Graphic Design Early Inspiration: Topps Wacky Packages

’d like to go back and remember a few things that initially attracted me to graphic design, years before I knew what that term was and what it meant. I grew up in Memphis area in the 1970s and I have always been a careful observer of things, remembering small details about all kinds of things, especially visual things.

One of the things I remember is a set of stickers produced by the Topps Company called Wacky Packages. These stickers parodied well-known consumer brands, and although I probably only bought a few, they circulated around the school playground, were plastered to notebooks and in the backs of school yearbooks.

Topps is best known for making bubblegum baseball cards and some other non-sports related cards, stickers and related ephemera. My friends and I thought these cards and stickers were pretty funny, some were a little crude and slightly edgy, but in a Mad Magazine rated PG humor kind of way.

Yes, I get that these are low-brow and juvenile, but they’re also fun and completely irreverent. They take me back to a time where I watched way too much TV and saw all these brand names in our home and going along with my mom to the grocery store. These companies were being spoofed in the same way that Weird Al Yankovic spoofs a popular song. It’s both a compliment to the popularity and brand recognition these products had and maybe a good dose of skepticism too.

Looking at them now, I can appreciate the skill and patience it took to render these. I think it took a little love to make these illustrations playful and fun. The typography is usually spot on to match the original package, and for some I have to do a double take to find out it’s one letter away from the real product. Also, many, if not all of the early series Wacky Packages are hand painted.

Writing this, I’ve come across the names of the illustrators, Norman Saunders, whose painted covers for pulp magazines like Marvel Science Stories and Mars Attacks trading cards. Art Speigelman, writer and illustrator of the graphic novel Maus. Tom Sutton, illustrator for Marvel, DC and Warren Magazines, to name a few.

There are a couple of books on the subject, Wacky Packages (2008) by the Topps Company and Art Speigelman if you want to see more of these funny and wacky stickers.