Topps VP of Licensing, Ira Friedman, Leaving Topps

Ira Friedman’s over 33 year career at Topps is coming to an end. In a farewell letter to fans, Friedman announced today his final day with Topps will be 7/31. Ira has been the Vice President of Licensing for a number of years for the company. His leadership over Garbage Pail Kids licensing has been one of the key reasons the brand has flourished over the past few years.

Below you will find his final farewell to not only Garbage Pail Kids but collectors as well. I can tell you from my personal experience, there has not been a bigger supporter of GPKs at Topps the past few years as I’ve ran this website. Ira always had collectors in mind while working there. That seems to be a rare quality these days. The brand won’t be the same without him. Thank you Ira!

It’s All About Fans First!
by Ira Friedman

Ever since my first publishing gig at STARLOG and FANGORIA sci-fi and horror magazines in the late ‘70’s, it’s always been about the fans. In 1980, when I worked atLucasfilm Ltd., I saw firsthand how much care and attention George Lucas placed on fostering an authentic connection with Star Wars fans everywhere. When I later branched off on my own, I produced official tie-in magazines for fan-fueled properties including: BladeRunner, The Goonies, Gremlins, Back to the Future, among others, and created the official E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Fan Club for Amblin Productions and Universal Studios.

When the Garbage Pail Kids blindsided the world in 1985, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked on everything GPK. In 1987, I acquired the publishing rights for an official “one-shot” magazine, based on the ill-fated Garbage Pail Kids movie. The film tanked at the box office yet has become a cult favorite to some many years later. While not particularly fond of the movie, it did not undermine my fascination with this quirky and outrageous property. Nor did it discourage the legions of fans who just couldn’t get enough of GPK.

In 1988 I joined Topps as the company’s Director of New Product Development. I got to ‘play’ in the firm’s non-sport ‘sandbox’ and spent much time immersed in things like Wacky Packages, Mars Attacks, along with many outside licenses and other company creations, most notably Garbage Pail Kids. My obsession with this irreverent-yet-adorable, controversial-yet-hilarious brand was in full blossom. While I was technically in charge of the GPK trading card program, the bulk of the credit goes to the artists – both back in those halcyon days and to the current times – whose incredible artwork and boundless creativity hit a nerve that continues to reverberate throughout the fan community.

In more recent times I have functioned in the role of chief architect of the GPK licensed merchandise business. It’s been a blast working with like-minded partners from all areas of commerce as they’ve passionately translated GPK into a wide variety of innovative consumer goods. This diverse range ofofficial products span: Monopoly board games, 8-bit video games, middle-school books by R.L. Stine, comics written by Adam F. Goldberg, a stunning 78-card Tarot Deck and the upcoming, first-ever GPK Pop-Up book, plus a myriad of amazing toys and lots of other cool stuff.

My 33+ year love affair with GPK is about to come to its professional end as July 31 will be my last day at Topps/Fanatics. The company has assembled a competent team to carry the torch and I look forward to seeing GPK persevere, prosper and continue to charm and infatuate the “little kid” inside us all.

As for me, while GPK will always hold a special place in my heart, it’s time to move on and explore other opportunities. Thanks to every one of you for being a part of my GPK adventure and for allowing me to play some part in your GPK experience. In my book, it’s always been — and always will be –about fans first!

– Ira Friedman, July 2023

P.S. And may the Farts be with you, always! J

 

Garbage Pail Kids To Be Part of 2023 Topps International Trading Card Day

Garbage Pail Kids will once again be part of Topps International Trading Card Day. Topps is expanding the program for 2023. This time anyone who visits a participating hobby store on 8/5/23 will get their choice of a free pack. Collectors can choose Baseball, UEFA Soccer, Formula 1, Bowman U Football, Athlete’s Unlimited, or Garbage Pail Kids. Additionally, anyone spending $10 in the store on 8/5 gets a Mike Trout card, and can return on 8/12 for a free Adley Rutschman card. Topps will release a list of participating stores and a checklist just prior to the event.

The GPK portion appears to be different this year. GPKNews is aware of 5 new paintings that were created by David Gross, Joe Simko, Brent Engstrom, and Joe McWilliams. It’s not yet known if there will be any other GPK cards as part of the set. The sell sheets for the product show one of the new GPK cards, Batty Kattie done by Smokin Joe McWilliams. GPK packs might be tougher to come by this year. Once again shops must purchase boxes to participate. Boxes cost dealers just over $50. Each 100 pack box contains; MLB (40), UEFA (20), Formula 1 (15), Bowman U (15), Athlete’s Unlimited (5), and Garbage Pail Kids (5). Each pack contains 5 cards. Get the family together and plan a Saturday searching all the Hobby shops in your area!

Abrams To Offer Signed Jeff Zapata Print at SDCC

Abrams has announced their Garbage Pail Kids plans for this year’s San Diego Comic Con. The company will have many of their recent GPK releases available at their booth, (#1216), including; Welcome to Smellville, Thrills & Chills, Camp Daze, and the GPK Coolbook. Abrams will also be distributing throughout the show signed prints by artist Jeff Zapata. The prints are hand numbered /750 and feature artwork from the Thrills & Chills book. This year’s SDCC is scheduled to take place 7/20-7/23.

