Alan Smithee: Art Spiegelman was an artist for the brand that went uncredited for a long while. As discussed in the foreword to the book commemorating the Garbage Pail Kids, he was working for Topps making both Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages at the same time that his book Maus was being published and released. The publishers for the latter were concerned that Spiegelman would be credited by name for the former, driving away potential customers who wouldn't want to read a comic about the Holocaust done by a gross-out artist. Topps didn't credit Spiegelman and the latter kept his involvement quiet until the foreword to said commemorative book.
Executive Meddling: In this case, from an executive entirely outside Topps. Topps was planning the Star Wars Wacky Packages series, an official crossover that was given permission by a Lucasfilm executive. However, after the announcement and reveal of some of the stickers, another Lucasfilm executive nixed the project.
The success of Wacky Packages would lead to other, less-noted, parody sticker brands. Some of these were off-label brands created by actual Wacky Packages artists.
Wacky Packages themselves were not exempt to following trends. The "World's Smallest" brand of series, making small plastic figures of the parodies as containers, was released around the same time as Zuru's "5Surprise" brand, making miniature plastic versions of real products. Zuru would then double back, making their "Mega Gross Minis" series, which gave gross-out parodies of existing food products, only mini.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to companies having more leeway in the first series of the cards, in the punch-out era, cards were being pulled within runs, meaning they are rare ones tricky to find. "Ratz" and "Cracked Animals" are among two of the rarest ones.
Milestone Celebration: The 2017 line celebrated the 50th anniversary of the brand. It included bringing back classic stickers from the past, creating new stickers based on current events, and creating a series of fake products based on existing characters and celebrities.
No Export for You: The "Irish Test Series" was a testing ground series released only in Ireland. While some of the stickers were imported existing ones, others were entirely new parodies that only found release in this series, never being released anywhere else.
Production Lead Time: Due to the process of making the stickers (going from an approved concept, to a sketch, to a scanned painting), some parodies end up obsolete by the time the stickers are actually printed:
Parodies of "Alpha-Bits" cereal, released with their modern packaging, ended up releasing months after the cereal was discontinued.
Due to some holdovers of the cancelled 1992 series being released in the 2004 series, a variety of obsolete products were referenced, such as a Game Boy parody when the Game Boy Advance, a system two generations after the Game Boy, was the current Nintendo system.
A variety of parodies were vetoed from the get-go, mainly due to reasoning from the original creators. Of note are a variety of Disney and Star Wars parody ideas, which never saw the light of day officially. What makes the case with the Star Wars stickers weirder is that it was going to be an official series of the cards, cancelled after announcement.
During the punch-out days of the franchise, companies had a touch more leeway, and were able to request pulls for parodies. Some of these would be replaced with other cards, while some cards were simply pulled with no replacement planned.
The first idea for what would become Wacky Packages, by artist Woody Gelman, was the product images being taken seriously. No changes to the images, just actual products as stickers. Art Spiegelman, with the backing of Len Brown, was the one to point out that children wouldn't care for this, instead pushing the satire nature towards the brand instead.
A whole series for 1992 was prepped out, but never came to be. Later versions of a fair amount of the stickers planned for these series were eventually released through later series, some as part of the Old School series, while others were bootlegged as part of the "Lost Wackys" release.
An unreleased sticker in the 1985 series would end up becoming the basis for the Garbage Pail Kids brand. However, the actual sticker never was released.
Mark Parisi, creator of the comic series Off the Mark, also works at Topps, giving concept ideas for Wacky Packages. However, not all of his ideas go to final, leaving them to be reused for "Off the Market", a subseries of Off the Mark. Sometimes, he'll also give a reason on why they didn't make the cut at Topps.
Star Wars was set to get an entire series of parody stickers in 2014. However, executives nixed this idea early into production, but after announcement. A few stickers released as part of the "Lost Wackys" bootlegs, however.
A subseries of only magazine-related parodies was planned for 1974, most likely to complete with Fleer's Crazy Magazine Covers series. This idea never came into fruition, and thus, Series 11 and 13 have a large amount of magazine-themed parodies included.
Miscellaneous trivia
Topps has only been taken to court over Wacky Packages once. Tetley Tea, taking umbrage with the parody "Petley Flea Bags", sued Topps over perceived wrongdoing, demanding removal of the sticker from the line. The sticker, which was currently in reissued rotation (the tea company didn't take action during the sticker's first run), would have caused destruction of multiple products in a variety of stores. Topps was able to win the lawsuit by proving that multiple products were parodied without damage in the line, along with some of Topps' own products, Wacky Packages included, resulting in the suit going in Topps' favor. This case would later often be used as citing for parody law in further cases.
Morton Salt, despite having had the "Moron Salt" parody pulled during the punch-out days of the franchise, still held onto such a grudge over it, that they would cancel modern online auction lots of anyone attempting to sell the old product. They would eventually stop this in 2003, 36 years after the original cease and desist.
