Last year as part of the Garbage Pail Kids 40th Anniversary, Topps along with Greenlight announced contests to GPK Yourself, where collectors could enter to win a contest to have themselves become a GPK in a future release. There have been some interesting developments in each contest.
The Topps contest got off to a rocky start from the beginning. The odds for GPK Yourself code cards were inadvertently switched with the odds for Buybacks on the odds sheet. Then when the website to enter the codes went live, it initially went to the incorrect entry form, with no options to enter GPK codes. After a couple of weeks, Topps did finally get the correct entry site up and running. Some collectors, who were really trying to win the contest, begin buying and trading for extra code cards. At one per box, there were a lot of cards to go around. However, it turns out Topps limited entries to one per account, and very few collectors were aware of this. There was nothing on the entry page that said entries were limited. Additionally, the website allowed for multiple entries without any warning. The only place that mentioned the entry restriction was the official contest rules. The problem was, the official contest rules were not displayed anywhere for collectors to view. When going to the QR code or website URL directly, the link in the fine print at the bottom of the website just led collectors to the same page they were already on. This stayed the same way through the entire contest and into the new year, until one eagled eyed collector decided to search google for the actual contest rules. When they found the rules and the entry restriction the collector contacted Topps legal department to voice their concerns. Topps confirmed with this collector that entries were limited to one per account. They also have recently updated the GPK Yourself page to now link to the official contest rules. This collector was able to get Topps to issue a credit to their account due to the issue.
For those curious, after reading through the contest rules, Topps should be in the process right now of sending out an email to the winner. Be sure to check your emails to see if you were the lucky winner! The winner is scheduled to have their card appear in the upcoming GPK Universe set later this year.
The other contest to become a GPK card was announced by Greenlight back in June of 2025. However, collectors noticed after a few days all mentions of the contest were removed from Greenlight’s social media accounts. GPKNews confirmed with Greenlight that the contest was discontinued shortly after it was announced. So there will be no winners here.
It’s harder than ever to become a Garbage Pail Kid! Whatever you do, for the love of everything GPK, don’t result to using AI to create yourself as a GPK!!
