While one person’s trash might be another person’s treasure, there are times when one person’s trash is also another’s person’s trash.

Originally released in 1985, the Garbage Pail Kids were designed to corner the market that was alienated by the success of the Cabbage Patch Kids: everyone knew that females like nonsense stories, babies, and especially the combination of the two, but how could the pockets of males be picked?

Once the Topps Company recognized this potential profit source, investment in hitting with sticks, masculine grunting, and sticking boogers to things took a downturn.

On the up-and-up (and up) was the Garbage Pail Kids, a series of collector cards and stickers accompanied by a stick of gum that served as a ticket to the dentist. The cards depicted Cabbage Patch-like babies in realistic and tasteful situations based on names rooted in “alliteration” and “playing” with “words” in order to create “humour”.

  One word: Delightful! 

The Garbage Pail Kids became so successful that it eventually spawned a lawsuit (“Please stop making your characters look so much like Cabbage Patch Kids.”), a major motion picture and an increased interest in the age-old practice of putting babies in the trash where some would argue they belong.

By the end of the 1980s, the Garbage Pail Kids lost its popularity and its run stopped after its fifteenth series of cards, terminating the only legal resource for pictures of pus-covered children.

One of the most thorough critiques of Reaganomics to appear during the decade.

Before you dedicate your life to creating unlicensed carts on a 25 year old system, it’s important to know the basics.

Get in at the bottom

The quickest way into the lucrative unlicensed cart industry is an exciting career as “English Translator.” You may wonder “Will they still hire me if I am not a native English speaker, and, in fact, have no ability to read or write in any language?” The answer is a resounding TERRIFIC SUPREME!

You’ll be given a box full of English terms cut from magazines. It’s your job to randomly sort them into groups of 2 or 3. Exciting Mascara King? I like your style, new guy!

Get promoted

When your amazing work as translator is recognized (or everyone else in the company is arrested and imprisoned) it’s time to move on to the next level.

You’ll be working with some of the best selling titles released for the NES. Get to work randomly modifying them, so as to make Super Mario Bros. start at World 5, Battle City’s tanks flash randomly, and every game you work on crash at some point. If your skill at deleting and editing code randomly pays off then you’ll be promoted again in no time.

Get promoted… again.

You’ve shown yourself able to randomly sort English terms and randomly edit code, but now you’re being called upon for the mission of a lifetime – putting Sonic The Hedgehog’s sprite in Super Mario Bros. and calling it Super Sonic Bros. 15.

Given a smoke-filled and sweaty basement at an undisclosed location in southeast Asia, a king’s ransom of 3 dollars per week salary, and a 486DX2 computer, can you accomplish the impossible?

This is about more than just taking intellectual property and modifying it for financial gain. It’s about the joy of 23 hour long programming sessions. It’s about the smiling faces of 30 year old Taiwanese men as they start your game for the first time.

I don’t want to live in a world where providing a paid service to make Taiwanese men smile is illegal.

Let’s take a look at the new face of Hollywood – Anthony Michael Hall.

Born in captivity, Hall took well to his surroundings, eventually being released into the wild. At seven he starred in his first commercial, a Honeycomb cereal ad. By 13 he was already playing Rusty Griswold in the National Lampoons Vacation series – something most kids don’t do until at least 14.

By 15 he had become addicted to huffing the fumes out of his Ferrari’s tailpipe. His time away from the zoo had caught up with him. Without the proper trainers and facility staff he was now on his own. If only there were people who could have taken responsibility for him – people older than him, with some type of genetic connection. Mother Nature is a harsh mistress.

While still suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning he followed up Vacation with Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. Each film earning progressively more at the box office until finally culminating in an incredible $936. Hall’s contract allowed him to collect the entirety of the ticket revenue, and he quickly invested the money into his idling car.

As the 90s approach Hall has been vocal about his inability to stop lying face down in his garage with several expensive luxury cars running. He’s personally starred in a number of commercials warning children about the misuse of Italian performance automobiles. Unfortunately he’s been blacklisted in Hollywood until he can get his problem straightened away.

