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Business

'Wacky Packages' to return

March 10, 2004

BY LUKAS I. ALPERT

NEW YORK -- Somewhere, in a junior high school locker, sits a faded sticker: ''Weakies, the Breakfast of Chumps.''

Time to scrape it off, and make room for a new generation of pop culture spoofs. ''Wacky Packages,'' the hot 1970s fad parodying popular household products, is revamped and ready for the 21st century.

In May, the Topps Co. will release "Wacky Packs" with one eye on the nostalgia market and its other on kids brought up in the computer age. The company hopes its product can transcend time and the generation gap.

Born in 1967, the ''Wacky Packages'' were hand-drawn parodies done with Mad magazine-style humor, placed on punched-out cardboard with a lick-and-stick back, and sold like baseball cards in a pack with a piece of gum.

Everything was fair game. Jell-O became Jail-O -- a metal file hidden in a jello mold and billed as Sing Sing's favorite dessert. Gravy-Train Dog Food became Grave Train, with a picture of a dead dog and the grim tag line, ''Your dog will never eat anything else.''

Topps even took swipes at its own products, turning Bazooka gum into Gadzooka.

Initially, the cards were not successful, but after they were brought back in 1973 as stickers they quickly became the biggest thing since white rice (or Minute Lice, as the stickers would have it).

''Anyone who was 7 years old in 1973 who wasn't really square was into this stuff,'' said Greg Grant, a University of Pennsylvania research mathematician who runs an elaborate ''Wacky Packages'' Web site.

By 1976, Topps began running out of ideas, and called it quits after printing the 16th series.

Briefly in early 1980s and again in the early 1990s, Topps came out with new ''Wacky Packages'' series, but they never took off. The problem with those, Grant said, is that they went ''just too far into gross-out humor.''

Oddly, the Topps folks decided on the re-release after the success of last summer's encore of the uber-gross Wacky-Pack successor, ''The Garbage Pail Kids.''

The new series will feature art from some of the original artists and with takeoffs on modern products like baboon-flavored ''Chimp Stick'' (Chap Stick), ''Mr. Coffin Casket Liners'' (Mr. Coffee coffee liners), and blue snazazberry flavored ''Bling Pups'' (Topps' own Ring Pops).

AP





 
 













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