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WACKY PACKS
If you mention the name Wacky Packs to children of the 1970s, you’re guaranteed
to elicit a response unlike any other craze in the last few decades. Billed as “the
number one children’s craze of the last 1,000 years” by Entertainment Weekly, the
stickers and trading cards that spoofed classic household items became the only
non-sports card to continually outsell baseball cards. Everyday products like Cap’n
Crunch were spoofed as Cap’n Crud, just like Hot Wheels became Shot Wheels.
Nothing was off-limits, covering everything from cereal (Wheaties became
Weakies) to drinks (Kool-Aid became Kook Aid) to cologne (Old Spice became Old
Spit). Originally created in 1967, the cultural phenomenon that captured the attention of America’s youth quickly became a hot item, selling out daily.
MICHAEL CRIST, an avid collector in Houston, knows all about Wacky Pack’s scarcity.
Born and raised in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he vividly remembers going to the local
7-11 as a child in 1973 and looking at the sticker images. Each pack came with
a stick of gum, and it was almost impossible to purchase due to their popularity.
“One of the reasons why they were ‘sold out’ was that one of the kids who lived
closest to the neighborhood 7-11 store would get there first and buy them all to resell
at school. It was the craze at the time to trade stickers with classmates to complete
each series – there were 16 original series (488 total stickers),” recalls Michael. His
love for Wacky Packs has never left him, and after eBay launched and allowed him
and other collectors to gain access to rare sticker and card collections, he moved
on to collecting the actual illustrators’ paintings. To this day he has amassed a collection of over 100 original and replica paintings of various spoofs, which began
with his first purchase in 1998. Over 15 years later, and Michael Crist continues to
collect when he can with an appreciation for the art form itself.
By Adam Bergen| Photography by Max Burkhalter
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