30 YEARS OF GARBAGE: THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS STORY (2016)

Studio:       Indican Pictures
Director:    Joe Simko, Jeff Zapata
Writer:       Joe Simko
Producer:  Krystle-Dawn M. Willing-Tiedeman, Adam F. Goldberg
Stars:     Art Spiegelman, Mark Newgarden, Len Brown, John Pound, Tom Bunk, James Warhola, Rebekah McKendry, Mackenzie Astin

Review Score:

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Summary:

Creators and fans document the history of Topps’ Garbage Pail Kids trading card phenomenon in the 1980s and beyond.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Garbage Pail Kids (GPK) co-creators Art Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden, former Topps Creative Director Len Brown, and veteran GPK artists Tom Bunk and James Warhola recall their time working at Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. in Brooklyn, New York while also recounting the company’s history.

1951 – Sy Berger and Woody Gelman created modern baseball cards as a means for Topps to expand outside of bubble gum production. Gelman, who was also the co-creator of Bazooka Joe, went on to recruit top talent from EC Comics and Disney to generate artwork as the market expanded into non-sports cards.

1962 – Topps wanted a Civil War card set to commemorate the upcoming centennial. Thinking it was a terrible idea, Gelman and Len Brown plotted to have the cards depict violent battles as a subtle act of defiance. The popularity of these graphic images led to the “Mars Attacks” series later that same year.

1967 – Gelman, an avid pop culture art collector, showed vintage advertising cards to Art Spiegelman with a suggestion that Topps try something similar. Influenced by the new paradigm of self-reflexive irony promoted by publisher Harvey Kurtzman at the time, Spiegelman suggested they instead do the cards as parodies similar to Mad Magazine. The Wacky Packages series was created.

1983/1984 – Topps revived Wacky Packages. Mark Newgarden created a Garbage Pail Kids card as a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids for Wacky Packages.

Topps tried acquiring the license to make Cabbage Patch Kids trading cards, but was denied. As an act of spite, Topps CEO Arthur Shorin encouraged the creative team to make an entire series dedicated to parodying the brand.

Inspired by the Ugly Stickers cards he did in 1965, artist Jay Lynch had the idea to give the Garbage Pail Kids names that children could relate to. Art Spiegelman had the idea to add cheeky adjectives in front of the names.

Because they were not initially directed to make the Garbage Pail Kids look like Cabbage Patch Kids, artists created characters as odd-looking dolls instead. After Topps reviewed numerous concepts and submissions, John Pound was hired as the primary artist to create 44 paintings in two months. To get the look right, it was ultimately decided to have the Garbage Pail Kids resemble Cabbage Patch Kids. Adam Bomb was the first Garbage Pail Kid created.

John Pound breaks down his creation process from pencil sketch to color rough to final painting. Pound recalls Spiegelman regularly encouraging him to exaggerate his designs more.

Art Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden were responsible for brainstorming concepts and coming up with names. Len Brown had Newgarden recycle Topps parody cards from previous decades to put on the backs of the GPK stickers.

15 series of Garbage Pail Kids were produced from 1985-1988, with 44 stickers in each set because that is how many cards were on a printing sheet. The fad went viral without any marketing.

GPK historian Aaron J. Boonton, Blumhouse EIC Rebekah McKendry, GPK fan Brian Henkel, TV creator Adam F. Goldberg, and hobby shop retailer Roxanne Toser recall the cards’ rising popularity among schoolchildren at the time.

For the third series of GPK, other artists were brought in to alleviate John Pound’s workload. German artist Tom Bunk talks about the initial difficulty he had duplicating Pound’s style. Artist James Warhola, nephew of Andy Warhol, previously illustrated Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov novels, and initially thought working on Garbage Pail Kids was beneath him.

Mark Newgarden discusses how the creative team always made extra cards for each series because they knew some would be scrapped. Newgarden reveals several of the designs rejected for being too objectionable.

As the fad grew, educators and psychiatrists spoke out against Garbage Pail Kids as a corrupting influence on the youth. Because parents hated it, kids loved it and the cards only became more popular.

Jeff Zapata, Topps’ GPK Art Director from 2004 through 2011, and pop culture specialist Simeon Lipman recall how the GPK brand was licensed to other merchandise and expanded globally. Pop graffiti artist Buff Monster specifically discusses Bukimi Kun, the Japanese version of Garbage Pail Kids.

