Who first thought of the idea for Garbage Pail Kids?
As far as I know, it was Mark Newgarden or art spiegelman. The very first GPK was a Wacky Packages painting I did for the 1985 series. It was never printed. Shortly after the Wacky Packages artwork was completed, Topps asked me, and 3 other artists, to do idea sketches and a color example for a possible sticker series, to be called “Garbage Pail Kids”. I really got into it, and cranked out a lot of ideas and sketches, which ended up being the closest to what Topps wanted for the project. They asked me if I could do 44 paintings in 2 months. “Well, I’ll do my best,” I said.
