Wacky li'l boxes.

Americans of a certain age will remember Wacky Packages, a line of cards and later stickers that parodied consumer products in a very MAD magazine style. In fact, they featured the work of some MAD creators like Drew Friedman. Wacky Packages were made by Topps, the premier baseball card company, and if memory serves also came with a stick of that lousy gum. Wacky Packages were one generation back from the Garbage Pail Kids, with that same gross-out humor.

I had plenty of the stickers, but never used them except on my loose-leaf binder and the like. A friend of mine plastered his bedroom door with Wacky Packages stickers (Comic Book Heroes stickers too, also made by Topps). That kind of thing didn't fly in my house. My dad wouldn't have killed me, but the disgust and disappointment radiating off him while he gently scraped the stickers off my door would have made me glow with shame for days. 

Nevertheless, I was amused to see this box of fun at the checkout at Walmart. 

Topps, through Super Impulse, has released the classic Wacky Packages as packages, tiny little 3-D replicas sold in containers like this. You get five products in a package for six bucks, which may be overpriced, but who cares? It's nostalgia! (Super Impulse, by the way, also makes a whole lot of fun stuff in small form, including the miniature Pac-Man console I got as a stocking stuffer a couple of years ago.) 

Let's see what Wacky Packages came in this set. (Thanks to the Wacky Packages fanpage and mall for historical information.) This is what's stuffed in the box:

No gum.

First, there's the paperwork --  a checklist so you can collect 'em all! It even notes which ones are rare, meaning they're holding back production to increase collectability and value on a handful. 

On to my packages! You'll note that no products have been updated; some of the actual products parodied on the checklist don't even exist anymore, like Duz detergent, Mr. Big bread, and Chun King foods. The packaging for the others has changed a lot since then. But these are still the same wacky parodies they were in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Otherwise, what's nostalgia for? 

First, for old times' sake we have an actual sticker, a miniature replica of the Grazin' Bran from the fourth original series. 

In the packages themselves, we have 

Liptorn, one of the very first products from the 1967 trading-card era, before they were stickers.

Windaxe is fun -- "Break Glass to Remove Axe." From the 13th series. 

Saran Wrap as Sorry Wrap, 7th series. 

A takeoff of Birdseye's International Recipes from the period, specifically the Bavarian Style Beans & Spaetzle (11th series).

Hey, I got a rare one! Pupsi-Cola (original sticker: 10th series) was called Rare on the Super Impulse checklist. I'm rich! Let's see... Nah, looks like I didn't get the really rare red sparkle edition. Meh -- best offer?

It was a fun trip down memory lane, although seeing these Wacky Packages and others online reminded me that most of the humor came from the shock value of looking at brands adults valued treated like garbage. Some are more clever than others, but most are kinda dumb. Nothing wrong with a dumb joke, though. Never stopped me!

I doubt I'll be holding on to these. Except for books -- and I want to trim down that library whenever we move -- I don't collect anything on purpose anymore. Ever since I had to sell my comic books in a hurry before my parents moved (I had no room in my little apartment), the collecting bug has gone out of me. But like so many things, it was fun while it lasted.