As Garbage Pail Kids became a phenomenon, Topps executives received million dollar bonuses. Art Spiegelman, who co-created the GPK brand, recalls being bitter about receiving only a small five-figure bonus.

In 1986/1987, Xavier Roberts and Original Appalachian Artworks, the owners of Cabbage Patch Kids, filed a copyright suit against Topps for $30 million. Mark Newgarden remembers finding out about the lawsuit when he came into the office and discovered that all of his sketches and work had been removed to be entered into discovery.

An incriminating note was ultimately uncovered with a specific instruction for John Pound to make the Garbage Pail Kids resemble Cabbage Patch Kids. Unprotected by parody law because the trading cards were not a print publication, Topps settled the suit out of court for $7 million, royalties, and a concession that future Garbage Pail Kids would look less like Cabbage Patch Kids.

In response to the settlement, changes were made to the GPK banner logo. Instead of cloth dolls, the characters were made to look like plastic dolls with bigger eyes and fewer fingers. This redesign began the decline of enthusiasm for the brand.

When “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie” went into production, Topps was not involved creatively. Actors Mackenzie Astin (Dodger), Debbie Lee Carrington (Valerie Vomit), Arturo Gil (Windy Winton), and Kevin Thompson (Ali Gator) recall making the movie, with many lamenting how it became an embarrassing disaster. Ron MacLachlan (Juice) mentions that he didn’t even know what Garbage Pail Kids were when he took his role.

CBS produced an animated series for Saturday morning television. However, it was cancelled before it aired due to public outcry. The series was later released on DVD in 2006.

Although work was completed on a 16th series of the cards, it was not published, supposedly due to slumping sales by 1988. Production on Garbage Pail Kids stopped for 15 years.

In 2003, Jeff Zapata relaunched the brand with Topps’ NPD, even though executives were still sensitive to the lawsuit. Topps produced an all-new series using unpublished art from the 16th series along with new paintings from original GPK artists. For the second series, Zapata brought aboard artists Brent Engstrom, Layron Dejarnette, Mark Pingitore, Joe Simko, and Dave Gross.

Young fan Andrew Leitzel, Gary Gerani, and James Houx of GPK Customs wrap up with reflections on the continued popularity of Garbage Pail Kids, commissioned paintings, and the collector’s culture surrounding GPK.

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Review:

NOTE: For a condensed version of this review that omits personal recollections, skip the first four and last two paragraphs.

I have two distinct memories regarding Garbage Pail Kids.  The first comes from 1985, when I plunked down a quarter at the neighborhood drugstore in Cleveland for a single pack of the awesomely irreverent stickers.  I hadn’t seen Garbage Pail Kids before.  Never even heard of them.  They weren’t a worldwide phenomenon yet.  They were just a pink package with a cherubic cartoon, who suspiciously resembled a Cabbage Patch Kids doll, blowing up his own head in a nuclear mushroom cloud.  That visual on brightly colored wax paper said everything I needed to know: whatever was inside was tailor-made for me.

My instincts proved right when the first card unwrapped was none other than Nasty Nick, number 1a in the first series, which could be worth about $3,000 today in gem mint condition.  Here was a sentient kid’s toy depicted as a vampire, bloodying the bitten neck of a helplessly immobile Barbie doll.  Woozy from the sudden sensory shock of multiple pleasure buttons being pushed, I couldn’t wait to see what the other four stickers held in store.  Almost as much as I couldn’t wait to show my friends from school, as I knew gorily goofy gold had just been struck.

The second milestone memory comes from my college days a decade later.  Comic books had lost a lot of luster until trendier professors started putting things like “Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Returns” on the syllabus for certain classes.  This had me rediscovering sequential art as a medium for sophisticated stories, not just a platform for costumed mutants to slug one another.  Part of this horizon broadening included Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” his heartbreaking tale of the Holocaust where Jews are depicted as mice and Nazis are drawn as cats.

When I first learned that Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on these lauded and literate graphic novels, was the same man responsible for co-creating Garbage Pail Kids, my mind did a figurative impression of Adam Bomb’s from the iconic GPK image.  Like my renewed admiration for viewing comics as an adult artform, suddenly there was a lightning blast back to childhood lending legitimacy to the GPK artwork and the immense creative talent behind it that I never previously considered.

