GPK Memes

Topps launched GPK Memes on September 27, 2018, positioning the release as On Demand Set #9 and marking only the second time a Garbage Pail Kids offering had appeared in that specific webstore section after GPK Classic arrived the year before. Coming after a quiet stretch of more than two months without an online GPK issue, the release paired original Series 1 stalwarts with recognizable internet gags across ten fresh illustrations, splitting the art duties evenly between Brent Engstrom, David Gross, Joe Simko, Smokin' Joe McWilliams, and Neil Camera. The premise brought familiar faces like Nasty Nick, Weird Wendy, and Blasted Billy into modern viral formats, parodying popular internet memes.

That price point worked out to a dollar and sixty-seven cents for every card, which undercut the standard two-dollar-and-fifty-cent charge seen on typical web offerings. Although the company opened the sale with an intended seven-day ordering window, the entire print run of five hundred copies vanished in less than twenty-four hours. Collectors jumped at the pricing and the limited ceiling despite sparse preview images and confusing descriptive copy, but fulfillment dragged out considerably once the sale closed, taking weeks and months for orders to finally ship.

Buyers also found four parallel cards in each package, distributed as three green borders and one pink border. Because Gross, Simko, and Engstrom never turned in standard sketch cards for that horror-themed retail release, GPK Memes ended up as the lone outlet for collectors hunting standard-sized Gross sketches from that production cycle.