Buff Monster’s ‘The Melty Misfits’ –- An Amazing Garbage Pail Kids Homage

In talking to Buff Monster about his upcoming ‘The Melty Misfits’ wax-pack sticker trading card series, I learned something I’ve never quite appreciated in the five or so years I’ve known him.  Buff Monster is a giant nerd. I know, a nerd, duh… but I mean NERD in glowing, massive neon letters.  Now, there’s nothing wrong in my book with Nerdom (ahem, look who’s writing this), but still I never truly understood the depth of his nerdiness.  Over the past few months he’s giddily revealed more and more about his fully-realized ice-cream based homage to his first true collectible passion – Garbage Pail Kids, the sticker card parody of the Cabbage Patch Dolls that kids just couldn’t get enough of when they were released in the mid 80’s.

However, I still didn’t quite realize his level of devotion to all things Garbage Pail Kids, until I visited his studio to talk to him in depth about the Melty Misfits as well his upcoming ‘Legend of the Pink Cherry’ solo at Corey Helford (4.14) which will include the 30 original 5” x 7” paintings done for his unprecedented and unrivaled homage project. 

That quickly started to change as he proceeded to give me a whirlwind tour of his collection.  First, his ‘prized possession’, a double uncut sheet of Series 1 cards which he assures me is incredibly rare, hung in a position of honor – right above his bed.   Next, came his binders of cards featuring complete runs of every single series – that’s all 15 original series, the seven ‘all-new’ series as well as the flashblack runs.  That’s really just the beginning, there’s also more ‘error’ cards than you probably knew existed including cards suffering from badly aligned cutting, poor color registration, completely missing card numbers, inaccurate kiss cuts and more.  In addition, Buff Monster is the proud owner of several of the original card sketches as well as few color roughs done by series regular and OG artist, John Pound.  His collection also includes a near-mint, unopened Series 3 box.   Still not convinced?  Ask him to tell you about the error card he discovered long after legions of collectors had poured over the sets looking for each and every error they could find. 

So if you had any doubt why Buff Monster decided to do an homage to the Garbage Pail Kids, you now know.  Every aspect of the ‘Melty Misfits’ is as close to the original cards as possible – the offset printed sticker cards complete with kiss cuts, the wax packs, the 60 card format with 30 pairs of differently named characters sharing the same image, the inclusion of puzzle back pieces and more.  While a few of the cards are reinterpretations of original Garbage Pail Kids, most of them are Buff Monster originals done as 5” x 7” paintings, the same format used to create the artwork for the original series back in the day.

Done in conjunction with  Sidekick, the retro production wizards who made the Art Hustle and Suckadelic Suckpack series, The Melty Misfits adds to the tried and true Garbage Pail formula with the inclusion of sketch cards (1 per every 5 boxes), signature cards, and even a Golden Ticket. What does the finder of the Golden Ticket receive? An original 5” x 7” Melty Misfits painting which was not included in the series.   The Melty Misfits ($5/pack) will be released at Buff Monster’s solo opening on April 14th at Corey Helford and then should make their way to your favorite in-the-know shop shortly after that.