Last weekend I was rummaging around my parents basement looking for old toys or comic books left over from my childhood (I’m a nostalgic guy) and I stumbled upon quite the time capsule, my childhood sticker book. Sorry about the quality of the scans, it was difficult to get the coil-bound book to sit properly on the scanner.
As with many kids, my sticker book became a dumping ground for anything colorful that would stick to a page. So many awesome and obscure stuff at work here . . . Star Wars, A-Team, Gremlins, Michael Jackson, WWF stars, rockstars, M.u.s.c.l.e. characters, the list goes on. There’s a lot of hearts in there for some reason, I must have raided some leftover Valentines Day stickers :)
This isn’t art or inspiration by any means, but a pretty hilarious and adorable look back at the early to mid 1980s in sticker form. Enjoy.
PS. I went by Jimmy back then, hence the Jim stickers all over the place.
Wow, the 80s were ridiculous. :)
Haha, no kidding. What the heck is ‘A Goblin Party’?
HAHA!!! I remember so many of those … that’s bad. I used to love those puffy ones too!
Some fabulous stickers in there James. I’ve a huge collection of Pannini Football (Soccer, that is, not North American HandEgg!) and WWF cards, I’ll need to dig them out.
I remember trading nearly every duplicate sticker I had plus REAL money for a foil Celtic badge to complete a sticker book one year!
Completing a book was so sterile – like a colouring book – but your spare stickers just got plastered everywhere. Looking at these sticker books is like a visual “meta tag cloud” for your childhood!
If you’re Jim… then who’s Dianne White?
Kev, “visual meta tag cloud for your childhood” is a wonderful analogy. Nicely done.
Parker, that would be my mom :) She gave me a bunch of leftover mailing labels because she thought I’d like the animals. She was right.
So cool! i think i’ll do the same today and dug up old boxes.
Looks like the black cat is crapping an orea in Michael Jackson’s face. I heart sticker books.
Haha dude that is awesome! I recently found my old sticker book from years back; what a blast to go through it again. Oddly enough I had pretty much the same stickers as you did! Garbage Pail Kids, Hostess Wrestling and Music stickers.. classic! Thanks for the blast from the past! :)
Wow, that’s amazing. My sisters and I had a sticker book too, and some of those look awfully familiar. My favourite was a puffy, scratch-and-sniff dill pickle; man that thing was magical to me as a kid.
if only i could find my childhood sticker book. i loved that thing. thanks for sharing!!
This is so fantastic :) I remember quite a few of these also. Mr. T kind of guy, eh? I was all about Murdoch myself.
And I don’t think you were all about hearts… rainbows were the huge thing (though for a guy, perhaps rainbows and heart rank equally?).
Now i can see where your rainbow colours inspiration came from…
I’ve counted 11 rainbows at the stickers…
Ehehehe
cheers!
Ah you can’t say this is not art or inspiration, it tells so much about where your work really does come from. And I mean that as a compliment!
Great post James!!
The Muscle Men are amazing. I’ve never seen them in sticker form.
Those rock n roll stickers (Van Halen, Scandal, etc.) came in bags of Hostess chips, did they not? I think I actually had every one stuck on the mirror in my bedroom growing up. Also, nice yellow pants, Han Solo (in the first batch).
Dave, you know it. All of the rock stickers and WWF stickers came from Hostess chips. Ever get a bag that had 10 stickers in it? To a kid that was like discovering a treasure chest and Robocop is inside.
Tight! I remember collecting stickers when I was a kid. We must be about the same age, because I have a whole bunch of the same stickers as you.
Yeah, I sort of figured as much right after clicking submit. Woops.
I miss my sticker collection now! Thanks. Puffy ones were the best but pretty hard to unstick!
i have both full sets of the wrestling stickers and to full sets of the music stickers even have the 3 munchie guys on one they look like zz top one on the drums and two playing the guitar , are they worth anything?
man, you and i had a lot of the same stickers. mine was more garbage pail kids and hostess wrestler-heavy, though.