Atomic Toybox Reveals SDCC Garbage Pail Kids Merchandise

The reveals continued today as Atomic Earth released their SDCC Garbage Pail Kids merchandise info via the SDCC Unofficial Blog. The company has traditionally had both prints and pins at their booth and this year is no exception. First there will be two versions of a GPK Blacklight poster available. The Snot Diego poster will come signed by the artist, Joe Simko. The poster measures 18” x 24” and comes in either super snot green or eggplant. Each color is limited to 150 copies and will be priced at $60 each.  Additionally, Atomic Toybox will have two versions of the Certified Gross logo in a glow in the dark enamel pin. The pins are also limited to 150 copies, but will also come with an exclusive GPK Guts Promo card. Each pin will cost collectors $14.95. All items will be available at the Atomic Toybox booth (#3921) during this year’s SDCC happening from 7/20-7/23.

Insight Editions Plans Garbage Pail Kids Promo Card for SDCC

Companies are starting to announce their plans for this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Garbage Pail Kids will once again have a presence at the show. Yesterday, Insight Editions announced plans for a GPK promo card via the SDCC Unofficial Blog. The company will be promoting their upcoming Garbage Pail Kids Pop-Up Book. The book is written and illustrated by longtime GPK artist Joe Simko, and designed by Matthew Reinhardt. Insight will be passing out the promo card at their booth (#2129) Friday and Saturday, limit one per person while supplies last. Saturday of the show, Simko will be at the booth signing autographs from 1:00-1:30. Additionally, collectors will get their first look at the book, which will be on display at the booth during the show. The GPK Pop-Up book can be preordered now, and is scheduled to be released in October. SDCC will take place form 7/20-7/23.

Topps Reveals Print Run for GPK Prime Slime Trashy TV Week 6

It took a while, but Topps has finally revealed the print run for Garbage Pail Kids Prime Slime Trashy TV expansion set week 6. The set sold a total of 1,694 copies. Sales were down a bit from the previous week’s set. Week six was the second lowest selling set of the series. This set marked the final set of the expansion series. Despite the sharp drop in sales after week 1, the set still held onto high sales numbers throughout the series. Collectors will get a short break now until the next six week series is launched online.

MJ Holding Launches New Repack Garbage Pail Kids Blister Packs

It’s the second coming of the Trash Boxes! MJ Holdings has launched a new repacked Garbage Pail Kids blister product that so far has been found in Big Lots stores. Thanks to collectors, Donny Moffitt, Max Geronimo, and Gary Anderson for sending along pictures and being the first to find these in the wild. Each Blister pack advertises “2 Factory Sealed Packs” and that collectors can “look for seeded refractors”. The backs of the blisters show that these are repacked for MJ Holdings with packs purchased from either Topps or a third party. Pricing at big lots for these has been anywhere from $8-$9 each, which is considerably higher than the retail cost of GPK retail packs. So far, blisters with 2023S1 GPK Go on Vacation and 2022 Chrome 4 have been found on the fronts and inside. All packs opened so far contain Chrome 4 blaster packs and/or GPK Vacation Retail Display packs. Those two recent releases, along with other releases the past couple of years were produced in very large quantities by Topps. It appears MJ Holdings is repackaging retail packs that have gone unsold. The term refractor on the packs implies there are chrome cards in each one, but that isn’t the case as some blisters have two GPK Vacation packs inside. These blisters are similar to the original Trash Boxes that Excell Marketing launched in 2016, although in a much smaller and more expensive form.

More Details on Super Impulse World’s Smallest GPK & Wacky Micro Card Collection

Without much fanfare or marketing, details recently appeared on Super Impulse’s website for their World’s Smallest GPK and Wacky Packages Micro Card Collection. The card collection is now out in the wild and available. Although, so far only two small online toy websites, (Little Obsessed and Sweets & Geeks), have had any available, and both sold out quickly. GPKNews was able to get more details from Super Impulse on the set, and was sent some samples to checkout the new product. Read on for what is known so far about the series.

Each card measures 1” x .125” x 1.5”. The cards are similar in size to the small cards included with the micro GPK toys released in 2021. The GPK cards contain the full “Garbage Pail Kids” licensed banner. Perhaps the nicest part of these is they are each die-cut stickers! Both GPKs and Wackies come die-cut. Topps eliminated die-cuts from GPKs years ago, so it’s refreshing to see Super Impulse use them for this series. Each pack comes with 1 GPK 5-card pack (Pink or Blue), 1 Wacky Packages 5-card pack (Red or Yellow), and 1 mystery pack that contain either GPK or Wacky Packages cards. The color of the pack doesn’t appear to have an effect on the cards included. According to Super Impulse, and confirmed with pack breaks, the GPK and Wacky labeled packs contain Standard cards. The GPK mystery pack contains 5 Rare cards, while the Wacky mystery pack contains 2 Rare cards, and 3 Standard Wacky cards. Also according to Super Impulse, the complete set contains 50 Standard GPKs, 20 Rare GPKs, 47 Standard Wackies, and 10 Rare Wackies. Collectors are going to need to bust a lot of these to complete a set.

