Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 11: Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids and the MAD Magazine Connection

Released February 3, 2021
© 2021 Two Designers Media, LLC

Two designers walk into a bar is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information about our show, or to discover more podcasts you'll enjoy, visit evergreen podcasts.com. Go ahead. 3, 2 1 1. . I should. I was like, should I say take two? Should I say start over? Ah, we're gonna, oh my God, the plane's going down.

Oh, we're gonna die. Yeah, you were. You were.

Welcome to two designers, walk into a bar, a place where pop culture creatives, discover design icons that make us tick, and we share a few cocktails in the process. Yep.

Today our conversation centers around sticky, tasteless cardboard. If that description reminds you of the bubblegum that a accompanies trading cards, well, you're not too far off. But instead, we will be talking about two of our favorite novelty card series from the seventies and eighties. So get your mitz on some collector's guides, and a six pack of forgettable wine coolers.

It's time to kick open the door as we roll back into the. So Todd, I have some novelty cards today that I really, really, really am excited to talk about. And these are direct children. These cards are, are the children. I can draw a straight line back to the publication. We love so much. Mad Magazine. Yes.

Yeah. So are you talking, are you talking about wacky package? No. Although I love wacky packages. Oh, okay. I do too. How much do you love wacky pack? What You're doing Wacky packages? That's, yeah, I know. Can you believe that? Um, so yeah. I mean that was, that was my jam when I was a kid. What is, so what are you talking about?

I am talking about the Definitely irreverent in the eighties, still around today. Garbage pale. Oh man. See, I don't know hardly anything about that other than, um, it was, you know, kind of a rip on the, uh, on the Cabbage Patch Kids. Um, I was too busy being in college and stuff, so I don't know much about that , but, but I do know about wacky packages.

And they're made by the same company, right? Yes. They were both made by tops. Not only were they both made by the same company, they were really both products of the same brain Trust. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, credit where credit is due. I think you and I both need to start at the beginning and talk about the father of both wacky packages and Garbage Pale kids.

Art Spiegelman the great Yes, the great Art Spiegelman. Yes. Yes. Uh, born from, uh, the Underground Comics movement, wasn't he? Yes. That. Um, which was kind of cool, and I think some of the other Tops players. We're also of that same time. Jay Lynch, Bob Stewart, um, and probably some of the Mad magazine artists were also involved with, uh, both wacky packages and garbage pill kids.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. We're gonna get into all this stuff and I think what I like, and I think you'll appreciate this and agree with me on this, art Spiegelman is the perfect blend. If you can think of an artist, he is the perfect blend of high and lowbrow. Mm-hmm. , I mean, this guy has won a Pulitzer Prize.

No kidding? Yes. For Mouse, if you recall his graphic novel Mouse, which is about the Holocaust. Right. But then he also did wacky packages. . That's right. That's right. So a little bit of everything. Um, which is amazing. He sounds like someone we need to know better. . Yeah. We need to, we need to go hang out. Yeah.

So of course when he was in school, Todd, guess who influenced him? Oh, you, you are taking too long to answer this question. It's, go ahead. The same people who influenced us, the usual gang of idiots. Oh, okay. Who later became his coworkers at MAN Magazine. Oh, no kidding. Okay. Yes. Um, yeah. Like the Stan Hart, Jack Davis guys.

You got it. You got it. Mort. Our Mort Drucker. Yep. Who is to blame for us starting this podcast, right? Yes. Yes. But for those of you out there who are cursing Mor Drucker's name, because you're listening to our voices now, it is not kind to speak ill of the dead. Okay. That's so you need to. That's right.

Right. It was, and then I will say it was our love of Mort Drucker. Yes. That brought us together to start talking about stuff like wacky packages and garbage pill kids, as well as the love of wacky packages and garbage pill kids. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so great jumping off point. I had hundreds of these wacky package stickers and man, what I wouldn't give to have 'em again today, they, so Tops was producing baseball cards and, and other athletic cards.

And they started in 1967 doing wacky packages, which were product parodies and they. Until about 1976, um, probably when I was really into it was right around the height of the popularity, which was 73, 74, you know, 75. And, um, what we were just talking about with, um, the influence of art Spiegelman on. So many things out there and, and, and being a part of Tops and Wacky Packages and Garbage Pill kids, it was this underground comics movement that these artists were all part of, um, kind of in their off time and some in their day job.

