Original Series 16 (European release)

Product development for Original Series 16 was entirely finished by the close of 1988, prepared for an estimated release window of March 1989. Test sheets for cards and boxes were in production by January 1989, rounding out an eighty-two card base set stretching from sticker 621a through 661b, alongside six planned variations that brought the intended tally to eighty-eight. Topps weighed the expenses of manufacturing against anticipated sales and decided against shipping another set into stores, shelving the project before packs could be distributed. The decision prevented another Garbage Pail Kids set from reaching the market for the new year.

The planned release featured writing by Jay Lynch and forty-one paintings divided almost entirely between John Pound and Tom Bunk, with each contributing twenty finished illustrations. The lone exception went to James Warhola, who painted Busy BEA and Handy Mandy as a replacement for an unpublished piece by Bunk that featured guns. Richard McGuire contributed the artwork for what was designed as the sixth and final outing for the FLICK IT feature on the card backs, while the puzzle cards carried forward the alphabetical sequence from the previous series with puzzles W and X. The set also marked the earliest known Garbage Pail Kids assignment for artist Jim Siergey.

Several cards in the set featured unusual layout choices. Collectors would have encountered a slanted title banner on Slammed SLOAN and KEITH Out, marking only the second time a series tilted the main header across an image. The experimental impulse went even further on Stuck On HUGH and Dash Board DENNIS, where the nameplate shrank to a single label and the series banner was dropped right into the middle of the illustration, an arrangement unique in the original run. Earlier revisions had already altered the lineup, including an unpublished backward reflection painting by Pound that was dropped in favor of GUY Pie and Pepperoni TONI.

Physical evidence of the aborted run first came to light in 1989, when a black and white printing separation sheet holding the A-name stickers was salvaged from a dumpster behind Topps headquarters. That sheet resurfaced for collectors in 2001, followed in late 2002 by Topps Vault auctions on eBay offering full sheets that showed the completed card faces and backs. The shelved artwork eventually reached collectors over the decades through subsequent releases, beginning in 2003 when twenty-nine of the paintings appeared in All-New Series 1. Nine more surfaced across the Flashback sets in 2010 and 2011, and the final three arrived as bonus cards inside the 2012 Abrams book. Although the original release never reached store shelves, Topps ultimately issued every character on its own card in later sets.