AMBFAD Book Club (w/ 1 Stick Bubble Gum)

'Wacky Packages'

As a small fry, I amassed a large 'collection' of bubblegum cards ranging in a myriad of subjects that included MLB, NBA, NFL, Star Wars, KISS, Three's Company, Close Encounters, Marvel Superheros, Charlie's Angels, Weird Wheels, Battlestar Galactica, Evel Knievel and so many others long forgotten. I loved sifting through the cards, the checklists and the stickers like a millionaire counting his cash.

My stacks upon stacks of comics were only eclipsed by the armada of shoe boxes full of these cards, not-at-all-neatly organized into groups using rubber bands. I remember selling the KISS cards sometime in Junior High at one of the memorabilia/swap meet type things that would show up in College Hills Mall every so often...the rest went to destinations unknown via garage sales and trading them for other stuff. Ancient memories the lot of them.

So, over a lunchtime trip to the comic book shop near my place of employment, I was elated to find a book completely devoted to one of the best offerings of of the bubblegum card genre: 'Wacky Packages'. They were a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards.

The book serves as a first-ever collection of Series 1 - 7 (from 1973 and 1974), released directly from Topps to honor the 35th anniversary of their existence. Not just content to offer up pictures of all 232 stickers, the book also includes a really cool forward from Art Spiegelman...a pioneer in Wacky Packages, conceiving all of the 1st series titles from 1973. You may better know him for his 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning comics memoir, 'Maus'. All that is cool enough, but what really drew me in was the design of the book itself...

From the dustcover made from the same waxy paper that the cards were originally packaged in to the four never-before-published 'Lost Wackys' (actual stickers) included exclusively with this book...it's apparent that some thought went into the experience of enjoying this book as much as you enjoyed the stickers it focuses upon.

The overall design is so clean and neat and full of little creative touches that include a lone stick of that pink cardboard that they would pass off as 'gum' staring back at you when you peel back the dustcover. Even better, the pages are stitched in, rather than just glued. It's a hell of a lot more expensive to produce a stitched book, but it's a hell of a lot more durable as well...perfect for those of the 'collector' mentality likely to buy the thing.

Really, you just have to see it in person to get the just of it and if you are a fan of this type of ephemera...I highly recommend checking it out. It was just released to stores this week, both online and I actually saw a bunch at Barnes & Nobel as well. Enjoy and save a piece of 'gum' for me!