Vote for your favorite 1st Series stickers See Poll Results Timeline: This is the legendary 1st series that came out in Spring (most likely March) of 1973. Titles: There are 30 titles. Although this series is known as "the 1st series", all 30 titles had already been released as die-cuts in 1967/8. The 1967/8 die-cut series was not greatly successful however, while the re-release in 1973 was phenomenally successful, so consequently most people think Wackys were born in 1973, however they were already 5 or 6 years old at the time. Perhaps the peel-and-stick format made the difference (die-cuts were punch-and-lick), or perhaps it was just more in the air come 1973. Whatever the reason, this is the series that put Wacky Packages on the map. Mainly due to cease-and-desist warnings, fourteen of the original 1967/8 die-cuts did not make it to this series. The Artists: Art Spiegelman conceived the jokes and drew the roughs for this series, Norm Saunders (primarily) did the final paintings. Packs: Packs came with two stickers, a checklist, a piece of gum. Checklists/Puzzle: There are nine different checklist backs which come together to form a Gadzooka puzzle. There is a typo on the checklist, "Jail-O Desert" should be "Jail-O Dessert". The Box: The box was purple and held 48 packs. A never opened full 1st series box has always been one of the holy grails of the hobby. Very few ever turned up. A full box did arise November of 2020, when somebody turned up with "several," the first of which sold on Heritage for an impressive $49,200. The Sheet: This series is notable among Topps regular series in how some of the stickers appeared only once on the sheet while others appeared as many as six times. There were four "one-per-sheet" stickers which were notoriously hard to come by in 1973: Lavirus, Mutt's, Paul Maul, and Bandache. See the number per sheet for every title. Most people thought the existence of the four shortprints was a marketing a tactic of Topps to get kids to buy more packs, but in fact it was entirely unintentional, read this history of how the short-prints really came to be. Copyrights: Back Variations: Due to their immense popularity, Topps went into a printing frenzy, and soon they had run out of white back sticker stock. They proceeded to use anything else they could find, and as a result there are four different 1st series backs, known as "back variations". All but the white backs were printed near the end of the run and are rare. White (common for the 1st series) Tan (rare for the 1st series) Black Ludlow (very rare) Red Ludlow (extremely rare for the 1st series) Reprints: Most of the 1st series titles were re-released in other series. Only Maddie-Boy and Skimpy were never reprinted. Some are difficult to distinguish from the originals, sometimes only the die-cut can distinguish them For example Lavirus and Tied. In some other instances there is no apparent way to tell the difference for example the tan back Gadzooka Wonder Bread premium is indistinguishable from the orignial, as far as anyone can tell.

1st Series Checklist
Duzn't Detergent	Grave Train	Vicejoy Cigarettes
Chock Full O' Bolts	Mrs. Klean	Hostage Cakes
Breadcrust Hash	Minute Lice	Kook-Aid
Jail-O Desert (sic)	Horrid Deodorant	Camals
Gadzooka Gum	Skimpy	Tied Detergent
6-Up Beverage	Liptorn Soup	Pure Hex
Maddie Boy	Fink Beverage	Lavirus
Quacker Oats	Dopey Cream	Paul Maul
Weakies Breakfast Cereal	Spray Nit	Mutt's Juice
Crust Tooth Paste	Cover Ghoul	Band-Ache Strips