Were designing these product parodies. And a little bit of interesting kind of takeaway there. I didn't realize how much Tops was in other things. Uh, as well was responsible for other things that the, uh, tops Art director, a guy named Woody Gelman and Lynn Brown, his created partner, they also created Bazooka Joe.

For Tops. Did you know that? I think that was the very first thing Tops did outside of sports. Trading cards was Bazooka Joe, wasn't it? Not? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So they wrote those, you know, kind of really corny, three panel comics. But wasn't it because they tops switched from including like trading cards, baseball cards, and so forth.

They were originally with tobacco. Mm-hmm. , and then mm-hmm , they switched to bubble. And so, mm-hmm. , you know, obviously there's the Bazooka brand and Bazooka Joe, and so I think this was a natural thing for them to kind of launch and extend this brand. Yeah. So interesting that Bazooka Joe and the, the, the rapper, the comic, uh, became a little extra reason to buy the.

Co It was the opposite for wacky packages. I don't know if it was the same for garbage pill kids, but most often people threw the gum away. They just wanted the stickers, so that would come with the gum. So, yep. Uh, the gum was nothing special at all. No, but the sticker, not at all. Stickers were really cool, especially if the packages had been hanging around for a while at the store.

Uh, the gun was really nothing special at that point. They did. Um, you know, another funny thing about Tops, um, I didn't know this. Elliot, you may know this. They are also responsible for, uh, a card series called Mars Attacks, which a movie was made. Tim Burton made a really cool movie in 1996, and it was inspired by trading cards.

I had no idea. I didn't either. I knew about the movie, of course, but I had no idea what it was based on. I had assumed if it was anything. It was a comic book. I had no clue it was trading cards. Yeah, same here. So it was basically a comic book in small card format that was delivered, you know, over a long period of time.

But if you go back and look at some of those, the characters look exactly like they do in the movie, which was really interesting. And I think it was that kind of, That sort of underground, still thumb your nose at the man. Um, that really interested me in wacky packages again, because if you think about it at the time, which was again, early mid seventies, products were really doing well in the advertising space.

They were really jumping out there and I would say, Not all of the advertising was advertising that, um, you know, was gonna win awards. This was a time when, well before this, I, I, I don't know when they stopped advertising cigarettes, but it was around that time. But you would see ads with Santa smoking cigarettes, and so it was a little bit of a less authentic take on advertising.

Wacky packages did was they sort of took the piss out of these products. Um, that's what we say in, in, in the uk we say taking the piss because, you know, we can't let 'em get bit too big. I don't want a bunch of products with piss in them. Especially if they're mouthwash and and things like that. Well, so that's why you have to take it out.

Um, but they became hugely popular. And um, I saw this quote from Jay Lynch who was another sort of constant thread that went through all of this with Art Spiegelman, and he was recalling how they used to work, and he would usually submit about a dozen rough. At a time for a series and they did something like 16 series throughout that, their period of, uh, eight, nine years.

And, uh, what a ruff was, was an India Inc. And magic marker drawing. And it was just, he would look at products of the day, go to the supermarket and kind of just make up funny shit about him. They would pay him like, uh, small amount. He said in the sixties he got about eight bucks a. By the seventies it had gone up to 20 bucks and then by the eighties it was like 1 25 and so on.

I'm sure by the time he was doing garbage pill kids, he was doing a little bit better than that. But um, what I think is funny, and this is a quote, he says, one rough pays about the same as a week's worth of groceries, always has and always will , which I think is hilarious. I think that's how William Gaines would pay the guys at MAD as well.

Yeah, probably. Um, and. Obviously products did not apply to be made fun of. They had a master list of products to not parody based on, uh, cease and desist letters that they would get from prior sales. So they would create a, a parody of something, get a cease and desist letter, and then like, okay, well we can't do that one again and move on to.

Another one. So they would've this master list going all the time. It's really funny, you know, thinking about a couple things with that. Um, if I remember correctly, they took no prisoners in the sense of there was a bazooka wacky packages sticker. As well. So they were even making fun of the own products, their, their own products within Tops

Yeah. Just like, you know, mad Magazine always did. They, they, they never claimed to be literary giants, which made them so popular and so endearing to me as a kid. Anyway. Well, um, with regard to cease and desist, you never know. When somebody is going to object or not until you sort of make their product. So you really don't have a choice.

I mean, it's one thing to do it innocently when you don't know they would object to it. It's another thing to keep going after that. Yeah. But in a way it reminds me of, I would think if I were a product and wacky packages parodied my product, I would almost think I've. Because my product is now part of the zeitgeist, it's really popular culture.

