By Roxanne Toser

If you weren’t collecting non-sport cards in 1985, you don know what you missed. It was a very exciting time, caused by the phenomenon known as Garbage Pail Kids (GPK) The very popular but in the opinion of a lot of people, ugly Cabbage Patch Kid (CPK) dolls had been around since 1982. They were supposed to be sweet but many people thought they were sickening, and were getting tired of them. Along came GPK stickers, produced by Topps. They were anything but sweet but both the name of the product and the characters on the stickers brought CPK dolls to mind. It seemed like the climate was right for a change away from the sweetness and the anything-but-sweet GPK stickers were very, very popular. There were 15 regular series produced, as well as a couple of larger sticker series, posters, buttons and 3-D wall plaques

Young boys are bigger collectors of non- sport cards than girls Both CPK and GPK were aimed at the 7 to 12 year old age group. While the girls were collecting dolls, here was something appealing to boys. What made them even more appealing was their nastiness.

This age group is notoriously nasty and what fun they could have with GPK stickers Since they used many common names, it was easy to find classmates to tease with the stickers. When they first appeared after the end of the school year the demand was not so great but when school reconvened, around the third series, the excitement really began To keep up with the demand for the stickers, Topps worked three-shifts, around the clock and still it was sometimes impossible to find a pack anywhere. Retailers were constantly complaining because they could not get

page10 Non-Sport Update