The announcement last week, and this week’s preorder on Topps website for 2025 Worst of Garbage Pail Kids 40th Anniversary was a whirlwind for collectors. 2025 is the year of change for Garbage Pail Kids. Topps is moving the brand in a new direction. GPKNews has reached out to numerous contacts and dug into the information provided by Topps. Hopefully the information below helps answers some of the most frequent questions since the launch. Here are a number of additional items regarding the set.
Notes on distribution and structure:
- Topps presale did sell out quickly, however that isn’t the only place collectors can buy boxes. Both Dave & Adams and Blowout Cards had listings for preorder now, but appear to be sold out currently.. GPKNews has heard hobby stores are also able to order boxes.
- This new distribution method is what Topps has moved almost all their other brands to since Fanatics bought the company. Topps routinely now does a preorder one month prior to release for retail releases. They will then often also offer boxes/cases on launch day. While there is no guarantee, there is a chance Topps will also have boxes available on launch day for sale.
- When Fanatics bought Topps one of their stated goals was to eliminate the middle man, mainly distributors. It’s harder than ever now for box resellers to get product at a Topps Direct price.
- In case you missed it, this is a Hobby only product. There will be no boxes in Target/Walmart.
- There are roughly 26k boxes produced. More than a Sapphire set, but much less than any other previous retail release.
- The set structure is a mix of a Sapphire release and Chrome 7. Very heavy emphasis on parallels and inserts. Huge deemphasis on base cards.
- Thanks to Ben Siegler’s awesome work, based on the odds, each box will only have 8 “a” base cards on average. Factoring in duplicates, it will most likely take two cases to make a base set. This is not a product for set collectors.
- I’ve added the full sell sheet from Topps to the previous article on details around the release.
Additional info on set:
- Topps is billing the base set as a, “celebration of the last 40 years”. That’s not quite accurate. 97 of the 100 cards are from OS. Here is a breakdown for what set the base cards originated.
OS 1 – 27
OS 2 – 21
OS 3 – 11
OS 4 – 12
OS 5 – 4
OS 6 – 3
OS 7 – 4
OS 8 – 2
OS 9 – 4
OS 10 – 2
OS 11 – 2
OS 13 – 2
OS 14 – 3
ANS 2 – 2
BNS 1 – 1 - Topps confirmed with GPKNews that there are no Drool Blue parallels for the C Name cards.
- Likewise Topps tells GPKNews that there are indeed Printing Plates for B & C name cards. They were accidentally left off the odds posted by Topps.
- The Adam Bomb Homage to Garbahj insert set is being billed by Topps as having 40 new versions of Adam Bomb by 40 artists. However, that is not the case. Topps shared the artist checklist with GPKNews. There are 20 artists on the set, all but one, (Simko), new to GPK. Here is the artist checklist:
- 1. Andy Greiling
2. Andy Greiling
3. Art Fuentes aka ARF
4. Art Fuentes aka ARF
5. BeastWreck and Belle Dee (Jared Moraitis and Shana Bilbrey)
6. BeastWreck and Belle Dee (Jared Moraitis and Shana Bilbrey)
7. Corey Smith
8. Corey Smith
9. Corey Smith
10. Curt Merlo
11. Danny SchlitzART
12. Danny SchlitzART
13. Danny SchlitzART
14. Danny SchlitzART
15. EL GATO GOMEZ (Crystal Zurat-Marshall)
16. EL GATO GOMEZ (Crystal Zurat-Marshall)
17. Hag Fersner
18. Hag Fersner
19. Joe Simko
20. Johnpaul Gutierrez
21. Kat Hudson Art
22. Kat Hudson Art
23. Louis Wes
24. Mary Ainza
25. Mary Ainza
26. Mary Ainza
27. Megan Ann Boyd
28. Niclas Mortensen
29. Niclas Mortensen
30. Niclas Mortensen
31. Pepa Blackman
32. Pepa Blackman
33. Pepa Blackman
34. Rebecca Puebla
35. Rebecca Puebla
36. Rob Bowyer (Massiveface)
37. Shanti Rittgers
38. Shanti Rittgers
39. Shawn Dickinson
40. Shawn Dickinson - There are a record 101 sketch artists that completed sketches for this set. There are four new artists making their GPK debuts. Coysoup, David Day, Jeff Abar, and Kevin Graham are all veteran Topps artists who have worked on other brands.
- The new sketch guidelines were used with some minor adjustments. The same sketch blanks that were used for Chrome 7 were used for this set. However, sketch artists received a mixture of blanks for their artist returns, unlike Chrome 7 where they were all green sketch blanks.
Finally, the Topps sales listing does state they are planning on shipping boxes early to arrive on release day. 2025 Worst of GPK 40th Anniversary is scheduled to release July 11, 2025.