Vintage Toy Box : Trash Bag Bunch!

 
When I started this feature earlier in the year, I got a request on Twitter to profile the 90's toys known as Trash Bag Bunch.  Though I can't remember who tweeted me the request, I promised the tweeter that I'd honor his request.  And so tonight, I am here to fulfill that promise, in the most epic fashion possible.  So mystery tweeter, this one's for you!!

First, here's a brief little rundown of the history of this vintage toy line, and then we'll get to the real fun!

The Trash Bag Bunch was the brainchild of toy designer Mel Birnkrant, who prior to their development created a toy for Galoob called Magic Diaper Babies, little baby dolls whose gender was unknown to the buyer until they were dipped in water.  If the diaper turned blue when wet, the baby was a boy.  If it turned pink, it was a girl.  Inspired by the success of that line and the lottery like approach to its design, Birnkrant soon after came up with a new line which he dubbed at the time The Garbage Bag Gang, an idea which was also inspired by something that was going on in his life at the time.  In the late 80's the state of New York decided to put a landfill right near Birnkrant's house, which would have unleashed all sorts of bugs and other creepy crawlies unto his neighborhood.  Thankfully, the decision was overturned, leaving Birnkrant with a new toy idea and a clean, bug free living environment.

The idea was to basically make Magic Diaper Babies toys for boys, so Birnkrant decided to package little disgusting monsters in bio-degradable eco-friendly trash bags, which when placed in water, would dissolve and reveal a mystery figure inside.  Brilliant?  I'll say!

When Birnkrant pitched the idea to Galoob, they told him that they already had a bunch of small PVC robot, alien and monster toys, which they didn't know what to do with.  The light bulb went off and they decided to fuse the Garbage Bag Gang idea with the figures they already had.  And thus, in 1991, the Trash Bag Bunch was born; little robots, aliens and monsters that hatched out of garbage bags when placed into water.  An effervescent Alka Seltzer-like tablet was even added to the mix, to further enhance the magical spectacle.



So then.  How do robots and aliens fit in with the theme of garbage dwelling vermin?  Well, a clever plot was devised to make it all work.  Ya see, story goes that good and evil 'trash creatures' have been at war for years on the planet of Garbagio, and at some point a man named Professor Garboff wrapped a bunch of them in 'alien trash bags', which were sent off to us here on Earth.  So we've got 36 different figurines in total, 18 of them being Disposers, the filth fighting robot looking dudes, and the other 18 being Trashors, the evil alien monsters.  Works for me!

Now the cool thing about the Trash Bag Bunch is that the line was way ahead of its time in the eco-friendly Green Peace movement, much like Captain Planet also was in the early 90's.  It's not that environmentalism wasn't around for decades prior to the 90's, but it's pretty awesome that Birnkrant devised the line well before all that sorta stuff was as prevalent and as talked about in our society as it is today.  But this is getting way too serious, so let's get back to TOYS!

Looking at the line-up of Trash Bag Bunch figurines, I remember many of them from my childhood and in fact, I think I still even have a bunch of them hanging out in my parents' attic.  Now what's funny is that it wasn't until recently that I realized all those figurines were Trash Bag Bunch toys.  I honestly don't remember dissolving trash bags in water to get to them as a kid, but I damn sure do remember playing with the figurines.  That lack of memory makes me sad.  But I'm here to remedy that tonight.

In order to make this Vintage Toy Box entry super special, I went out and bought myself a vintage Trash Bag Bunch toy on eBay last week, mint on the card.  I figured that a Trash Bag Bunch post is a pretty lame Trash Bag Bunch post unless one of the trash dwelling monsters is hatched live and in living color within the post.  It's just something I had to do, especially considering I don't recall doing this as a kid.  Even though I surely must have.

Now I admit, it's gonna pain me a bit to open this bad boy up, being that I'm a collector who likes to keep old toys in their packaging.  I honestly wasn't expecting the package to be in such good shape, and I almost wish that it wasn't.  It's totally beautiful, and I can only imagine that the seller (who has a ton of them up on eBay), somehow recently got a hold of a whole case of these, which had never even seen the light of day.  The packaging is absolutely pristine, and I'm pretty damn sure I'm gonna buy another one to keep pristine right after I'm done writing this post.  But for now, FOR YOU, I'm about to hatch me a Trash Bag Bunch figurine!!!

More importantly, I'm about to answer the age old question ...

21 years later, do these faux garbage bags still dissolve in water the way they used to?

ROLL VIDEO!



Wow, was that a professional video or what?  Full on air vent blasting in the background, big time dirty water spillage all over the bathroom, Michael J. Fox hands ... only the finest of production values for you here on Freddy In Space!



So yea, these things do in fact still hatch over 20 years later, the same way they did back when they were on the market.  Kinda bummed that I hatched White Washer, one of the good guys, but what can ya do.  I shall cherish and treasure him all the same. Well, maybe not as much as I would've cherished Skuzbeast or Muck Master ...

 Though the Trash Bag Bunch are long gone, they paved the way for a slew of similarly themed toys to come in later years, most recently The Trash Pack, which take the same you don't know what you're gonna get approach that the Trash Bag Bunch did.  True trendsetters, these filthy citizens of Garbagio were!

Mel Birnkrant has got a whole website dedicated to the Trash Bag Bunch, and I strongly encourage you to head over there and browse around, even if you only having a passing interest in the line.  He's got all kinds of goodies over there, including unused ideas that never made it to production and original catalog pages, so be sure to check it out whenever you get a chance!

Now if I can just get somebody to fund my idea for a similar line called STD's; visual monstrous depictions of sexually transmitted diseases that hatch out of used condoms.  Anyone?  Anyone?!