Like if it's obscure and it gets made fun of, no one's gonna get the joke. Mm-hmm. . But if it's everywhere and it gets made fun of, it almost legitimizes its popularity and ubiquity in a way, wouldn't you think? Yeah, I would. And I wonder if this, uh, this gang of, uh, usual idiots, if they, uh, if they wouldn't be happy, um, Getting cease and desist letters.

You know, like if, if they didn't hear from Proctor and Gamble or something, they would probably think we're not doing our job right. Yet. , or, or the, the parody missed, right? It wasn't close enough to home to make the, uh, the real manufacturer uncomfortable. Right, right. And, um, so we're gonna put some links on our site.

Uh, there are, there are gallery sites, there are homage sites to wacky packages, as I'm sure there are with, uh, garbage pill kids. And they're hundreds of these. And, uh, all of them are great. They're all a play on the name of some kind, the name of the product. And then, um, probably a little bit of a, of a rip on the product's tagline or so.

My favorites, my personal favorites are crust toothpaste, um, which is garlic flavored, uh, which, you know, sounds wonderful. . Uh, and, and then another one, uh, because they, they, they went outside of products too and went into restaurants. Um, they parodied, um, Called Kentucky Fried Fingers, uh, which were, you know, fried fingers, uh, in that came in a KFC bucket.

And the tagline I love this tagline is, it's chicken licking good . Uh, that's amazing. So, okay, so that's a little bit about, they went on to do some reissues in the late seventies. Um, and then in through the mid eighties to the nineties, and then in, even in the two thousands, they did some old school ones, but I want to know a little bit more about Garbage pale kids because as I said, I sort of knew they existed, but I really didn't connect it to, uh, wacky packages.

You weren't collecting, uh, cabbage Patch kids in the eighties when you were in college? Oh, n no. Um, no. I definitely wasn't doing that , but, but you probably were, that's why you were probably into garbage pill kids, right? A hundred percent.

Todd, you mentioned taking the piss outta some of these products. Yep. That's giving me an idea. Well, my guess is the listeners can connect those dots on their own. Okay, folks, let's take a break for a few minutes. Noses will be powdered, drinks will be freshened, and we will meet back around the bar in just a few minutes.

Koch and music can bring us together. Connect us t.

Introducing the newest limited edition Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Move. Taste the transformation.

Hi, while we have your attention, if you wanna learn more about us and the podcast, there are a few ways to do it. Visit our website at two designers. Walk into a bar.com. All of that is spelled out. No numbers. Kind of a long U R L. So do yourself a favor and bookmark it. Once you're there, you can find links to more information about the subjects in this episode, our episode archive, and information about both of us.

Wait. We do want people to visit, right? Well, oh, and look for us on social media. You can find those links on our website as well. And while we're at it, if you have a friend who you feel will dig on our rambling, tell him or her what we are up to. And while we can't guarantee that they will remain your friend, we can guarantee that they will listen to at least 30 seconds of whatever episode you send them the link to.

That's being a little shameless. And speaking of being shameless, it wouldn't be a proper ask if we didn't mention that. If you like what you hear, you can also make a donation via our website. We have a Nigerian prince handling all transactions for us. In fact, he told us to mention that we have stickers to mail to anyone who donates $10 or more.

Are we done? We're done. We're done.

So Garbage Pale Kids, just like wacky packages. Garbage Pale Kids were a collectible novelty card series from Tops. Um, although they came along about 10 or so years later, and there's an interesting origin story here. A couple different things. I feel like I need to start with Cabbage Patch Kids, because some people listening probably don't even know what Cabbage Patch kids are.

Mm-hmm. . So in the mid eighties there was this doll line, collectible doll line that was incredibly popular. And when I say incredibly popular, I mean parents rioting at toy stores to get their hands on these things for their. Popular . Okay. This is again, pre-internet. Internet, yeah, yeah. Pre-internet, pre Amazon, whatever.

So you had to show up if you wanted something. Kind of, I guess the equivalent today would be when Apple releases a new iPhone. Of course pre covid when you would have all these people lining up and they would run out and they would hold the new iPhone over their head and everybody in line cheers. , it's that same sort of thing, except it would be a hairy eyeball from all the other parents because they probably then weren't going to get a gar, a cabbage patch kid almost said, garbage fail kid.

