The Topps Company: Garbage Pail Kids [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

I'm not really sure where the reviewer was coming from who said "Overall, there just doesn't appear to have been that much work put into the book as there should have been. There's no feeling that it was done as a labor of love, so much as just an excuse to grab more cash from fans..."

After receiving this book I feel the complete and absolute opposite. The attention to details and the little knowing touches are what makes this book really stand out in my opinion.

The book was actually much smaller than I had imagined, which I think is a great thing. It fits neatly in your hands and feels just right - not like one of these huge staggering books that makes your arms ache whilst flipping through.

The first thing that make me smile was the dust cover for the book. It's made out of a similar waxy paper that the cards came in back in the 80s. Very nice touch and a clever piece of design. If you take off the dust cover there's a beautifull minimalist photograph of the iconic gum stick on the front and a snapped picture of it on the back. Once again, really creative, clever and appropriate design.

Once in the superb design doesn't let up. The title page is a peeled sticker, the contents page is designed like the iconic yellow check-lists on the back of the cards etc.. etc.. real big-up to the graphic designers who worked on this. They clearly know what it's all about.

The Art Spielgman introduction is Brilliant and goes into how all of this got started with some exclusive inspirational artwork. Nice afterword too - some great info.

As for the book itself from here on in it's a no-nonsense page by page GPK run-down of the first 5 series. The print quality is high and each card has it's own page with the alternative names featured just below. Each card is given space to breath and shine on it's own and it feels very much like flicking through a deck. My one fear was that the cards would all be crammed onto pages with text everywhere, making it a bit of a headache to take in - this is not the case at all.

The final (and for me -most wonderfull) surprise was that tucked at the back of the book are 4 never released before GPK stickers! And more than that.. they're really good ones too (a couple of them are super dark). Pretty much the perfect touch on a brilliant book which knows itself inside out and which I couldn't recommend highly enough to fans and non-fans of GPK alike.

This is a book I've wished for for years. I loved Garbage Pail Kids when I was young, and I've often thought that it would be nice to have them collected in a book--especially the hard-to-find first series. This book includes the first five series, with one card per page. The images are a little larger than the original stickers. As familiar as the Garbage Pail Kids are to me, I found myself noticing a few details that I hadn't noticed before while looking through this book.

The book's design is great, the written parts provide some interesting history, and the printing and paper quality seem high. I hope they follow this up with a second volume.

The book's cover is wax-like as in the waxy packaging the cards once came in. Under the jacket, is a hardcover with a piece of gum on the cover. I've read some of the negative reviews... the editorial in this book is limited, but it's primarily meant to view the cards. You'll get a pretty good sized sticker card on each page with the secondary name mentioned at the bottom. Keep in mind I also own the oversized cards, and the book's detail is definitely enough... the book is not that big... and I'm assuming people wanted a huge coffee book, which this is not.

Great stuff! I'll buy the next book, so let's hope they make a second volume for the remaining series.

Oh yeah! And... the book includes unreleased stickers in the back in plastic. Awesome!