Stickers! 1984

When I was very young, stickers and sticker albums were all the rage. Among the children of my neighborhood, at the very least, I remember a rash of sticker trading and showing off. Stickers: the Webkinz of 1984. (I'm sad that I even know what Webkinz are, but two of my nephews recently had birthdays.)

I might not have been aware of this phenomenon were it not for my older sisters. I was four years old, so my finger probably wasn't directly on the pulse of popular culture. But my sisters and their friends were all about stickers, and therefore so was I.

I was down the Basement o' Wonders recently hunting for wrapping paper when I stumbled upon a box containing all of my old sticker albums. I hadn't seen them in years and years. After looking through four albums (secured in a green Trapper Keeper, naturally) I knew that I would be doing the world a great disservice if I did not share them with the masses. A sampling follows, but you can visit my flickr for much more. I have to warn you, though - your brain may not be able to handle all the awesome.

So here's a page you might expect to find in a four-year-old girl's sticker album, right?

We've got some dancing little girls, Christmas pandas, a rocking horse, shiny balloon, Mommy and baby bunny ... okay, a Pac Man ghost with a cryptic caption...

Here's another:

Lots of Sanrio characters (Hello Kitty, Twin Stars, My Melody), some old-fashioned Valentines ... child-friendly NFL stickers ... you begin to get the sense that there might be some interesting juxtapositions here. And then you turn a few more pages and see this:


Scratch 'n' Sniff teddy with a hearts and flowers - next to Culture Club. Hell yes.

Other favorites:

No, you are!



Judging from the surrounding stickers I'd say this has to be one of the Jackson 5, but I have no idea which.



Dr. Connolly was my childhood dentist. I kind of hated him, actually.



Funny, I don't really remember Sesame Street having a flasher.



Aww. Jaki and Niki are my sisters. This is just to remind you that I was, indeed, four.



There are others that say "Grody" and "Gag me with a spoon."



This one is so fantastically dated. It's a clunky computer! Doing aerobics! With a caption in "computer font" alluding to an Olivia Newton-John song!


Finally, this may be my favorite complete page out of all four albums:



This one is a close second, though:


My favorite thing about it is that the big red heart on the left isn't part of the Mr. T. set. It has a suede finish, and is not puffy. So obviously I just decided this was the best place for it. BECAUSE I LOVED MR. T.