Wacky Packages are a series of humorous trading cards featuring parodies of consumer products.

[1] Relying on the talents of such cartoonists and comics artists as Kim Deitch, George Evans, Drew Friedman, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, Norman Saunders, Art Spiegelman, Bhob Stewart and Tom Sutton,[2] the cards spoofed well-known brands and packaging.

The very first Wacky Packages series was produced in 1967 and featured 44 die-cut cards that were made to be punched out, licked on the back and stuck to surfaces.

This series featured parodies created by Art Spiegelman and primarily painted by Norm Saunders.

Two of the cards – "Cracked Animals" and "Ratz Crackers" – were pulled from production after the initial run.

In all, 14 of the 44 cards were pulled from the series, all of them due to cease-and-desist letters sent to Topps by the companies that, at the time, owned the products being parodied.

At least two extra Ads, "Mixwell Hearse Coffee" and "Muleburro Cigarettes", are now known to have been finished, but were never released as actual cards.

For Series 16, the price rose to 10 cents per pack containing three stickers, a stick of bubble gum, and a puzzle piece/sticker checklist.

A 1992 series was planned, started and even nearly completed, but was halted in mid-production and never released,[3] according to Fred Wheaton, one of the many recent artists for the modern Wacky Packages run.

[4] Wacky Packages returned in 2004 with the release of the first All-New Series (ANS) set of stickers.

Card backs in this run had a mixture of puzzle pieces, checklists and parodies of coupons, websites and billboards depending on the series and, from ANS7 onward, had both multiple levels of chase cards and multiple border color variations.

The ANS sets also saw the return of original 1970s Wacky Packages cartoonist Jay Lynch, plus newcomers David Gross, Strephon Taylor, Neil Camera, Fred Wheaton, Smokin' Joe McWilliams, Mark Parisi, Brent Engstrom, Mark Pingitore, Sam Gambino and Joe Simko.

Wacky Pack Flashback 2 also featured a number of chase cards and border color variations outside of the main set.

Like the two Flashback series, this one featured a number of chase cards outside of the main set, but it had no border variations.

Other promotional stickers have also appeared at different times in Hostess pastries, Shedd's Peanut Butter plastic containers, Ralston Purina breakfast cereals and, more recently, in a number of DC Comics publications (to promote the then-new ANS1) and in the Abrams Books line of products.

Topps has created a variety of additional Wacky Packages spin-off products over the years.

In addition to being sold in stores, the posters were also advertised on various Wacky Packages series wrappers and could be obtained by sending $2.00 to Topps.

These series also included various sketch cards by Wacky Packages artists such as Neil Camera, Smokin' Joe McWilliams, Sam Gambino and Brent Engstrom.

This line, created by David Gross, was initially designed to resemble the boxes, wrappers, stickers and puzzle pieces/checklists of the original 1973–1977 run.

Each package contained the models, a sticker, and a checklist showing all of the collectable items that the company offered.

[8] There have been numerous other types of Wacky Packages-related merchandise made through the years such as T-shirts, art books, wall calendars, wall graphics, canvas art, three-ring binders and collector albums.