Off-Colour Claire

With rather more time than work today I eliminated another set of half-memories by looking up Garbage Pail Kids on Wikipedia. My memory of these was that I had shedloads of series 4,5,6 and 7, a couple of series 3, but that series 1 and 2 were deliciously rare - with the rarity itself being significant, not the content of the cards. In fact I think I did possess some series 1, but I swear I could only actually recall Les Vegas, Stoned Sean (having magnificently failed to get the joke or should I say get the toke, but then I was a sheltered 10 years old) and one or two others, leaving me to think that actually I didn't have any at all, and had only seen the cards of classmates in passing. I certainly don't recall any like Ray Gun or US Arnie which cast satirical aspersions on 80s celebrities and I was pretty politically aware for a 10 year old (I used to warn my friends of the possible imminent end of the world, while they tried to tell me what would happen to your willy if you got naked with a girl. In fact they never needed my advice while I didn't need theirs until I was 24).

Looking at the artwork now, the number of cards devoted to hairy women is either an advert for misogyny or a prediction of the rise of modern pornography, in which women have no hairs at all except for the dyed ones on their heads plus some statistically insignificant working follicles over the eyes and whatever it is that makes eyelashes. Just as well Carlyle wasn't a c21 porn addict, he'd've had a heart attack (was it Carlyle, or was it Ruskin, who was horrified by his wife's pubic hair - presumably he didn't have any of his own then, or maybe he went to a late Victorian back,sack'n'crack merchant every Friday night).

The title card of this post was one renamed for the UK market, on the basis that British kids wouldn't get whatever name it was in the original (Clara), but were endlessly familiar with Claire with an i.

As, of course, we are.