How do you remember the sequence of series that you collected? I collected 1234567 but something weird happened at 7 I remember something was out of order like suddenly 6th started showing up again and I never saw 8 or later.
Well, although the isolative nature of this stupid pandemic seems to have zapped my short-term memory (well, 2000-2020, really), my long-term is totally in tact. And also, because I was one of the few people who started collecting Wackys in the 7,8,9 wave, with 8 being the one that hooked me... from there I remembered when they came because it was SO weird to get a chance to buy series 2 packs after already completing 7 and 8. My Wacky story is definintely non-standard, for sure. I bought 16th series when it came out, and had a near complete Wacky Ads set from a collectables shop even though I never got to buy die-cuts or 1,3,4 series. So, when I started collecting again in 1997 & pulled out my collection, it was very different from most of the other 30-somethings raiding their closet at the same time. Full set of posters w/the 3 hard ones. 2 Grime-Heavy's. An English 2nd series checklist. A couple Wacky Placks. But no boxes, wrappers, tattoos, Ludlows, mail-away posters, or complete puzzles to speak of. Only kept one checklist for each set. But they were in little plastic bags instead of rubber-banded anyway.
Yah, something weird did happen around the 7th series timeframe... and I do remember the gumless packs confusing the heck out of us. The box being thin, it blended in with the baseball cards, too, so at first we though the guy didn't have any Wackys (which was always an extreme source of sadness... until we convinced our icecream man to SAVE a box for our street, since he was my school-buddy's uncle, and the kids on the street before us often bought 'em all up before he got to us... jerks.) Yah... 1970s memory is still good. Can't tell you what the hell I did in 2007, though. heh. Well, I can. But it was a boring year.