'70s Fad Brings 'Wacky' Fun to New Generation

Wacky Packages are back in the spotlight, in all their graphic genius. The product parodies introduced a generation of American kids to countercultural values, writes CNN’s Todd Leopold, who takes a look at a new book dedicated to the series and reflects on its history. Art Spiegelman, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for the graphic novel Maus, was behind the series at its peak and wrote the preface for a book about the phenomenon.

"It was all done as Part of a Day's Work, much like the way early comic books were made: they certainly weren't made as art, they weren't sold as art, and they weren't thought of as art," Spiegelman writes. "Wacky Packages just formed an island of subversive underground culture in the surrounding sea of junk." (More Wacky Packages stories.)