You either remember the actual Garbage Pail Kids cards or you remember the controversy they sparked. Either way the chances are good that you remember them. After all they were blatant jab at the always popular Cabbage Patch Kids. The Garbage Pail Kids were essentially the down and out kids that weren’t given the best life or weren’t put into the best situations. They were gross, they were crude, but they were funny in a way that the Cabbage Patch Kids weren’t. They were also the one thing that kids could purchase that didn’t incur any blowback from their parents because they could buy them without having to have their parents present.
That might sound a little diabolical but in all honesty the Garbage Pail Kids were a dirty little secret that kids could keep all to themselves as they collected, traded, and looked at these things that were essentially just gross and overblown parodies of other pop culture icons. Eventually they stopped being parodies just the Cabbage Patch Kids and went on to be named after celebrities and media icons. A few of those would include Knave Nixon, George W. Mush, and even Jumpin’ Jordan.
They became popular enough to actually land their own Saturday morning cartoon, but unfortunately the production was halted when they were taken to court by Coleco, the company responsible for creating the Cabbage Patch Kids. While this was settled out of court it kind of put the kibosh on the cartoon which wasn’t that popular to begin with. Most of the more gruesome Kids weren’t allowed on screen and the show wound up being just another lame version of the Cabbage Patch Kids but with a darker twist.
It seemed for a while like the GPK were destined to remain on the trading cards where they’d been born but eventually someone got the idea in their head that a movie might actually be the way to go. The Cabbage Patch Kids had had such a major level of success that the GPK needed something that could give them what they needed to come charging back.
Unfortunately the Garbage Pail Kids Movie wasn’t what it needed. It was a trainwreck from the get-go, with a low budget and no way to really expand on the cards and the histories of the characters as was needed. The director, who knew next to nothing about the cards, took what could have been a decent film about a beloved bunch of characters and made into a burning trash fire that had almost no redeeming qualities. Worse than that, the actual actors in the GPK suits had to be relieved every 5 to 7 minutes because the heads had no openings in them and were capable of suffocating the actors.
If this film was to ever be rebooted, and it’s possible, then it would have to be animated or CGI, because nothing else would come close to really capturing what the GPK are all about. It could happen.
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