The series stars the characters Split Kit, Elliot Mess, Terri Cloth, Patty Putty, and Clogged Duane as gross-looking kids with abilities to help others.
The show also features parodies of popular movies of the era like the Indiana Jones series, Superman, Conan the Barbarian, King Kong, and The Fly.
The reasons given were that the series ridiculed the disabled and glorified violence, along with the claim that the program was effectively a program-length ad for the Garbage Pail Kids toys and cards.
Some advertisers, such as Nabisco, McDonald's and Crayola also pulled out, either due to pressure from interest groups, or because they were unable to pre-screen the series from advanced tapes.
A few CBS affiliates, such as WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas,[1] KOTV in Tulsa, Oklahoma, WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio,[2] KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas[2] and KREM-TV in Spokane, Washington[3] made known they would not carry the series on their stations, notifying CBS of their pre-emptions weeks in advance of the debut.