Trivia / The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

• Acting for Two: Jim Cummings voices both Greaser Greg and Nat Nerd.
• Box Office Bomb: It cost about $1 million to produce, and earned just $1.5 million in profits. Parental protests over the film's Vulgar Humor after it received a PG rating led to it being pulled from theaters within weeks of its release. Part of a long series of bombs for Atlantic Releasing Corporation.
• Bury Your Art: Jim Cummings (Greaser Greg and Nat Nerd's voice actor) went out of his way to join the protest against the film's theatrical release when he saw the final product, an effort that eventually saw the film pulled from theaters.
• Cameo Prop: A portrait visible in Manzini's shop is the painting from Troll (1986). It can be seen in the scene after the Garbage Pail Kids have had their weenie roast and are back at the shop recovering.
• Colbert Bump: The movie might have been rightly forgotten had The Nostalgia Critic not reviewed it early in his run. Perhaps ironically, Doug Walker and his brother Rob have repeatedly stated that this is their least favorite movie ever.
• Creator Backlash: In an interview years later, Mackenzie Astin (Dodger) and Arturo Gil (Windy Winston) both criticized the film (though Gil said he thought the film was laughable). Jim Cummings (voice of Greaser Greg and Nat Nerd) and John Carl Buechler (the film's effects artist) have openly criticized the film as well, with the former even helping to boycott it out of theaters.
• Creator Killer: Director Rod Amateau never took the helm of another major project after this film. It was also part of a massive series of flops from the film's distributor, Atlantic Releasing Corporation; the company's only commercial hit after this film was Teen Wolf Too, and even then it was critically panned. The number of losses from this film and the company's other high-budget bombs (like 1969) caused the company to cease operations in 1989.
• Development Hell: There were plans for a new GPK in the early 2010s which dissolved by 2013. Notably, it would have been the feature directorial debut of stop-motion animator PES (of Fresh Guacamole fame).
• Disowned Adaptation: Mark Newgarden, the creator of the cards, openly called this the worst film ever made, saying that neither he nor Topps had any involvement and he was "...sick and depressed throughout the whole thing."
  Mark Newgarden: "I had nothing to do with this movie, I'm proud to say."
• Franchise Killer: This film did not help the actual card collection at all. It now mostly exists as a niche collectors series. It also got, combined with more parental protests, an already-completed Saturday-Morning Cartoon canceled before it could even debut.
• Looping Lines: The voices were provided by both the suit actors — Kevin Thompson (Ali Gator), Debbie Lee Carrington (Valerie Vomit) and Arturo Gil (Windy Winston) — and standard voice-over artists over suit actors — Greaser Greg and Nat Nerd (both voiced by Jim Cummings, but performed on set by Phil Fondacaro and Larry Green, respectively), Foul Phil (Robert Bell on set, Chloe Amateau for the voice) and Messy Tessie (Sue Rossito on set, Teri Benaron for the voice).
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: John Carl Buechler was considered to direct the film. His version of the story was going to be a straight-up horror film. The Garbage Pail Kids would have spawned from radioactive sludge that had found its way to a garbage can filled with broken dolls, turning them into serial killers. For the final film, he simply provides the costumes and animatronics, which do look horrifying, but for all the wrong reasons thanks to production and budget issues.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • It's been well documented that Rod Amateau didn't care about the Garbage Pail Kids and that he made no attempt to learn more about the franchise while making the movie. He only directed the film to fulfill obligations to the Director's Guild so that he would continue receiving benefits. He also hoped that if the film was a success then he might make enough money through royalties to retire early.
  • The Topps Company were not concerned with protecting the GPK brand. At the time, they didn't know how much longer the franchise would continue to be financially successful, especially in the aftermath of Original Appalachian Artworks' lawsuit against them, and their only desire was squeezing as much money from the property as they could. They didn't care about the quality of the film, only that they could make money through the film's licensing. They even forbade the cards' creative team from assisting on the film to prevent them from getting in the way of its production.
