We've seen some surprising band x brand collabs in 2025 (I'm looking at you, Bon Iver and Fishwife). But even still, Green Day Garbage Pail Kids trading cards were not on my bingo list.
The US punk band is hitting us with a dose of '80s nostalgia by taking us back to a parody franchise whose grotesque character designs delighted kids and repulsed parents and teachers back in its day. The original cards even spawned what may have been the worst movie of all time until Amazon's War of the Worlds movie dropped this month.
The Green Day x Garbage Pail Kids: Battle of the Bands is a set of 100 A and B cards apparently inspired by the band's history. The band members themselves appear as characters Billie Boogers, Burnt Dirnt and Tricky Tre while other cards are inspired by song titles like Good Riddance and Basket Case. Some are animated, some are signed and some have tour-used relics baked in.
If you're thinking that selling trading cards isn't exactly very anti-corporate punk, the original Garbage Pail Kids cards were a bit of anti-establishment phenomenon back in their day. They were dreamed up by the cartoonist Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel Maus, as a parody on the popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls.
Released by Topps in 1985, the cards were banned in many schools and even in some countries, including Mexico and Australia, because of the shock value and dark humour of the pun-heavy character designs, most of which were kids with some kind of comical deformity or who suffered a terrible death. It's not an entirely bad fit for a band that's cultivated an outsider status.
Despite their controversy, the Garbage Pail Kids were successful enough to inspire a terrible 1987 live-action movie that starred dwarf actors in animatronic costumes.
The Green Day Garbage Pail Kids cards will be released by Topps on 27 August.
For more of the week's character design news, see the controversy over Miary Zo in Tekken 8. For your own work, see our character design tips from the experts.
