Spiegelman and fellow cartoonist Mark Newgarden worked together as the editors and art directors of the project, Len Brown was the manager and the first run of the cards was drawn exclusively by artist John Pound.

[6][7] Following the initial success of the cards, several additional artists and writers were brought in to contribute to the series, including Jay Lynch, Tom Bunk and James Warhola, among others.

Each pack contained three stickers and the "peel here" arrow pointed to the top left area since there was no die-cut scoring.

After this success, Series 1 was released in Australia and New Zealand known as The Garbage Gang and was identical to the United States version (albeit smaller in size).

An animated television series was also created in 1987, but its initial scheduled broadcast in the U.S. was postponed due to parental complaints.

[13][14] Since 1988,[15] any export and import of Garbage Pail Kids is banned in Mexico due to the approval of a reform to the Export and Import Law, banning all representations of minors "in a degrading or ridiculous manner, in attitudes of incitement to violence, self-destruction or in any other form of antisocial behavior", citing Garbage Pail Kids as an example.

[17] Topps was sued by the rightsholders of Cabbage Patch Kids, Original Appalachian Artworks, for trademark infringement.

[18][19] As part of the out-of-court settlement, Topps agreed to modify the appearance of the Garbage Pail Kids to remove the resemblance between the characters and to change the logo design.

In March 2021, Topps released a sticker card depicting a Whac-A-Mole game with members of K-pop group BTS being severely beaten with a Grammy award.

In 2005, Topps celebrated the 20th anniversary of the GPK franchise with special Sketch Card original art inserts for its ANS4 set.

[21] These were limited to one randomly inserted card per hobby-exclusive box (available only from speciality retailers) and featured original artwork by series regulars John Pound, Tom Bunk and Jay Lynch, as well as guest artists Strephon Taylor, John Czop, Don Perlin and Justin Green.

Although a regular to the series with over 35 paintings, Luis Diaz was not involved in the sketch cards due to a previous financial dispute with Topps from years earlier.

Packs contained randomly inserted chase cards, including lenticular Loco Motion cards, authentic printing plates, four levels of parallels and hand-drawn artist sketches by pop-culture artists, including Layron DeJarnette, Brent Engstrom, Dave Gross, Mark Pingitore, Joe Simko, Colin Walton, Neil Camera, Fred Wheaton, Jeff Zapata and veteran GPK artists Tom Bunk and Jay Lynch.

A second 2016 series followed in April called Prime Slime Trashy TV with humorous takes on popular television shows.

[26] Topps announced that the second series for 2017 will arrive in October and be called Battle of the Bands, caricaturing popular music acts and album covers.

The yearly themed series, along with their timing around the 2016 presidential elections, provided Topps with a perfect opportunity to spoof American politics.

In July 2015, they released the “Thirtieth Anniversary” series, which featured ten additional “Garbage Pail Presidents.” This was followed in January 2016 by “The 2016 Presidential Candidates,” and in September 2016, they launched "DisgRace to the White House."

On March 12, 2012, it was announced that Michael Eisner's Tornante Company would be producing a new movie based on the Garbage Pail Kids, likely with computer-generated character imagery.