WACK FOR WACKIES

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.

ROCKIN’ THE BOOM

I was born at the tail end of the Baby Boom, the twenty-year period of post-World War II American prosperity. In every sense of the term, I’m a boomer. In birth year, sensibilities and spirit. If you dig what I’m saying, then let me hear you say “right on!”

• When I hear the word “news,” my first thought (before I remember what year it is) is Cronkite or Chancellor or Reasoner -- not Twitter.
• My personal stamp of approval is always given with the word “cool.” “Awesome” is a descriptor of the powers of a supreme being.
• The drama of the Olympics will forever be associated in my mind with Cold War rivalries – and LeRoy Neiman paintings.
• If you watch America’s Got Talent and you’ve never heard of The Gong Show, then our generation gap rivals the Grand Canyon.
• Jeans that don’t flare at the bottom are called “straight leg,” not “skinny.”
• Classic rock is simply rock.
• Watergate and Wacky Packs profoundly shaped the person I am today.
• When I turn on the TV, I sometimes forget – for an instant – that there are more than three major networks and a couple of cheesy UHF stations.
• I know all the words to Coke’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and the Burger King jingle that starts “Two hundred million people…”
• I treasured the moon rover toy I got from a box of Cheerios, I loved the chemical taste of chocolate fudge Space Food Sticks and I remember where I was when Sky Lab fell.
• Being a mall rat meant checking out the pet rocks, posters and naughty board games at Spencer Gifts, buying 45s at Record & Tape Outlet and browsing the sexy dresses at Merry-Go-Round.
• I still believe that the U.S. will be going metric in 1980.
• Mood rings, macramé owls and MOR radio – need I say more?