Freudian slip. So anyway, with anything that is popular, there is of course a backlash. And my brother and I were firmly in the backlash camp. We thought these things were lame. We didn't understand why people were going ape shit over them. We thought these people were crazy. So again, these were Beanie Babies.

Before there were Beanie Babies, these were American girl. Before there was American girl, these things were soft featured, plastic headed, rustic. Plush Dolls started in the late seventies under a different name. We won't get into the history of that. You guys can research it if you like. And then they were exploded out of a cannon into the United States in the early eighties as Cabbage Patch kids.

They even went outside of our borders. They gained international popularity before largely dying out by the decades end. But as any enterprising company will do, which I believe at this time may have been Coleco, um mm. There was an awful tie in with a 1992 US Olympic team where every athlete was given a doll to take with them to the Olympics.

Oh dude. Yeah, . So th this just sort of gives you an idea of the horribleness that Tops was trying to counteract. They were ripe for the picking. God bless them. So, but here is the other interesting part of this story. Tops. Saw the Cabbage Patch kids popularity, and they actually approached them and said, Hey, would you be willing to let us do a line of cards maybe for the kids who can't afford all of these dolls?

They can still have pictures of the dolls. With the dolls names, and they'll be on these carts. Mm-hmm. and Cabbage Patch Kids basically said, Uh, we're not in the low price product business, so you guys can go pound sand, you know, no like this is, this is like totally beneath us. Tri, you know, trading cards, novelty cards, totally beneath us.

No, to hell with it. And so tops, of course, with wacky packages having been in their back pocket, they shrugged and said, Fuck you. We'll go and make a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Right? . So they came out the game, they tried to play knives. Yeah. Yeah. So then they came out Loaded for bear, right? It's a God bless 'em.

Cause I love that. I would say more people remember garbage failed kids actually than Cabbage Patch kids. I think you're probably right. Yes. So what. Are garbage bail kit. So basically, again, trading card size sticker. Essentially just like wacky packages. So the front side of the card had an illustration with a character that always looked like a slightly quote unquote off cabbage patch kit.

Along the bottom, the names would be puns of traditional. First name. So like you would have Adam Baum spelled a d a m. Mm-hmm . And then that doll would be pressing the button of a detonator while his head is exploding in a giant mushroom cloud . Or another one of my favorites was Stormy Heather. Which was a girl in a raincoat getting hit by Lightning Outside

Cause the, well cause Cabbage Patch kids, they came named. Yes, we bought one. It already had a name. They had a name and had an adoption Certifi certificate. Yeah, it had, it was just, there was so much cheese there. Yeah. That these guys, you know, the jokes almost write themselves right. All of this first series was illustrated by a single guy, this guy named John Pound.

Mm-hmm. . And to get more mileage out of the artwork, each piece of art was actually used twice. So there was an A series and a B series, and each series used as specific name. So each piece of art would have an A name and a B name. Hmm. So that gave you twice as much stuff to collect. A And while Cabbage Patch kids existed in this sort of frozen in time, dream world, garbage pale, kids were firmly a part of the dystopian the Russian bombs could fall at any moment.

Go, go Wall Street 1980s. Right. I would say shamelessly. So. Right. And that I think is what made them work really plugging into pop culture in an of the minute kind of. And then on the backs of these cards, I can't remember. I had wacky packages when I was a little kid too. Believe it or not. My parents introduced them to me.

Oh yeah. But they also introduced me to Mad Magazine. So it only sort of makes sense. Well, yeah, that's, that's good parenting right there. It is. It is. So the card backs of, uh, garbage PA kids had. These spoof certificates that you mentioned, like these adoption certificates? Mm-hmm. are spoof awards. Mm-hmm.

that these people won or didn't win or whatever, likely making fun of these adoption certificates. But other ones were actually pieces of a giant puzzle, almost like a mosaic, right? So if you're a kid and you're collecting these packs, you want to complete the puzzle. So you're gonna go buy as many packs as you can to complete the puzzle.

And the puzzle back was typically like a. Garbage Pale kid sort of illustration, you know, there was maybe mm-hmm. comprised of, I don't know, like 16 or 20 cards or something like that. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Okay. Todd, you talked about lawsuits. I think this, you know, maybe our podcast should just be about creative lawsuits, , because it seems like everything that we love there is always at least one lawsuit involved, so naturally that's right.

