In the late 1970s, when I was about eight, I loved how Wacky Packages subversively caricaturized consumer culture and capitalism. As an adult, I learned that the artwork was drawn by some of the top underground cartoonists of the time. This rekindled my interest in these obscure artifacts of juvenilia that altered my childhood perception. 

Then in the mid-80s, Garbage Pail Kids both raised and lowered gross-out humor to new levels. As a disaffected Reagan-era teenager, I appreciated how GPK's mutant body-horror shock value turned the culturally infantile Cabbage Patch Dolls collectables craze on its ear – then bit that ear off, spat it into a toilet bowl of toxic waste and gleefully flushed it down.