It’s hard to compare Wackies to Pokémon cards though. Pokémon keeps adding new generations by adapting to the popular media or technology of the time. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, my kids got into it because of the TV cartoon series. They then started collecting the cards. It didn’t hurt that Burger King gave out Pokémon related toys, coins, pokeballs, etc. for several years in their kids meals.
Movies followed along with the never-ending string of video games that are still being made. Clothing plushies, books, and the like appeal to differing age groups. About 8 years ago, they released a game called Pokémon Go for mobile phones. It was pretty innovative, along with several other similar games, that started using “augmented reality”. This allows the player to move around the real world, while encountering Pokémon, gyms, and other elements from the card game and TV show.
Over the past 8 years, they continue to add new features regularly to try to retain players and keep it fresh.
People at Nintendo, Niantic, and other Pokémon related companies, are kind of master minds of keeping all these revenue streams interconnected and interesting to attractive new youth, but also keeping many people my kids’ age, in their 30s, interested with new offerings. Once every 5 years or so, they introduce a new generation of Pokemon characters.
But this was a gradual process of releasing new products over a long haul. Sports cards continue to appeal because new generations are interested in sports as an ever changing cultural entity. But you definitely see shifts in which sports are popular. I never thought we’d see soccer trading cards, for example. Wackies appealed to our generation for a number of reasons, but did not in the same way with subsequent ones.
Parody and satire like I found entertaining included MAD, Cracked, National Lampoon magazines and the like; radio programs like Dr. Demento; movies and TV like Naked Gun, Get Smart,.. or Mel Brooks spoofs or mockumentaries like Spinal Tap, all have pretty much fallen by the wayside, sadly. The closest thing today are lots of political based music parodies on social media and late night talk shows.
I guess Wackies were relevant for us at the time, and the medium of trading cards hit us in a spot that was great. Without some type of social media presence,not sure how Wackies can be made appealing to youth today. But I fear it would take more than just that. There would have to be some reason they fealt that Wackies belonged to them. GPK cards are similar to Wackies but don’t appeal to some of us because our tolerance level for certain types of humor is lower, perhaps. For whatever reason many of us think they belong to a different generation.