When. Tops had approached Cabbage Patch kids, cabbage Patch kids, stern them down, uh, tops, retaliates with the garbage pale kids. Cabbage Patch. Kids naturally file a lawsuit against tops claiming copyright infringement and brand reputation damage. So I will say this, they di they didn't think putting out those like creepy, squishy dolls damaged their reputation enough,

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, it was, yeah, there wasn't the, yeah, it wasn't like the creep factor or whatever, you know, I guess there. Sponsorship opportunity for our podcast. . Right, right. , sorry. Plush doll Manufacturers. We are just not interested. Um, but I don't remember. I, I think it was, there was some sort of settlement because obviously Cabbage Patch kids are still around.

Garbage pale. Kids are certainly still around. Uh, and so whatever. So who were involved with these things? So we talked about Art Spiegelman, we talked about this idea. High and low culture that you and I both love so much, taking something that is out there in the landscape and parodying it. So basically, Spiegelman and this other cartoonist named Mark Newgarden worked together as the editors for the project.

So they were the ones who were coming up with the funny names and all these sorts of things. John Pound, as we mentioned, um, was the one who did all of the illustrations. Then they started to rope in all these other guys, kind of like Man Magazine. So you may be familiar with some of these names. Jay Lynch, Tom Bunk, and a certain illustrator named James Warhola, and if that name rings a bell at all, that was Andy Warhol's nephew.

Yeah. Yeah, right. Interesting. How funny. Yeah, so Andy Warhol's nephew was one of the folks involved with Garbage PA kids now. Wow. Get this. But wait, it gets even better. So the Cabbage Patch kids, as I mentioned, exploded from a cannon, went beyond our borders and were sold internationally. So garbage pale kids not to be out.

We're also popular internationally. Now, I need to give you some of the translated names for what garbage PA kids were called in some other parts of the world. Are you ready? Oh, this'll be good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in Japan, they were known as Mr. Creepy. That was the brand name. . Yeah. These are all the brand names, not garbage milk.

Yeah. Mr. Creepy in Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Israel. They were known as the garbage gang. The garbage gang. The garbage gang. The garbage gang in Latin America and Brazil. They were the trash rings . Oh hey, I love their second album. The trash rings . Yeah. Well in Italy they were called the snot Lings.

in France and Belgium. They were the filthy. And in Germany, and this is such a German name, they were the totally broken kids.

This is a totally broken kids, the children who are the broken ones, the children who are the broken ones. And I can see them shaking their heads Yes. As they would say yes. Yeah. But they, they were not buying probably they, they were, they were, uh, all in black and white. In Germany,

Yes, definitely. So additional pop culture imprint. So what, you know, the garbage pail kids at this point, they've taken on a life of their own. Right? Right. So naturally what do you do? You gotta monetize, you gotta strike while the iron's hot. Todd, I don't know about you, but that's, that's what good business people do.

Well it sounds like good business advice. It is, it is. So live action movie, you gotta do that. 1987 really total. Total flop. Total flop. Oh, okay. No wonder I didn't hear that. . Yeah. Yeah. You were, you were, again, you were busy. You were in college. Yeah. Um, $1 million budget made one and a half million dollars total globally.

So total flop. Okay. The same year they were going to release an animated TV show. like a children's TV show, Uhhuh . But there were so many parental complaints that it was shelved and it was never aired until years and years later. And then of course, you know, the bloom was off the rose and it never went anywhere.

Right, right. And then of course, I don't think any discussion of Garbage PA kids or Cabbage Patch kids would be complete without talking about the horror movie Child's play with the Possessed Good Guys brand. Chucky . Right? So that's Of course. Yeah, of course. So that's far more, I think, along the lines of what Garbage Pill Kids was all about.

And in fact, I think that's the better movie than the Garbage PA kids movie . Well, you might be, God, I would love to get my hands on a, on a copy of the Garbage Pill Kids movie and just see how bad it is. Well, good news, I found the. All right, we will have a link to the trailer on our episode page. And Todd, if you still want a copy of the full Garbage Bail Kids movie.

After you watch the trailer, Uhhuh , I will get it for you. . We will find it. . I will also get you some psychiatric help because if you still want it, there are far bigger problems than your lack of taste because this movie looks like it is absolutely horrible. The fact that it even made one and a half million dollars is astonishing to me.

So, you know what's funny? Like you talked about the, uh, the, the influence that the garbage Pell kids. Cards had, um, they went into. Movies and animation not successfully. Um, but you gotta, you gotta see that even today, like, um, the influence of those parodies and I'm thinking now wacky packages, they're felt today in memes, uh, in parody Instagram accounts that you see every day.

