Monday, December 14, 2009

A-Team Puffy Stickers


Hey, why not click for bigger? 

I purchased these in San Diego at Pic-n-Save in the mid 1980s. My friends and I were obsessed with Pic-n-Sav, a chain of regional discount stores. We even made custom silk-screened t-shirts of their logo! Every single thing at Pic-n-Save was either a reject or a failure, making it a particularly bizarre shopping experience. Every flop trend, every irregular manufacturing error, every misspelled ceramic knickknack... they all ended up there. It was really trashy and really cheap. At the Arizona stores you could even get wine – the worst wine ever, ever made. God, that store was just so good.

Over-manufactured puffy stickers were a constant presence at Pic-n-Save; they had an actual puffy sticker section, but I guess that's the 80s for you. Trends on the wane  (like the A-Team, above, pretty long in the tooth by that time) were a common presence on such merchandise; if you were on a puffy sticker at Pic-n-Save, your career was in trouble.

I remember a friend of mine saying, "Can you imagine publishing a novel and then seeing it at Pic-n-Save a year later for 15¢? Wouldn't that be awful?" Yes, it sure would.

To make a long story short, holy cow did we ever buy some stupid shit at that store! You'll be seeing more of it here.

7 comments:

jfruh said...

Wow, these are really Mr. T heavy, aren't they? How about giving my man Murdoch some love, huh?

Karen Zipdrive said...

I used to love Pic-n-Sav for all the same reasons. Once I got a genuine cedar napkin holder with a blonde Jesus decoupaged on each side.

Matthew Hubbard said...

I only vaguely remember the A-Team. Did they add a female member near the end of the run, like some new Huxtable kid?

SystemError said...

I had those stickers! Also A-Team trading cards, where if you collected all 100 of them, they told a story!

Chris said...

Gawd - when I was a kid growing up in Riverside, if the other little monsters at my school ever found out that a kid even went near a Pic-n-Sav they were teased MERCILESSLY.

This chain still survives today, bought out by Big Lots (which still rules for delivering weird stuff, but not nearly as much). Seems like their shtick has pretty much been supplanted by the various 98 cent stores.

Peteykins said...

Haw, Karen, I had to edit the post and make it look like you made a typo because I found out it really is "Pic-n-SavE" with an E.

Mistressmybae said...

Pic-n-Save. I miss you so much.