cards, (an addiction I have not been able to drop since then and I am sure I will talk about my obsession with Magic the gathering in another post). I naturally fell into a respect for the cards and keeping them in good condition that most 10/11 years old would not have automatically thought us, especially considering they doubled as stickers.
These cards also had special backs to them, some of them where parts of a larger picture and so you had to collect all the cards to make the picture up and some had certificates or wanted posters on the back which you could write your friends names in. Unfortunately my obsession with keeping them in pristine order did not extend to the back of the cards and now that I look at them I see my brother’s and sister’s names written on the back of many, as well as many of my school friends of the time.
Some of my favourite cards come from the first set of which you can see an example of in the picture above, some cards of notes include, Dead Ted, Stevie TV and Tommy Tomb. If you look into the history of these cards they ran for 15 sets, a huge amount even by todays standards, sadly they didn’t last for more than a few years for me and my friends, once we left primary school and moved on to high school we got to old for them. However I always kept my collection and during those few years when the fad took hold it was really popular, although not with the teachers or parents as with the cards you also got a stick of chewing gum which ultimately led to the teachers trying to ban the cards which then led to an underground black market run by some enterprising 12 years olds.
The funny thing is I came across an American packet of Garbage Pail kids cards in a shop in Aflex Palace in Manchester a few moths ago. The cards had changed a bit, they must have been from a later series and the chewing gum had become fossilized, but still all the old feelings and love for these cards came flooding back. Those who were never into the cards do not see what the big deal is (i.e. my fiancee) however if you did collect the cards then you will know exactly what I mean when I say I can’t help but smile every time I look at them again.
Now that I am 30... 