Anyone Remember "Wacky Packages?"

I got a wacky package for ya RIGHT HERE

I’m 60, those are right in my wheelhouse. Timesaver at E William David Pkwy/Vets

Sure do. Very popular around 1973-74. 4-5 stickers that came in a pack with a slab of gum, like baseball cards.

Funny story about those. By the summer of '74, some of the sticker designs were being sold on T-shirts at places like K- Mart. Of course I wanted some, so my grandma (who spoiled me rotten) bought me 2.

My parents had divorced 2 years earlier, and my dad that summer took my sister and I to Disneyworld, which was a big deal back then (it was only 3 years old).

I put on one of those shirts to wear our first day there, and after my dad saw it, he thought it looked too trashy and made me put on a collared shirt instead.

We get to Disneyworld and I tell you, every other kid there was wearing a Wacky Packages T-shirt. When we got back to the hotel, my dad sheepishly told me, "son, you can wear that T-shirt you wanted to tomorrow".

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I’m 60, those are right in my wheelhouse.

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This

The artwork was what really set these above all other kiddie gum-card junk. Beautifully painted for maximum humor by old-timer Norman Saunders, who did marvelous cover art for old pulp magazines back in the 1930s and 1940s. A real master.

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I’m 60, those are right in my wheelhouse. Timesaver at E William David Pkwy/Vets

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I'm 64 and we'd ride out bikes to the 7-11 at Perkins and College Drive just to buy these things.

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I'm 64 and we'd ride out bikes to the 7-11 at Perkins and College

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It was a Pak-a-Sak.

Oh yeah.

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It was a Pak-a-Sak.

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Pak-a-Sak merged with Southland Corporation (7-11) in 1971. You must be old like me if you remember the P-a-S.

There was a kid who lived on Pollard Parkway who worked at that Pak-A-Sak who had just graduated from Lee High School. He was on his way to work driving his VW Beetle (in the summer of 1968) when he lost control of his car at the front of Pollard. He hit the concrete embankment for a ditch running underneath Pollard Parkway and his car exploded on impact; he was killed instantly. We used to hang out by that ditch back-in-the-day and there was still melted plastic residue on the concrete; there's an impact stain there to this day.

I always associated these with Mad Magazine for some reason