Wacky Packages

Although I'm officially contemptuous of popular culture (when I'm not oblivious to it)... especially consumer culture... I was not always thus. I was a kid once, too, believe it or not.

One of the passing fancies of my childhood were Wacky Packages. These were baseball-card-sized stickers featuring parodies of well-known consumer goods, the kind a typical kid would know from going shopping with Mom or at least seeing them around the house. They all had insulting sound-alike names that worked on the playground-name-calling level, and the more inspired ones tied the product's advertising slogans and the rest of the packaging into the theme. They included stuff like "Crust" toothpaste, "Badzooka" bubblegum, and "Belch's" jelly.

As I was thumbing through the latest Previews (the monthly ordering catalog for comicbook specialty stores, essential for any comics reader who doesn't want to be limited to the mainstream stuff his local retailer orders), a card fell out. "Oh brother, another stupid 'collectible card game' or - even stupider - line of trading cards," I thought. Then I looked at it. Topps (purveyors of many of the the aforementioned stupid cards) is bringing back Wacky Packages. The sample card included in my catalog was for "Mr. Coffin" and it bears all the hallmarks of the Wacky Packages of my youth.

On one hand, it's sad that marketing materials are what pass for cultural references in our society... both when I was a kid, and today. And it's gotten far worse today, when people are willing to pay top dollar to wear advertisements on their chests. But I think Wacky Packages - by lampooning these mercantile identities - help to deflate them a bit. They're not exactly AdBusters, but they're at least second cousins once removed.

But I have to admit that the main reason I got a kick out of seeing Wacky Packages coming back into production was the treacle of nostalgia. They remind me of a time when none of the boys I knew liked girls, when I could count on my parents to be able to take care of any bad thing that happened, when I was blissfully unaware of just how much crap goes on in the world... when "Slopicana" orange juice was still enough to make me laugh.