Used by permission from Topps Company, Inc.

As a kid, I loved him. He was covered in ripe red pimples and was popping away. I couldn't wait until I got my first zit so that I could try the same. His name was "Crater Chris" and he was a Garbage Pail Kid. No, that's not a derogatory term, Garbage Pail Kids are actually a collection of trading cards and stickers that began grossing parents out over fifteen years ago, while kids—like me—couldn't get enough.

Throughout the mid-1980s, I collected him and his buddies in droves. Whenever my mom took me to Woolworth's, I had to do two things: admire the tropical fish and get some more Garbage Pail Kids. Once, I was dragged along to an auction with my dad (he loved going, but, to me, it was always just a few hours for climbing under the bleachers to collect pop cans), and, to my amazement, a box of authentic Garbage Pail Kids buttons came up on the bidder's block. He took one look at the big brown eyes peering out from the bleachers and knew. Needless to say, I was pretty popular at school the next day.

Collector's Corner A variety of collecting ideas for children and some interesting child collectors are featured at the Smithsonian Kids Collecting Web site [1]. The UK's Campaign for Museums [2]explores the eternal question, "Why do people collect things?" Your kids may not find dinosaur bones in your backyard, but Kids Ark [3] tells how they can come close.

Not bad for a kid whose friend Ryan once laughed him off the playground for making a colossal mistake involving Garbage Pail Kids. Yes, early on in my unenlightened youth, I once innocently asked Ryan, "What are Garbage Can Kids?" only to be derided for months on end. I still remember his face, laughing away—not because I didn't know what they were, but because I had said "can" instead of "pail." Those kinds of things always mattered—big time.

But I never made that slip of the tongue again. In fact, I soon became a champion Garbage Pail Kid collector. Heck, I even dressed up as one for Halloween, but no one could guess what I was supposed to be. One older lady gushed, "Oh, what a cute Cabbage Patch baby—before she dropped some stale candy corn into my trick-or-treat sack. But I didn't care. I knew that I was "Rob Slob" from series 2.

You might think, then, that I was devastated when the Topps Company stopped making the cards in 1988. Not so. By then, I had moved on to the world of Nintendo and Mario was my new "it" guy. Garbage Pail Kids were pass—left under the bed with trashed Hot-Wheels cars and dusty Thundercat action figures.

Currently surviving through her son's obsession with all things Yu-Gi-Oh (the latest rage in trading cards), my editor couldn't help but ponder a question of the ages upon learning of my Garbage Pail frenzy: Why do kids love to collect things so much—what is that fascination?

Having been a psychology major in college, I immediately thought of an odd-looking gentleman named Jean Piaget who stared at me one too many times from the pages of my intro to psych book. The famous child psychologist believed that the key to human knowledge just might be buried in the depths of a child's mind—he even took the time to do the research on this, folks, spending hundreds of hours interviewing kids over the course of his 84-year lifetime.

A highlight of his work? He found that during the "concrete operational stage" of child development, which occurs between ages 7 and 11, kids learn how the things around them relate to one another. And guess what? Their natural tendency is to group similar items together. Pairing one gross Garbage Pail Kid ("Potty Scotty") with an equally gross one ("Ghastly Ashley") would be an example. Oh, and it's fun, too, but Piaget had a more difficult time explaining that. Other less-famous psychologists say that kids enjoy collecting as a way to make friends with their peers, increase their self-esteem or to imagine themselves in fantasy worlds'a Garbage Pail utopia, in my case.

While I don't run around trying to bond over the goo on the chin of "Messy Tessie" anymore, I still have a little "garbage" left in my heart: When my fiance and I moved from Michigan to Washington, DC, we barely had enough room in the U-Haul to fit the important things (like a bed), but I had to have my box of Garbage Pail Kids buttons from the auction. "You can leave them at your mom's house, I'm sure they'll be safe," said Katrina. "No, they are coming with me to DC."

So, yes, I'm admittedly excited that the Kids are set to make a big comeback. Topps is releasing a new series of the stickers in August 2003 and is even bringing the gang into the millennium with a Web site where fans can create their own Garbage Pail Kids and take a tour of a Garbage Pail Kid city (fantasy a la virtual reality?).

Arthur T. Shorin, chairman of Topps, hopes that these new developments will go over well with the next generation of child gross-out collectors. He remembers the controversy of their first release all too well, telling an AP reporter, "I would get letters all the time from parents saying, 'This is in poor taste.'" His response? "Well, of course it's in poor taste. But it's not in wrong taste; we would never do that."

It's funny because when I was a kid, I didn't even realize there was a controversy surrounding the gang. My parents must have known something about it, but they were probably too busy collecting antiques to worry much (some people must never grow out of it, huh Piaget?). But maybe they realized that it's not so important which hobbies your children have, it's just important that they have ones that make them tick. I liked the cards—endlessly alphabetizing and rearranging them, and reading out-loud the backs of the cards, which were cluttered with fake "Garbage Pale Kid Offers," like this one from "Van Pire":

Used by permission from Topps Company, Inc.

Offer: Real Dental Tartar
Description: "The next time your dentist gives you a lecture about brushing after meals, thrill him with 20 pounds of real tartar build-up!"
Cost: $700
Note: Perfect for making tartar sauce!

Collecting these gross-out "facts" didn't make me any less inclined to work on science fair projects, join the spelling bee, or play in the soccer league. They did make me laugh, and I'm betting that they even drew smiles from adults—maybe even from a few parents with a crazy-haired Troll doll, or two, stashed away in the closet. Will we soon see droves of kids at Wal-Mart, tugging on their parents' sleeves for the latest Garbage Pail Kids? My guess is yes. And I'm willing to predict that the next generation of "Rob Slobs" will turn out just fine.

Oh, and if you happen to find the rarest of rare 9th series unnumbered "Semi Colin," drop me an email. We can bond like seven-year-olds.

Rob Capriccioso is a former staff writer for Connect for Kids .