Post by nayrbgo on Aug 13, 2020 14:03:11 GMT -5
Hello hello! I realized I never said hello!
Thanks for having me on board here. GPK makes me smile and always has since the beginning. I am a vintage collector only, though I admit enjoying the pleasure of opening a new box of packs from the modern era.
We really had no idea what hit us in 1985 — except for the kids who were already hip to Wacky Packs, Cracked, and MAD. But GPK was different. Gross. Wrong. Topical. Relevant. And really gross. Did I mention gross?!
That’s what got us excited! We were in a club of freaks who wanted to laugh at the world and the stupidity of things before we really knew what was happening. We knew enough that the adults had to be wrong some of the time, at the very least.
So, we naturally brought the cards to school and got them subsequently banned on campus. Teachers and principals were crazy angry and couldn’t believe how society had deteriorated that innocent children were buying these and caring about them. Little did they know that we were just laughing even more at their actions and tempted into being “bad” even more intensely.
The same attitude from school officials happened in junior high and we just kept on buying cards, chewing nasty gum, and drawing our own boogers and barfs on everything. Nothing stops the power of children!
Funny looking back and not knowing we were in a cultural revolution at the time — maybe we are always in a cultural revolution and your age just determines how much you understand and how much you participate.
But GPK, like sports cards and comic books, were massive in my consciousness many decades ago and not much has changed with regard to that. I go in and out of collecting all of the things I love. I have been heavy into Sesame Street and MEGO with an intense focus on 1970s non-USA releases.
These days I am excited to return to GPK OS1 through OS4, and will likely restock on packs of those series first before finishing through OS15.
The part that is so wild to me about my history with this stuff is that I grew up in Santa Monica, California — a supposed bastion of free thinking — and as much as we did get some of that as kids around here, there were many who were against free speech and free exchanges of ideas, even amongst children. GPK and Jolly Ranchers were banned with the same intolerance! So wild. But guess what we did — we just hid them and traded and sold them on campus anyhow. There were kids brave enough to take their parents’ encyclopedias, dig out the pages to make a hidden compartment, stuff them with contraband, and then climb up a little fence near the cafeteria to tuck the books on top of the cantilevered roof.
Great days!
Buying candy for five cents on the way to school was awesome! Eating it all day and coming home with an extra dollar in profit to buy more the next day was even more awesome!
Thanks for reading. See ya soon!
Bryan
Thanks for having me on board here. GPK makes me smile and always has since the beginning. I am a vintage collector only, though I admit enjoying the pleasure of opening a new box of packs from the modern era.
We really had no idea what hit us in 1985 — except for the kids who were already hip to Wacky Packs, Cracked, and MAD. But GPK was different. Gross. Wrong. Topical. Relevant. And really gross. Did I mention gross?!
That’s what got us excited! We were in a club of freaks who wanted to laugh at the world and the stupidity of things before we really knew what was happening. We knew enough that the adults had to be wrong some of the time, at the very least.
So, we naturally brought the cards to school and got them subsequently banned on campus. Teachers and principals were crazy angry and couldn’t believe how society had deteriorated that innocent children were buying these and caring about them. Little did they know that we were just laughing even more at their actions and tempted into being “bad” even more intensely.
The same attitude from school officials happened in junior high and we just kept on buying cards, chewing nasty gum, and drawing our own boogers and barfs on everything. Nothing stops the power of children!
Funny looking back and not knowing we were in a cultural revolution at the time — maybe we are always in a cultural revolution and your age just determines how much you understand and how much you participate.
But GPK, like sports cards and comic books, were massive in my consciousness many decades ago and not much has changed with regard to that. I go in and out of collecting all of the things I love. I have been heavy into Sesame Street and MEGO with an intense focus on 1970s non-USA releases.
These days I am excited to return to GPK OS1 through OS4, and will likely restock on packs of those series first before finishing through OS15.
The part that is so wild to me about my history with this stuff is that I grew up in Santa Monica, California — a supposed bastion of free thinking — and as much as we did get some of that as kids around here, there were many who were against free speech and free exchanges of ideas, even amongst children. GPK and Jolly Ranchers were banned with the same intolerance! So wild. But guess what we did — we just hid them and traded and sold them on campus anyhow. There were kids brave enough to take their parents’ encyclopedias, dig out the pages to make a hidden compartment, stuff them with contraband, and then climb up a little fence near the cafeteria to tuck the books on top of the cantilevered roof.
Great days!
Buying candy for five cents on the way to school was awesome! Eating it all day and coming home with an extra dollar in profit to buy more the next day was even more awesome!
Thanks for reading. See ya soon!
Bryan