So, I thought I was going to be able to get to scanning the Baseballs’ Greatest Grossouts stickers earlier in the week, but that fell through so I thought I’d bump up this week’s Wax Paper Pop Art. Hopefully I’ll be able to tackle those stickers tonight.
Anyway, in keeping with the slight theme of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I thought I’d share my collection of TMNT wax wrappers. Before I get to that though, I wanted to give an update for the postcard project I started on Tuesday. 22 of the 24 postcards have been claimed, and so far they’re being mailed out to twelve different states and provinces in the US, as well as four other countries spanning three continents. There are two left, an April O’Neil and a Splinter, waiting for homes to be mailed to, so check out the post below for details. I’m super excited at the response to this idea and I think I might do some additional postcard runs in the coming year (I already have an idea for this coming October…)
Now, on to the WPPA. First up we have the four wrappers from the 1989 Topps cartoon stickers and cards set…
Next up is the wrapper for the 1990 Topps movie cards and stickers…
I must have seen this movie at least a hundred times over the years. It’s been one of my go-to comfort classics and it reminds of a lot of when I first left Florida as a preteen. In 1990 my family pulled up roots and moved to New England for a year, and coming from the sunny beach minded southern peninsula it was a shock to my system. Not only was the weather and landscape different, but the general vibe I got from the kids up there was a whole heck of a lot different as well. That summer when the TMNT movie came out in theaters, it felt like a link back to my childhood in Florida. My introduction to the toys and cartoon series was one of my last memories with my longtime friends down there and collecting the movie cards when they came out brought me out of an isolating funk…
This next set of wrappers jumps back to the cartoon series. The first one is for the 2nd series Topps cards that came out in 1990…
…and these next three are also from that series of cards, though they’re a bit different.
These are from what I believe is the Canadian variation of the 2nd series cards. Though they’re not labeled as O-Pee-Chee (the Canadian version of Topps), I’m taking clues from the title change (these are Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles), and the ingredients for the included gum which have the classic Canadian/UK spellings of flavour and colour with the added “u”. The Michelangelo wrapper above also has an alternate illustration, whereas the rest of the wrappers feature the same imagery from the 1st series packaging.
Last up today is the Topps wrapper for the 1992 live action sequel to the TMNT movie, Secret of the Ooze…
This flick also marks a strange place in my nostalgia as the end of my toy collecting for the most part. By ’92 I was more into comic books and roleplaying (not straying very far from the Turtles though as I was a Palladium TMNT and Other Strangeness junky throughout high school), and toys were taking a backseat. Add to this the weird toyline from this flick with all the freckles and the goofy vibe of Vanilla Ice, and I pretty much lost interest in the film series and collecting the action figures. I have a soft spot in my heart for the flick now, though it was a long time in coming…