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Garbage Pail Kids Are Still a Hoot

The Topps Company has released a series featuring five of the presidential candidates, including Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

by
Jonathan Zalman
February 05, 2016
Chris Hondros/Getty Images
Chris Hondros/Getty Images
Chris Hondros/Getty Images
Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Garbage Pail Kids—those genius and irreverent trading cards that feature lots of puke and bombs and blood—are back with a new series that takes aim and the foibles of five of the 2016 presidential candidates: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson. And they’re pretty good, too, but it’s mostly the Donald Trump cartoon I’m in love with, which shows him making potty and getting ready to wipe his tushie with the Constitution. Yep, that’s about right. (Click here for the rest.)

I loved these cards growing up. They were sick and twisted and hilarious, and many schools even banned them. There’s not much that makes a boy smile more than cartoons popping pimples, or their heads blowing up, right?

One of the brains behind the original run of Garbage Pail Kids is none other than Art Spiegelman, who had published Maus about five years before they were released. First issued in 1985, Garbage Pail Kids were mostly drawn by John Pound, and over 600 of the cards, which doubled as stickers, were made in the first three years of the series’ creation. A new series was printed in 2003, and again in 2010, which featured a “Where Are They Now?” series. And they are still being produced, of course, so: What are you waiting for?

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.