The company tells GPKNews there is no checklist available for the series. This is where things get confusing. It appears there was no rhyme or reason for how Super Impulse chose the characters to be included in the set. All Standard GPK cards appear to be reprints of OS 1 characters. However, if Super Impulse’s set size is correct, not all OS 1 cards were included. To add to the confusion, in some cases only “a” names were included, or only “b” names, or even both “a & b” names. Each Standard GPK card contains the original card number from OS1, so many numbers are skipped. The backs of each of the Standard GPK cards feature the classic award backs from the series. The Rare GPK cards are all reprints from the recent 2021S1 Food Fight set. Again, the choices appear to be completely random. What is even worse on the Rare GPKs are the numbers that appear on the cards. About half contain the original card number from the Food Fight, while the other half look to be assigned a random card number. Early results look like Super Impulse chose 10 a/b character sets from Food Fight to make up the 20 Rare cards. The backs of the Rare cards are puzzle pieces for two of the included Food Fight characters. The Standard Wacky Package backs all contain puzzles, while the Rare backs contain the Wacky Packages logo with a red or blue background.

There were a number of errors made by Super Impulse on the cards in the set. Perhaps the biggest is the “Loony Lenny” card. The Lenny name plate was put on the Dead Ted artwork with the 5b card number. Both 5a (Dead Ted), and 5b (Jay Decay), also have cards in the set. So there are three standard cards with the same artwork. Another mistake is the Food Fight Adam Bomb card is spelled “Atom” on the name plate. Finally, In addition to the random numbering on the GPK Rare cards, the Sour Scott card is actually numbered “49ba”. Each pack is wrapped in a sturdy paper stock “wrapper” that is closed by a tab and slot system. The quality of the cards out of the packs is poor. Almost no cards are cut cleanly with “hanging” pieces on many card corners or edges. Additionally, a handful of cards from pack breaks are coming with creases completely through the cards. There won’t be any PSA 10’s here.

Because there is no available checklist, GPKNews has been unable to confirm the set size supplied by Super Impulse. It’s also impossible to know which cards are missing. And don’t bother asking about print runs. There is no way to determine how many Super Impulse printed. However, when it comes to the GPK cards, because of set size and math, the “Rares” are most likely not rare, and could be slightly more common than the Standard cards. One other unknown is if any of the Standard cards are more rare than others. With the GPK Micro blind box figures from 2021, it was clear Super Impulse printed different amounts of some of the figures, but that info was never confirmed by the company. GPKNews, along with Wacky Packages collectors Andrew and Jacob so far have busted a combined 21 packs. We’ve been able to identify 37/50 Standard GPKs, 15/20 Rare GPKs, 40/47 Standard Wackies, and 10/10 Rare Wackies. GPKNews has created the following checklist for the release that will be updated as new cards are found. Please contact GPKNews if you find any new cards from the set.

Super Impulse GPK/Wacky Micro Card Checklist

Finally, if you want to get your hands on a couple of packs, go check out the GPKNews Facebook page on 5/30/23 and enter a contest to win two sealed packs!

 

Garbage Pail Kids 2024 Calendar Images and Theme Revealed

Back in February we shared preorder information for the Abrams 2024 Garbage Pail Kids Wall and Desk calendars. The company has updated the information now to include this year’s theme, along with pictures. The Garbage Pail Kids: Stuck in School 2024 Day-to-Day Desk Calendar features 366 GPKs on a daily tear off style calendar. Each month focuses on a certain theme involving school. Once again each image credits the names of the set and artist from the card. The daily calendar can be preordered for $17.99. The Garbage Pail Kids Wall Calendar is a 16 month calendar featuring the same Stuck in School theme. The 12” x 24” classic wall calendar features a number of popular GPK form through the years. The Wall calendar can be preordered for $15.99. Both calendars can be preordered anywhere books are sold. Both calendars are also set to be released on the same day, 10/10/23.

Greenlight Releases Mockup Images for Garbage Pail Kids Die-cast Series 5

Greenlight has released deco images to distributors for their next Garbage Pail Kids Die-cast cars, series 5. There was also a change to the car that will come with the Bouyant Billie sticker. A couple of vans, a police car, and even an ice cream trailer highlight the vehicles chosen for this release. Individual pictures for each car along with its included card is below. Cars can be preordered now from various diecast websites. Greenlight GPK Series 5 is scheduled to launch in the Sept.-Oct. timeframe.

• Buoyant Billie – 1968 Plymouth HEMI GTX
• Crashed Craig – 1968 Volkswagen Type 2 Campmobile with Hurst Bumper – Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Search Team
• Hal Pass – 2008 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor – Junior High Security Guard
• Ice Cream Sandy – Retail Ice Cream Trailer
• Rhetta White & Blue – 1985 Dodge Ram D-250
• Aggravated Angela – 1977 Dodge B-100 Van