Garbage Pail Kids

Garbage Pail Kids ("The Garbage Gang" in Australia & New Zealand, "La Pandilla Basura" or "Basuritas" in Latin America, "Gang do Lixo" in Brazil, and "Les Crados" in France) is a series of trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985 and designed to parody the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls created by Xavier Roberts, which were immensely popular at the time. Each sticker card featured a Garbage Pail Kid character, with some comical abnormality and/or suffering some terrible fate, and a humorous, word play-rich character name. Two (and occasionally three) versions of each card were produced, with variations featuring the same artwork but different character names. Fifteen regular series were released in the United States, with various sets released in other countries. Two large format card editions were also released, as well as a set of posters.
The series was the brainchild of Topps consultant and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who came up with the product idea after the success of his earlier creations, Garbage Candy and Wacky Packages. The concept originally began as an unreleased Wacky Packages title, but the management at Topps thought that it would be a good idea for a separate spin-off series. Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden worked together as the editors and art directors of the project, Len Brown was the manager, and the first run of the cards was drawn exclusively by artist John Pound. Following the initial success of the cards, several additional artists and writers were brought in to contribute to the series, including Jay Lynch, Tom Bunk and James Warhola, among others.