There's a great story to go with this piece too, as it's quite a shock to see it suddenly appear like this at auction.
The piece was one of nine that John Pound painted for the 1985 Wacky Packages set.
Around the same time, Topps was looking to get a license with OAA to create Cabbage Patch Kids merchandise.
Topps didn't want to anger OAA as that process was going forward, so they decided to pull the title from the set and not release it.
The deal with OAA for a CPK license never materialized though.
This setback inspired Topps to go the parody route instead, using the pulled Wacky GPK as the basis, and thus the Garbage Pail Kids series was born.
OAA wasn't happy about the GPK cards though, and quickly sued Topps after a couple of series were released.
A year later, Topps lost the court battle, and was forced to significantly alter the GPK look and feel for any new cards.
After the loss, in a fit of rage, Topps president Art Shorin had the Wacky GPK artwork burned, as it was the source of all the frustration for the past year.
But now, 37 years later, the artwork has magically shown up at Heritage Auctions.
Where did it come from? How did it get there?
>>Hat tip to Aaron Booton, GPK World, for the finding out the resolution to this mystery.
Aaron heard from Brandon Zuern, the writer of this linked blog post - which contains the story of the discovery of the piece, and how it got to Heritage:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/89631136?utm_campaign=postshare_creator&fbclid=IwAR1MYW97WN39T4LJNOtiqWHaz0WDR7q00eP-xE3ClxpWMH6TFqCK4bDQASALong story short, it was in the possession of Len Brown, who was managing Topps's New Product Development at the time.
Likely Art directed Len to destroy it, but for whatever reason it got filed away somewhere instead.
So the artwork disappeared for 37 years, with everyone believing it had been burned to ashes long ago.
Then recently Len Brown brought a bunch of items to Brandon's comic shop for assessment and selling.
And tucked away amongst all the other items, was that original art for the Juvenile Doll-inquent.
Unbelievable!
