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Garbage Pail Tales

Garbage Pail Kids Stickers Wrapper
As usual, it wouldn’t be the spooky season here at Never Say Dice if we didn’t dust off some nostalgic childhood memories and use them as gaming inspiration. As we've discussed before, it shouldn’t be too surprising, given how much macabre media molded the childhoods of 80s and 90s children - very much including ourselves. We’ve even already posted about a number of things from Boglins to Beatlejuices, and (probably) some other letters of the alphabet. More than a few of these tiny bits of nostalgia are proudly disgusting, like Blurp Balls or just good ol' generic ooze. (Everything was oozy or slimy in the late 80s and early 90s! Venkman got slimed, the Ninja/Hero Turtles got oozed... and I cared for none of that stuff. I can’t be the only one from that era who had this kind of textural issue.) One thing that fits right in with all the strangeness of the era is the bizarre phenomenon known as the Garbage Pail Kids: sets of trading cards produced by Topps, and designed by Art Spiegelman, Mark Newgarden, and John Pound, featuring cartoon children reminiscent of the Cabbage Patch Kids with all kinds of gross, strange, disturbing, or just plain creepy things happening to them. Cards of “Up Chuck”, “Adam Bomb”, and “Dead Ted” were super popular, even enough that I had a few of my own. Like everything else, the franchise wasn’t limited to trading cards and had its fair share of stickers, t-shirts, coloring books, and even its own cartoon. For the purposes of this post, though, let's focus on a few of the original cards to inspire our tabletops. 

Garbage Pail Kids 11th Series Stickers Wrapper
Swarmy Stevie

No, Swarmy Stevie wasn’t a card in the original set. In fact, I’m not sure it was ever a card at all. As the above links suggest, there would frequently be two cards with the same art work and different names - something they did to expand their sets, like a palette swap in video games. I suppose it ultimately came down to cost savings (but not on the part of the kids) and increased profits. I’m actually thinking of Itchy Richie (or, if you prefer, Bugged Bert), but you can use Swarmy Stevie in your own copyright-safe games. This card features a generic-enough looking kid covered in a swarm of spiders. There are plenty of things tabletop players don’t like, and swarms of things is generally on the list. So, when you’re considering your Big Bad Evil Guy, consider incorporating them with a swarm of some kind! Rats, bats, snakes, crows (though they are a "murder," rather than a swarm - even better!), spiders, scorpions, files - really anything creepy crawly will work here. Maybe the BBEG is made of them, or maybe they can just summon and control them, but they ramp up the creepiness and add an additional challenge for the players to combat. It can easily fit in fantasy and horror games (what Call of Cthulhu Storyteller could resist describing anything as "crawling," "shambling," and even "undulating") and even sci-fi, depending on your setting.

Garbage Pail Kids 12th Series Stickers Wrapper
Slimy Sarah (or maybe gooey Gertrude. Gooey Trudy?)

Again, no Slimy Sarah isn’t a card appearing in the original set, and as far as this blog is aware, isn’t one from any expanded set, either - so feel free to use the name and the idea without worrying about Topps' no-doubt terrifying attorneys. This time, we’re drawing from Oozy Suzy (AKA Meltin’ Melissa). There's that concept again, oozy/gooey/slimy... what was wrong in the 80s and 90s, was there something amiss with the general viscosity of everything? (Perhaps it's residue from all the cigarette smoke in the 70s/80s, also sometimes featured on these cards.) While they've become celebrities in their own right thanks to the Dragon Quest games, Slimes and other, less-famous, oozes feature heavily in the original  Dungeons & Dragons all the way back to the 70s with Ochre Jellies, Black Puddings, Gray Oozes and Green Slimes. And we can’t forget beloved fan favorite Gelatinous Cube! So are we really adding anything new? We are if we’re featuring other creatures covered, melded or otherwise combined with them. Ooey Gooey Rats? Perhaps giant rants that split off into slimes when attacked. Goblins that exude slimy poisonous substances. Nobody really wants to get slimed in one of these games, so why not go for it! There are all sorts of effects you can grant another creature with some extra pudding powers. 

Your games don’t always need to be spooky (unless that's your thing, we won’t judge... in fact, why don’t you invite us? Bugsy's been wanting to try Mothership), but every now and again it's good to include some oddities. Garbage Pail Kids are a great well to draw some inspiration from when it comes to altering the adversaries in your games. While we could add a few more to this post, perhaps we’ll just save those for another time. Until then, maybe send us your own Garbage Pail monster inspirations. Enjoy your oozy dice and spooky tables in the meantime, folks. 

Send questions, comments, more imaginary Garbage Pail Kid names to neversaydice20@gmail.com.

Garbage Pail Kids Comic: Featuring Hot Rod and Haunted Hollis

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