Will Hall pick himself up off of his garage floor, turn back the key – and perhaps turn back the clock, to a simpler time? A time when his only comfort wasn’t found in the hum of a finely tuned engine echoing through his purposely small garage?

We can only hope – and look forward to the next film about an awkward teen.

Between the glory days of the record, and the tragic compact disc era, there was another way of listening to music. That way was the compact cassette.

A cassette (sometimes known as a "tape") normally contained 30 to 45 minutes of audio per side – just enough AC/DC to keep you wanting more. Its size was roughly that of a deck of cards, though not as deep.

A key difference between the vinyl record and the tape was that it enabled listeners to record music off of the radio, or to duplicate their friend’s tapes. This meant listeners were no longer bound by the crushing clutches of "not being a music pirate" and were free to ’stick it to artists.’

The recording industry inevitably tried to take cassettes off the market through a lawsuit, but their case was thrown out when cassette makers presented Bruce Springsteen as evidence that music had no value – a key requirement in considering something theft.

Where tapes failed in comparison to records was resiliency – they had a tendency to be ‘eaten’ by cassette decks. Following their destruction the tapes often resembled an unraveled ball of yarn – albeit a yarn covered in the sweet sweet sounds of ZZ Top. These eaten tapes would often get discarded by the sides of roads as drivers sought environmentally friendly ways to decorate the neighborhood.

Eventually cassettes were replaced in their role as a means to listen to audio. Their replacement came in the form of writing out and then ingesting the lyrics to your favorite songs – which in some instances improved the song after travelling through the digestive system.

Now-a-days, as we listen to our favorite Katy Perry wax cylinder it’s easy to take for granted the devices of the past.

Without cassettes my Walkman would only be good for emptying batteries.

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The Walkman was originally introduced to North America as the Soundabout. It was the first device which enabled the portable listening of music.

One of the drawbacks of the Walkman was that you were forced to listen to songs in consecutive order. This was addressed years later with the invention of "Radio" which enabled songs to be shuffled into a random sequence.

Another drawback was the Walkman’s reliance on AA batteries. The estimated battery life of 47 seconds meant that rather than listening to music, Walkman owners could simply sample it. This sampling concept would later come into play in the hip-hop community.

Eventually Walkmen were equipped with belt-fed battery loaders, capable of loading several thousand batteries per second. The same technology was used in Vietnam to load lead batteries into power-hungry Charlie.

Finally I can listen to my Fleetwood Mac cassettes from the comfort of a stranger’s patio.

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After surviving the Holocaust and writing a successful tell-all diary, Lisa Frank decided to branch out into the world of children’s merchandising. Realizing that the sale of children is frowned upon in many parts of the world, she refocused her efforts on selling products that children would like to buy if they had a work ethic and money.

Frank launched her franchise, Lisa Frank in 1979 after a wholesome night of LSD consumption. What came out of the other side of this delicious haze were two counts of assault and some of the brightest coloured animal-themed stickers ever unleashed on the world.

In the 1980s, Lisa Frank became a household name through its production of school supplies – including pencils, notebooks, and binders – that were marketed toward young girls and approximately twenty-percent of young boys.

This marketing campaign to induce children into thinking they wanted brightly coloured objects was so successful that writing in a Lisa Frank notebook with a Lisa Frank pencil – with its eraser rendered useless by decorative rubber, a symbolic representation of the success of capitalism during the decline of Communism and the Cold War – became a fashion statement.

Seizing this newly-found ‘fashion’ idea, Frank decided to test the waters of its comically oversized sweater market. A true visionary, Frank’s endeavour was a success, as can be seen in the ad on the left, in which two young girls and a handsome young boy model Frank’s lively sweaters.

While Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit is a big part of her success, some of her popularity and her company’s longevity can also be chalked up to the delightful cast of characters she created, which appeared on sweaters and stationery across the free world. Some of her most famous characters include:

• Rainbow-coloured unicorn

Thanks, Lisa Frank. Your valuable contribution to our society – which some may mischaracterize as a ‘cash grab’ – and the physical pain of my school years will neither be forgotten nor go unnoticed.

I try to forget, I really do… But… I… just…

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