I don’t know if we can ever be totally certain how we become haunt and horror fans. I know I always liked monsters and fantasy and things that were a little off center when I was growing up, and I have decided to explore some of those things in a series of articles. If you have ideas of things that you think contributed to your early HorrorBuzz please feel free to write and we will try and write about them as well.

Somewhere around the mid-80’s just as I was leaving childhood behind and yet still wanted to relate with kid stuff to my younger brother, Topps Baseball Card company infected the world with a delightfully gross series of parody stickers known as the Garbage Pail Kids. And yes the pack still had a stick gum in it, which I suppose is appropriate because if the cards weren’t gross enough to turn your stomach, the hard rectangular piece of semi-edible pink bubblegum was there to do the trick.

As I understand the history of the series, The Topps creative team was trying to figure out if they could make money off the very popular Cabbage Patch Kids, and rather than have to pay to license the property, decided to just parody the living daylights out of the pop-culture phenomenon instead (a much better choice in my opinion.)

These cards were designed to provoke a desired reaction, and that was to provoke parents to multiple levels of frustration. First the fact that the packs of cards were cheap enough that it was difficult to argue against allowing their purchase at the stores they could be found, and second disgust and worry that their precious child would want to collect or laugh about their content. This made them almost as much of a must have popular item as the dolls they were supposed to skew.

For someone just dipping his feet into the gore that was the amazing 80’s golden age of Horror. These cards were off base like Weird Al on MTV in just the right way, and the giggles I shared with my friends and brother over these socially horrific diaper clad atrocities, are definitely a part of my horror indoctrination.

So if you want to remember the awful smell of that bubble gum, and have a strong constitution, here are some “inappropriate” examples of the Garbage Pail Kids:

Good times huh? Who were your favorite Garbage Pail Kids?