A Lost Moment in Time: Wacky Packs: BeastBall

By Craig: It is been quite a while since I have updated this blog. There is a reason for this which I shall be revealing sometime in the next few weeks, but for now I shall say that I just haven't been in the frame of mind to write lately...or for that matter...to think. Every now and then I come up with an idea and then presto!...nothing...just a blank.  I was talking to my brother Jay the other day and he asked me if I remembered the wacky pack stickers that we use to get when we were kids. I smiled. I remembered them fondly. Anyone that grew up in the 1970s was familiar with wacky packs. This was probably more true for boys than girls, but I imagine that girls collected them too. Technically they were called "wacky packages", but kids where I grew up just called them wacky packs. I guess it was too much to add the "ages" to the "pack" but I don't really know how we bastardized the real name of them. I suppose it doesn't really matter. A generation of children who are now in the throes of middle age, and rapidly advancing toward old age remember "Crust Toothpaste" Brush teeth twice a month, tastes lousy, or "Beast Ball" Creepy Cards, with shocking bubble gum, or perhaps they might recall the "Weakies," "The breakfast of chumps" or "Blunder Bread,"" Extra heavy bread, build your body just by lifting package"

Wacky Packages came in a pack with 2 or 3 stickers and a puzzle piece. I don't really remember if gum came in the pack like it did with baseball cards, but kids bought them for the stickers not the gum, or the puzzle that you could never find all the pieces for. My brother and I would stick them all over the place. On our bed headboard, our desks, our bureaus, on the wall and basically any place that they would stick. Our mother must have cringed every time we got a pack of this new art deco. I can imagine that a lot of mothers back in the 1970s cursed Topps Chewing Gum Incorporated for this marvelous invention. I can vividly remember attempting to remove a wacky pack from the baseboard on my bed. No such luck. The edges could be peeled back but that was it. It would have taken patience (which I did not possess) and a boy scout jack knife to remove it. Even then it would have been a tedious and laborious task. Once a wacky pack made its mark it was permanent whether your mother liked it or not. I believe that I was about 6 or 7 when I first started collecting them. Some of the artwork was morbid...almost disturbing.  As a child who was still getting use to the world and all its mysteries the wacky packs threw a wrench in it. I can remember pausing and reflecting on the unreal images as if I had entered some parallel universe that was similar, but not quite the same as the one we lived in. What if I fell asleep and woke up in the wacky pack universe? Was it possible? Would I wake up and find myself drinking "Kook Aid" rather than "Kool Aide?" Impossible...or was it? To a 6 or 7 year old anything is possible. The whole world is a mystery.

I was curious to see if there was a market in the 21st century for the ubiquitous 1970s wacky pack. I was amazed to find that they were still being made, and had been brought back on numerous occasions over the past 40 years. You can buy a whole box of them for about $20. Needless to say they are not the same wacky packs that came out in the 1970s. They are knock offs and a cheaper version. The original stickers fetch a tidy little sum if one wanted to start collecting them. Do I regret sticking them all over my bedroom when I was a kid knowing now that I could fetch a few dollars for them? Absolutely not! The memory is what matters, after all, the 1970s were the golden age of wacky packs. I am glad that I was a part of it! I asked my 14 year old son if he had ever heard of a wacky pack and got a blank look... "A wacky what dad?"