• No Budget: The film was made on the relatively miniscule production budget of one million dollars. Can one expect the costumes' eyes to work properly?
• No Dub for You: Due to the premise of the franchise and the film, only a couple of countries dubbed this film in their respective languages, and they only did so because it's mandatory by law.
• Real-Life Relative: J.P. Amateau, who played Wally, is the son of director Rod Amateau.
• Romance on the Set: Mackenzie Astin (Dodger) and Katie Barberi (Tangerine) started dating a few months before working together on the film (he recommended her to the producers), and ended the relationship during filming. It's worth remembering that even though it doesn't look like it in the movie, in real life Barberi is just a year older than Astin.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Even if the film could have afforded higher quality costumes they wouldn't have been able to resemble the designs from the original cards since part of Topps' settlement with Original Appalachian Artworks was that all Garbage Pail Kids media would be redesigned so that they no longer resembled Cabbage Patch Kids.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The planned Garbage Pail Kids Saturday-Morning Cartoon, 13 episodes of which were made, was canceled by CBS before it premiered in 1987. To compensate for this, Muppet Babies was expanded into an unprecedented 90-minute block.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Anthony Newley's already-crippled cinematic career went down the drain with this film. It had taken him nearly twenty years after the utter failure of his earlier Vanity Project Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which cost Universal Pictures millions and had been panned as an utter flop. He never appeared in another major film for the rest of his life.
  • Mexican actress Katie Barberi surprisingly went from having a small role as "Economics Student" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off to landing the lead female role in this film, but this film's spectacular bombing ensured that this and the Made-for-TV Movie Not Quite Human II were her only leading roles in an American film. While she would still make some guest appearances on American TV series afterwards, she would spend the bulk of her career in her native Mexico, and she wouldn't have a significant role in an American production until Every Witch Way in 2014 (and even it was a Foreign Remake of a Latin American TV series, Grachi), and wouldn't have another role on a theatrically-released American film until Saw X in 2023 (and that might be due to Saw X being shot on location in Mexico anyway).
• Stillborn Franchise: Because of the film's critical and commercial failure, tentative plans for a sequel were abandoned.
• Troubled Production:
  • The costumes for the Garbage Pail Kids were so poorly designed that the actors wearing them could barely see, hear or even breathe with their animatronic heads on. All the scenes with the Garbage Pail Kids had to be rehearsed with the heads off first and had to be shot in five to seven minute intervals to ensure that the actors didn't suffocate, with a paramedic having to be on standby throughout the shoot.
  • The production dragged on for much longer than most movies both due to the aforementioned problems with the costumes and the fact that Mackenzie Astin and Katie Barberi were both minors, meaning that filming was limited to only 8 hours a day rather than a standard 12-15. Additionally, the factory the movie was filmed in frequently interrupted the radio signals that controlled the articulation of the animatronic heads, requiring many scene reshoots.
• Underage Casting:
  • To the surprise of many, Katie Barberi as Tangerine. She was all of 15 during principal photography (born January 1972, the movie shot from April to June of 1987), but her character is old enough to drive a car and lives alone in a studio apartment, and hangs around with characters played by actors who are clearly well into their twenties. Many viewers express discomfort at Tangerine's romantic scenes with Dodger, but Barberi and Mackenzie Astin were born only 16 months apart (he turned 14 during principal photography).
  • Mackenzie Astin is a year younger than his character, having been 13 and turning 14 during filming (as opposed to his 14-going-on-15-year-old character).
• What Could Have Been: Rod Amateau originally envisioned the film as a Made-for-TV Movie but changed his mind when he realized the film would receive a PG rating, something that held a lot more weight in the 1980s. Parents would be more likely to buy extra tickets to see the film alongside their children rather than just drop them off to watch it by themselves. Amateau also hoped that if the film was a success then they could continue making more money off of it by rereleasing it in theaters every few years.

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