I’m writing more about myself than I am about the movie to express the effect that “30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story” has on someone for whom GPK is a seminal touchstone.  Seeing creators and collectors recall the cards so enthusiastically fires up flux capacitors of fondness using weapons-grade nostalgia.  The documentary then quickly hits 88mph on a Memory Lane trip that is educational, enlightening, and entertaining.

To talk about Garbage Pail Kids is to essentially talk about popular culture, as they are a top example of what that term represents.  Garbage Pail Kids are much more than punny names and gross caricatures.  In two-dimensional adhesive form, they simultaneously lampoon (then) contemporary culture and playfully celebrate subversive childishness.  And there will never be another fad quite like it.

GPK’s creators were merely men fulfilling another assignment from the Powers That Be at Topps.  Of course they didn’t know they were going to singlehandedly spur a tidal wave of youth counterculture from 1985 through 1988.  But they did know they were on to a hot idea and were having a grand time keeping the train rolling as long as they could.

Everyone essential to the Garbage Pail Kids’ genesis, including co-creators Art Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden, Topps Creative Director Len Brown, lead GPK artist John Pound, and several other key contributors who were in the original trenches, remembers that era with reverence in their on-camera interviews.  Though not so much that they shy away from acknowledging the sting of big bonuses going to execs upstairs, or the uncomfortable admission that Garbage Pail Kids were so close of a knock on Cabbage Patch Kids, Topps spent a good part of 1987 inside a courtroom responding to a lawsuit that cost them big.

Indeed, there is more drama to the GPK story than just the filmic adaptation that became a box office bomb.  Andy Warhol’s nephew James Warhola was certain he was slumming it as a GPK artist after making a name for himself illustrating the sci-fi novels of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.  Parental pressure over the objectionable cards grew to such a pitch that CBS shelved an animated series before it ever aired in its Saturday morning slot.  Good, bad, and ugly, just like the Garbage Pail Kids themselves, “30 Years of Garbage” covers it all.

Also like the Garbage Pail Kids, the documentary’s aesthetic echoes GPK’s rock ‘n’ roll attitude.  Since the film is mainly talking heads and insert shots, the rhythm finds alternative ways to maintain energy.  Colorfully animated segues, percussive music, bouncy sound effects, and sharp editing practically snap their fingers at each other to keep the movie moving.

“30 Years of Garbage” does lag on a few laps.  Close to a complete half hour of a nearly two-hour runtime is devoted to the GPK revival series cards that started in 2003.  That’s a long time to spend on a chapter of the brand’s history that fans don’t have the same investment in as the 80s era.  It is interesting to see how art generation and production processes have evolved, though that appeal is narrowed to those curious about GPK from a technical standpoint.

Here is where I might mention that anyone without some kind of affinity for the cards will likely be left in the cold with a bunch of blather that is irrelevant to his/her interests.  That seems a silly disclaimer to make however, as I can’t imagine anyone without affection for GPK watching “30 Years of Garbage” in the first place.  Why would structural drawbacks as a film matter anyway?

Maybe there isn’t enough meat about the much-maligned live action movie.  Maybe the conclusion of the pivotal lawsuit is glossed over too quickly.  But for those of us who were on the frontlines in the GPK heyday, or who came into the fervent fold since, “30 Years of Garbage” functions fantastically as an exhaustive capsule of a time not soon to be seen again.

If I may indulge in a closing anecdote…

There is a dive bar down the street from me here in Los Angeles* that locals know for a number of reasons, one of which is its quirky vending machine by the photo booth in the back.  Put in a couple of bucks and one can walk away with a mini-sombrero, disposable underpants from Japan, or a sealed wax pack of Alf, Ghostbusters II, Fright Flicks, or whatever other bubble gum cards happen to be rotated in that week.**

With a pitcher of PBR and a few friends on a Friday night, you might be surprised at how big the smiles can get at the small thrill of tearing into one of those packs.  I have Garbage Pail Kids to thank for installing that touchstone in my memory bank.  And I have “30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story” to thank for the reminder of how significant such an experience is, and what it means to the kid inside all of us.

*Cha Cha Lounge, which also makes a cameo appearance in “Beyond the Gates” (review here).

**Don’t eat the 30-year-old gum inside.  It crumbles to dust almost instantly and tastes like chalk.  You’ll need at least two more drinks to wash out your mouth.

NOTE: There is a brief post-credits scene.

Review Score:  80

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