Series 4 of Garbage Pail Kids was released in May of 1986, just five months after Series 3. If nothing else, Topps was striking while the iron was hot on these things. In all, there were 84 stickers released, but I only have about 25 of them. Like Series 3, much of the artwork was handled by John Pound, but there were significant contributions from artists David Burke and Tom Bunk, too.
This was the last series of GPK that I collected. Not because the cards weren’t great, but just because the novelty of the concept and the shock factor had began to dwindle in my mind and the minds of my friends. Even though they’d only been out for about a year (Series 1 dropped in June 1985), they flamed up fast, but burned out quickly for us.
Perhaps more importantly, though, by 1986, I’d moved on to collecting other things. GPK led into collecting baseball cards, which I would continue to buy until about 1989 or so. But the main thing that I switched to was comic books, so my money was simply going towards G.I. Joe, Uncanny X-Men, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead. Obviously I loved my time collecting Garbage Pail Kids, but I was never as passionate about them as I would become about the hobbies that followed.
As I was digging through my bins of stuff and came upon my old GPK cards, I thought it would be really cool to figure out a way to display some of them. So I hit the thrift store, found the gaudiest gold frame I could find, and put together a little museum piece highlighting some of my favorite cards from all four series. The finished display hangs prominently in our basement…
I used adhesive photo corner stickers to hold them in place, to give it that little extra care and attention to detail…
And now, on to my Series 4 cards…
That gold frame is wonderful for these Garbage Pail Kids!
Garbage Pail Kids reminds me of the Madball I had, Swine Sucker—which is sorta like a Garbage Pail Kid in real life.