I’ll just start off by saying, this post is a complete rip-off of the sticker book post on ShezCrafti.  As Jaime put it,

every kid in the 80s col­lected stick­ers

It’s something I never really thought about but, this is very true.  Stickers seemed to be in their heyday, in the 80’s & early 90’s.  Kids today aren’t really that into them, from what I can tell.  If my son gets some stickers, 5 minutes later they’re all stuck to the walls and he’s off playing with his toys or asking to play Angry Birds.

Back in my day – old man rant, over.

I used to collect stickers.  Not so much in the sense that I tried to amass as many as I could but, I would just throw them in a box if I happened to get some.  My mom used to buy me and my brothers stickers sometimes when we were little.  We would quickly unwrap them and stick them but, then the party was over.

From a very early age, I decided that I didn’t want the fun to be over so quickly.  So I started saving my stickers and over the years I’ve collected some retro gems.  Below are just highlights (I’d say about 1/6th) of my collection.  They are not stuck to anything but, I’ve tried to group them together by theme.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Because I know the question will probably come up, no those Mello Smello TMNT stickers do NOT smell like turtles or pizza.  I picked up that single Raph sticker in a fruit pie.

 

Monsters / Halloween / Aliens

‘Goosebumps’ and Lisa Frank Halloween stickers … so 90’s.

 

Animals / Dinosaurs / Dragons

Random animalia stickers.  Those purple dragon ones still smell of fake grape.

 

Kid Cuisine / Fun Feast

So my mother (like my wife) is an amazing cook.  But on occasion, if it was getting late, she would let us pick out our own TV dinners at the store.  These were generally ‘Fun Feast’ (Swanson) or ‘Kid Cuisine’ (Con Agra) meals.  Besides the food, there was always some sort of fun item (generally stickers) in the box.  Before you dive into the gallery, let’s get this out of the way;

Yes, that one sticker says ‘BJ•Riffic!’

I have no idea what marketing genius let that one out.  As for those shimmer stickers, they are ridiculous and awesome.

 

Sports

 

Superheroes

 

Causes

 

Automotive

My uncles own/run a couple auto shops here in the Phoenix area and would grab stickers for me on occasion.  They got all of these for me, except the sheet of cartoon cars.  The pics don’t really do them justice.  That Bosch sticker is about a foot long and that kickass Ferrari Testarossa sticker is about 8″x8″.

 

Various Characters

I really have a lot of odds and ends here.  Those Alf stickers are courtesy of Tommy @ Boxsome.  The puffy Nintendo and Simpsons stickers are just awesome and I have never seen a Rocketeer sticker as cool as this one.

 

Random

Ah, the random pile.  There’s some great ones in here that just didn’t fit in the other categories.  Unfortunately, those Mello Smellos stickers have pretty much lost most of their scent.  On that topic, am I the only one that finds ‘Peach Sundae’ to be a really random flavor?

And yes, I am in my own sticker collection.  When I was in kindergarten and they did class pictures, for some reason, they gave us a sticker of our picture.  I have no idea why that would be useful but, whatever.