It’s the battle of the (gross) brands, as Cloudco Entertainment and The Topps Company join forces for collaboration that playfully pits Madballs against Garbage Pail Kids — two classic ’80s brands that embrace all things disgusting.
Garbage Pail Kids debuted as a series of trading cards in 1985, featuring gross characters with outrageous names to match. Over the next three years, the brand expanded to include an animated series and a slate of consumer products, which is still active today. Madballs — a collection of grotesque characters designed as irregularly-shaped toy foam balls — launched in 1985. This oddball brand went on to inspire a series of animated specials and its own line of consumer products.
Topps and Cloudco have tapped veteran Garbage Pail Kids and Madballs illustrators to create ’80s-inspired artwork featuring individual characters (or groups of characters) from each brand facing off.
This artwork will be featured on and/or inspire a variety of consumer products, such as Topps trading cards, action figure two-packs from Megalopolis, apparel and accessories from Mad Engine, jackets from Chalk Line, a collection from Mishka NYC, augmented-reality pins from Pinfinity, and collectibles from Super Impulse.
There are also plans for a mobile app, publishing components, and additional retail partnerships for this collaboration. Additional details will be announced soon.
“Shared nostalgic roots and over-the-top zaniness make this collab a no-brainer,” says Ira Friedman, Topps’ vice president of global licensing. “Our respective fan bases as well as pop-culture aficionados everywhere are going to have fun with this outrageous mash-up.”