WACK FOR WACKIES

FROM THE EARTHBOUND TOMBOY FILES...

BY HEIDI JOHNSON-WRIGHT

The summer just before I turned nine years old changed my life forever. It wasn’t that I acquired some profound bit of knowledge or underwent a religious conversion. Instead, it was a discovery I made with my friend and next-door neighbor, Trish.  Her family was from New Jersey, so she called pop “soda,” and tennis shoes “sneakers.” She had an infectious laugh, was rarely moody, loved Sonny and Cher as much as I did (which is, to say, a crap load), and had a wardrobe of nine or ten bathing suits. My personal favorite was a one-piece that was held together at the belly button by a plastic ring. It hurt her stomach when she’d plunge head-first down the water slide, but it made her look like a miniature Ali MacGraw.

One afternoon as Trish and I arrived at the neighborhood pool, I glanced over at another bicycle on the rack where I was locking mine up. On the fender was a Wacky Package sticker, the first one I’d ever seen. It was Six-Up (Six Fooey Ounces. You Hate It – It Hates You.) For me, it was love at first sight, later bordering on obsession.

For those of you too young to remember, Wacky Packages were a series of trading cards and stickers by the Topps Company that parodied consumer products. They appealed to me for a variety of reasons. They were bright and colorful. They often featured bodily humor like burps and B.O. (Spit & Spill Cleanser, Belch’s Grape Jelly, Heartburn Cereal) or jokes about current events, like the Cold War (Commie Cleanser, Moscow Syrup, Czechlets.)

Many included animal imagery (Pigpen Oil, Toad Bubble Bath, Ape Green Beans) and drawings of the disgusting (Nose-X Tissue, Bird Brain Leftovers, Decay Toothpaste.) I adored the Wackies of things supernatural (Hex-Lax, Scary-Lee, Play Skull) and even the jokes about death (Casket Soap, Killette Hair Spray, Nooseweek Magazine.) Their use of parody reminded me of my beloved Mad magazine. 

Starting the summer of 1973, I bought as many Wackies as I could afford with my meager allowance. Eventually, I acquired T-shirts sporting large decals of the stickers, including Rice-a-Phony and KoDuck. Forty-plus years later, I still adore them. I would decorate a room in my home with them from floor to ceiling, if I could. Wackies shaped the woman I am today. I still enjoy humor that uses both high-brow wordplay and low-brow crudeness. I appreciate tweaking the nose of corporate American and consumerism.

 

And I still think back fondly on lazy summer afternoons when I passed the time reading Mad magazine and buying Wacky Packs at the convenience mart and swimming with Trish.

 

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