Friday, March 4, 2011

GARBAGE PAIL KIDS FLASHBACK 2

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The Garbage Pail Kids Flashback 2 series began showing up in stores February 23rd. Like the first "flashback" set, this one has various reprints from the OS (old series) 1-15 along with "Where Are They Now" cards showing grown-up versions of classic GPKs, Adam Mania cards with variations of OS 1 Adam Bomb/Blasted Billy, 3D cards, and multiple parallels (different colored borders).
If you are real lucky, you have a chance of finding a hand-drawn sketch card done by one of the GPK illustrators or a printing plate used in the production of the cards at Topps.

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The first 65 cards of this series are the reprints from the OS series from the 80s.

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Topps accidentally labeled card #14 "Michelle Muck/Sewer Sue" which is a mistake. The character is named Off-the-wall Paul/Zach Plaque.

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Topps messed up again with card #33 "Surreal Neal" which was actually already used in the 1st Flashback series. Ooops again. Bad Topps.

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Besides the obvious mistakes by Topps, fans spent time ranting online and pointing out design errors, typos, and offset printing mistakes. Fans are fans though and we will keep on buying these cause we love them, mistakes and all.

The reverse sides of these cards have a spoof of Facebook called "Fakebook" where Garbage Pail Kids message eachother. Pretty funny.

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The next 5 cards (66-70) are "Lost" Garbage Pail Kids that were scrapped in the earlier OS series.

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This is one of my favorite parts of the flashback series is getting to see these paintings finally make it on to cards.

Cards 71-80 are "Where Are They Now?" cards depicting the kids as they would appear today.

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These are all so great, and funny. Only complaint, Topps spelled Valerie (Valarie) wrong on card 78b.
Mark Pingitore did Smelly Sally, Jolly Roger, Potty Scotty, Ghastly Ashley and New Wave Dave.
Tom Bunk did Half Nelson, Loony Lenny and Valerie Vomit.
Brent Engstrom did Tanya Hide.
and I think Joe Simko did the Chris Hiss one?

A couple new things with this series, There are 10 Adam Mania cards (variations on os1 Adam Bomb/Blasted Billy). The odds of finding one of these are 1:8 packs.
There are also 5 3D cards which are awesome and can be found 1-12 packs.
Along with the parallel borders this makes the full or master set virtually impossible to collect.
If you are poor like I am, you can cheat and weigh the packs with a tobacco scale to get the full 3d set (heavier packs). Or use "fanning" which is spreading the cards lengthwise inside the wrapper and peering through the semi-transparent wrapper. The 3d or Adam mania cards can be found 3 cards down the stack by looking for their red card backs. Or a sketch card 1:469 packs with a blue back. Works every time.
Most collectors discourage this method called "cherry picking" but usually do it themselves. It sure takes a lot of time and patience but saves money. Hardcore fans/collectors spend thousands of dollars every time a set like this comes out because rare cards sell on ebay for large sums.

Anyway, here are the scans:

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Brent Engstrom did all of these cards which are amazing.

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I'm going to do a "part 2" of this post on Flashback 2 because it's a big series with a lot of info. I want to discuss both of the sketch card sets offered with this, bonus cards and posters.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip on 3rd card down! Target has 24 packs of cards for $5. By fanning, you can see there are usually 3 'rare' cards. Green border and pink are easy to spot. Be careful; the silver can be mistaken for Yellow border. You can feel the texture of 3D, and Adam Mania don't have the checkerboard.

STEVEFELLDOWN said...

I must not be the only one in my area who knows this because often the packs are fanned before I get there. Also, Target security approached me a few times and were aware of what I was up to. One security guy said it was popular with sports card collectors. Pretty funny.