Said Art Spiegelman, quoted in
"Len Brown, the Kidlike Creator of ‘Mars Attacks,’ Dies at 84/He brought a juvenile creative sensibility to the Topps Chewing Gum company, where he was able to unerringly predict what would appeal to adolescents" (NYT gift link).
The terrifying global invasion ['Mars Attacks'] played out in 55 vivid cards. But parents’ complaints about the gory incidents that were depicted — a dog being destroyed, for example, as a boy “cried out in horror” — kept them from being distributed nationally....
His many projects in the 1960s included helping to create a card set devoted to Soupy Sales, the mischievous TV personality. During the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Brown was part of the team that created two major sticker series: “Wacky Packages” mocked consumer products, parodying them with names like Cap’n Crud, Jolly Mean Giant and Ratz Crackers; “Garbage Pail Kids” spoofed Cabbage Patch Kids, the wildly popular, round-faced dolls that came with adoption papers.
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11 comments:
I was addicted to Wacky Packages as a kid. There's a really good book about them that came out in 2008. It's one of those big, colorful, coffee table size, books. (And they recently came out with a volume 2.)
Wacky Packages were the best - my favorites were Moron Salt and Weakies. They were ideal for the 10-year-old boy demographic and another way to get kids interested in something other than baseball and football cards.
For some reason, my prim and proper mother let me cover my bedroom door in Wacky Packages stickers. Maybe because she appreciated good word play.
"Fish Bone" salad dressing sticks in my head.
…no kids on the bus could resist Wacky Packages appeal. So subversive. A tweak at the carpet bombing of ads we kids endured. Resist!
A kid in our neighborhood had a few of the Mars Attacks cards. We (preadolecents) thought they were goofy or funny.
On those occasions when I had a spare nickel, I used it for a 5-pack of baseball or football cards. I'd throw the gum away, peeved over that accursed slab staining the top card in the pack, and leaving a lingering unpleasant (to me) bubble gum odor on it.
Dont really know the guy or his work, but he deserved a better Obit. The NYT's seems more interested in talking about Art Spieglemann then the man who died!
View the complete Topps "Mars Attacks" card set here.
Grok : No. The 1988 film Big (directed by Penny Marshall, starring Tom Hanks) was not based on Len Brown.
ebay : These should be selling out soon
The mentality of your typical 2026 social justice warrior existed in that nearly forgotten era, bookended by the Cuban Missile Crisis and Woodstock, and manifested in the preoccupations of those who campaigned against the "Mars Attacks" trading cards series, comic books, "war toys", and lawn darts. They may have had a conditionally valid point regarding lawn darts. Anyone inclined to throw boulders at someone's head might choose a lawn dart for increased damage potential, but what is likely is completely unimportant compared to what is remotely possible to those frenetic meddlers we call Karens these days.
As can be seen by a visit to the flickr.com page linked above, what we have are 55 crudely illustrated scenes of absurd sci-fi/horror mayhem completely beyond the pale of plausibility, even to the mind of the most comic book-absorbed eight-year-old male of average intelligence. The only iota of potential offence is entirely confined to Card 13, which depicts Chinese victims of Martian mayhem with banana-yellow complexions. I ask you, what East Asian-descended person can endure such a calumny, even after 62 years?
These cards were no threat to anyone, except to the Karens of 1962, because someone somewhere might actually have been having a little fun. Oh, the humanity!
Correction: The Yellow Peril gets its just reward meted out by the Martian military in Card 15. Card 13 is about the Martian Homefront.
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