Yeah. Like some of my favorites that I. And I think you share this too. Uh, worst buy, uh, which is obviously a takeoff of Best Buy, um, apple Product parody is the name of an account, which, you know, is, is almost believable as an Apple product, uh, account. And then another one of my favorites, not a product parody, but shithead Steve, I don't know if you Yes, I follow shithead.

Steve. I'm aware of shithead Steve. Yes. But brilliant, brilliant stuff. So, I mean, clearly this was at a time. You know, like we had said, uh, advertising was, was probably a little unchecked. The budgets were going kind of crazy. Um, there was some great advertising done at the time of, of wacky packages. But you know what's also funny too, is this explosion of tops wacky packages coincides.

Exactly with the launch of Saturday Night Live. Mm. That's a great, a live parody show. So, you know, clearly there was something in that mid seventies water that people were, were like saying, fuck you the man, you know, we're gonna have some fun at your expense. Right. Well, I don't know if people are aware of this, but a lot of.

When Saturday Night Live does spoof TV commercials, they hire real TV commercial production companies to do these fake ads for them. Right, right. For authenticity. Yes. Because that, that sells the joke more than anything else is that they're believable and you could actually, you, you sort of get sucked into it more.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

Well, thinking about garbage pale kids and really just some high level takeaways that I have that I learned from just doing research on this, and of course collecting these back in the day, back in the eighties with my brother. One of the things is strike while the iron's hot. So pop culture, as we've talked about frequently, it moves quickly.

and so it's important to capitalize on a trend while it's on everyone's minds. Both wacky packages and garbage pale Kids are still around today, but of course they don't nearly have the broad appeal they did decades ago. Mm-hmm. and I think, mm-hmm. , the internet and social media and all of these things are really a good.

Reason why, you know, we can post something instantly that Lampoon's pop culture. I think the drawback though is there's no physical artifact from that, and I think that's one of the things that you and I love about both of these card sets. Yeah, I would say another thing is if there's an audience that likes something, There's also an audience that doesn't, and they can be your audience

Right? Right. So if you think about Tops, it's like, okay, well we're not gonna sell to the people who like Cabbage Patch kids, so we're gonna sell to the people who hate Cabbage Patch kids, , you know? Right. And, and there is probably a bigger market for that because again, I might not wanna spend however much it was 50 bucks or a hundred bucks on a doll, but I can spend a buck or two.

You know, probably at that point it was like a quarter 50 cents on a pack of these cards, right? I'd actually be curious to see who in the end made more money overall. If it was the people selling the dolls or the people selling the cards, um, yeah. Yeah. And then other people's marketing dollars can become yours as well.

And I think this is true for both wacky packages and for garbage PA kits, right? So the best parodies always remind someone. Of the original and vice versa, like we're just talking about. Mm-hmm. with Saturday Night Live. Mm-hmm. . So rather than spend a ton of money to promote the card sets, all Tops did was they capitalized on the brand equity and efforts of others to move their own stuff.

which, uh, got cease and desist letters because they were doing that . They did it a little too well, yes, exactly right. Yeah. But you're right, the, the closer. Uh, the closer the, the product flies to the sun, uh, the better that tops is gonna be there to sort of take 'em down a couple notches. Yeah, and I, and I think that kind of, um, course correction, that pop culture course correction, I think, you know, you use the phrase taking the piss out of, and I think it's sort of this idea of just kind of what, what good parody does is it throws a hand up and says, does anybody think this is as crazy as much as I.

Yeah. . Right, right, right. And so I think that in the case of both wacky packages and um, garbage Pale kids, I think this was just two examples of tops sort of playing the part of the, the, the individual or the group of people saying, Hey, maybe we need to pump the brakes a second and just take a look around

Yeah. You know, are we being too excited about some of this goofy stuff we have? That that's a great observation, Elliot. Um, I think you're exactly right. Um, certainly there were probably more people in the mass audience that, uh, would like to have, uh, make fun of these products than were actually buying those products, and everybody certainly was exposed to it because it was all on national media all the time.

So I think that's a good observ. Speaking of products, I think I need to amble on over to the bar and uh, see what sort of alcoholic products they might have available cuz my drink has gone dry. Nice. I will sache with you then Arm in, arm to the bar,

That's a great place to leave it. . All right man, we'll talk again soon.

Two designers walk into a bar is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network.

For more information about our show, or to discover more podcasts you'll enjoy, visit evergreen podcasts.com.