Wacky Packages Celebrated in New Book

It’s been 35 years since Topps rolled out Wacky Packages, its sticker product featuring parodies of consumer products, well-known brands, and packaging. Some found them shocking, others found them hilarious. But they were an unquestioned commercial success for the company. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than its flagship line of baseball cards. The series was relaunched several times over the years, most recently in 2004.

Topps has teamed with Harry Abrams, Inc., for a new book, Wacky Packages, which offers a look back at the first-ever collection of Series One through Series Seven (from 1973 and 1974) and showcases images of all 223 rare and hard-to-find stickers. The book also includes a bonus pack of four rare and previously unreleased stickers, an introduction by Art Spiegelman (one of the original creators and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer), and an afterword by Jay Lynch (a long-time Wacky Packages collaborator).

As Spiegelman says in his introduction, “Wackies were a young child’s first exposure to subverting adult consumer culture. Now, 35 years later, that generation can afford to nostalgically consume a deluxe volume brimming with that subversion.”

The book is available to buy here.