It seems like Garbage Pail Kids invariably come up when my friends are talking about memorable childhood toys. I vividly recall my introduction to them- I was at recess, and a friend called me over to a dark corner of the school yard as though he were orchestrating a drug deal. He brandished a pack of "Garbage Pail Kids" cards, and I my perception of what a "cartoon" should look like was forever changed. Never before had I seen such vividly disgusting depictions of - well- all kinds of things. (Dismemberment, decay, asphyxiation and various other pleasantries.) As an adolescent boy, of course, I thought it was "awesome."It is counterintuitive to call products like these "innocent" - but they are a sign of more innocent times. As extreme as some of these images were, they seem almost mild in today's content-saturated world - where most of the actions described on the GPK cards can be seen demonstrated on YouTube by real, live morons.
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