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Garbage Pail Kids - The Gross, Weird, and Wonderful Cards That Took Over the 80s

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Garbage Pail Kids - The Gross, Weird, and Wonderful Cards That Took Over the 80s In the mid-1980s, while kids were trading baseball cards and begging for Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, Topps decided to stir the pot. The result? Garbage Pail Kids  - a set of hilariously gross, satirical trading cards that became both a playground sensation and a cultural controversy. Adam Bomb – The most iconic Garbage Pail Kid of them all Where it all began First released in 1985 by Topps, Garbage Pail Kids were designed as a parody of the wildly popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Each card featured a grotesque yet funny character with pun-filled names like Adam Bomb , Leaky Lindsay , or Up Chuck . Kids loved them. Parents… not so much. Artwork came from comic legends like Art Spiegelman (later Pulitzer Prize winner for Maus ) and John Pound, who turned gross-out humor into collectible gold. Every sticker card had two versions: an “A” and “B” name, but with the same artwork — ...
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DID YOU KNOW #2 - Gary Pettis was not Gary Pettis?

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Gary Pettis' 1985 Topps Card… Starring His Brother? Baseball cards have seen their fair share of printing errors and quirky mistakes — but this one might be the most charming of all. In 1985, Topps released a card for then-California Angels outfielder Gary Pettis . The only problem? The guy on the card wasn’t Gary at all… it was his younger brother. The 1985 Topps card that started the confusion It all happened one Sunday at the ballpark. Pettis' younger brother had tagged along, wearing a uniform and running drills with other kids while the players were doing their thing. That just happened to be the day Topps photographers were snapping player shots for the upcoming set. Gary wasn’t even aware pictures were being taken… but his brother was out there, in full gear and looking pretty similar to his big-league sibling. As Gary later explained in an interview: "My brother would come out to the ballpark on Sundays and go out on the field. I gue...
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Magic: The Gathering (MTG) - First modern trading card game

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Lets leave sport cards for a while and tell a few words about  Magic: The Gathering - First modern trading card game (MTG). Dr. Richard Garfield created the first Magic core set: Alpha, which was bought by Wizards of the Coast and released in August 1993. Due to popular demand, a second Beta print run was released two months later, followed by a renamed Unlimited Edition. Richard dubbed the game Magic when he originally created it. Because the name was too simple to trademark, it was altered to Mana Clash. Because everyone kept referring to it as Magic, they looked into what they needed to do in order to refer to it as such. To make it more unique, the solution was to add something to it. Because the intention was to continually modifying the sub names, Richard chose "The Gathering" as a starting point.
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DID YOU KNOW #1 - Topps Hocus Focus needs water?

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This Was Always My Favorite Part – Did You Know? As the first fun fact in what I hope becomes a long-running series, let’s rewind to one of Topps’ most curious creations: the Hocus Focus Magic Photo cards. From the very beginning, trading card producers knew that cards weren’t just collectibles—they were marketing tools. To stay ahead of the game, companies like Topps had to innovate. Cigarette cards had their time, but the 1940s needed something new. 🃏 Blank Cards With a Twist? Imagine opening a pack and seeing... nothing. Blank cards. But no misprint here! In 1948–49, Topps released a set where the magic only appeared with water and a special blue "magic paper" overlay. After wetting the card and applying the paper, an image of a player or actor would reveal itself—like a cardboard sorcery trick. 🗂️ The Set and Checklist The full set included 252 photo cards across sports (baseball, football, basketball, boxing) and entertainment (m...
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Pokémon trading card game

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Before we talk a bit about Pokémon  card  game , we definitely should write a few words on where all did come from :) Long time ago a man called Satoshi Tajiri , big fan of bugs (some say, he wanted to become an entomologist) started to create games. His (and his friends) first productions were Pulseman , Yoshi and Mario & Wario . Those games were not a big success, but they were quite popular on the market. After some time, around 1990, still having this "bug geek" thoughts, Satoshi realized, that this might work out and invented Pocket Monsters. Nintendo was his first choice. It took some time to convince Nintendo to his idea, but when he finally did it, he immediately began working on the game ...
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The Beginning of trading cards

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Nowadays, trading cards, collectible cards and all other cards are huge business with millions of dollars behind it. It doesn`t matter if it is a sport card, movie card or just a card released to promote something. Some are valued few cents, other can reach up millions for a single card. Have You ever wondered how it began? Well... this is a short story about it. Some say, that it all started somewhere around 1880 when John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter set up a company named... yes, you are right: Allen & Ginter. I will not focus on its history as a tobacco company obviously (nowadays its not politically correct to talk about cigs;), but Allen & Ginter had a very interesting idea of how to develop marketing of their products. Cigarette manufacturers were using paper cards putted inside cig packs to prevent cigarettes from being squeezed. They created and introduced cigarette card for collecting and trading purposes. Now the trade mark of Allen & Ginter is used by some other c...
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