21 Comments
User's avatar
Ellen Burney's avatar

thank you for nudging these nostalgic thoughts :

🧌 Garbage pail kids stickers with pink gum.

🪩 Hologram World Cup Stickers

🍨 The immense pleasure of those clear stickers you could reuse & move around in Beano sticker albums.

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

I forgot Garbage Pail Kids stickers - and I actually did stick those, all over my bedroom door! I didn't get the Beano sticker albums, but those clear stickers sound great - and as for holograms!! The future!!!

Expand full comment
Ellen Burney's avatar

& also, now I’m thinking how the puffiness of the page-of-stickers you could buy was the ultimate luxury texture. And super-Ted stickers from the dentist. And star stickers in school books. ⭐️

Expand full comment
Psit Jewellery's avatar

I have a "sticker column" outside my shop. I want to put there stickers I like so anyone can enjoy them but sometimes they might take them with them (as have I, taken *ahem* rescued *ahem* stickers from lonely places to bring to my column. It's a constant exercise in letting go. I love it when people add to it (especially stickers I like) . Also, my laptop is my sticker showcase. Sadly, too little space...

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

This is such a nice idea!! So do they actually get stuck down, or are they pinned with their backing paper? Laptops are a good sticker showcase, but then what happens when it's time to get a new laptop?!? So fraught with worry!!

Expand full comment
Psit Jewellery's avatar

They all get properly stuck! And the laptop I have to part with the stickers when I change it. It's hard for some of them. I still remember a great one I had on my previous laptop: a babushka doll that lifted her dress and she had a manly chest with abs!

Expand full comment
Katie Clapham's avatar

Argh, Tor. I've been holding on to a sticker I got from the Studio Ghibli museum now for 18 years. I've got a Paul Frank Julius the monkey dressed as Adam Ant sticker I've had for decades. I WANT THEM TO LIVE THEIR BEST LIVES BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO STICK THEM.

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

It's a nightmare, isn't it. A NIGHTMARE!!! Maybe offer them to some kind of institution/museum where they can be displayed in a case, still not STUCK, but at least everyone could see them??? STICKER MUSEUM PLEASE!!!

Expand full comment
Ella Beech's avatar

Wow! I remember selling your coin collection. A long distant memory!

I seem to recall that I treated my stickers much like my other toys and games. Lost in the play-moment all logic is forgotten, and the stickers got stuck, the Barbie/Sindy hair got cut, only to realise that I had permanently put my sticker on the wrong page! Barbie/Sindy’s hair was then permanently in tufts and upright.

Also, the actual activity we used to make out of going to the shop just to look at and plan future sticker purchases. The holy relics that they were. Especially the fuzzy ones!

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

It really is isn't it!! 😂

And I reckon your attitude toward play is right - who wants to be the neurotic with stickers on their backings and Barbies/Sindys with long flowing hair?!

Such holy relics 😂😂😂 What can we get this excited about again - thoughts please!!

xxx

Expand full comment
KJ's avatar

Such sticker book memories! I can still smell the scratch-n-sniff ones in my mind's eye (nose)!

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

The amazing witchcraft of scratch-n-sniff!!

Expand full comment
Joe Berger's avatar

Love this, Tor. Stickers definitely featured prominently in my young life - I can still recall the smell of a sheet of scratch ‘n’ sniff pizza stickers I bought at Foolscap in Bristol (oregano basically). It was the early 80s era of scented gubbins - a Swiss roll flavoured eraser also lingers Proustian in my memory.

My first real collection *obsession* was Mad magazine, introduced to me by my sophisticated cousin in Oxford when I was about 12. I bought it obsessively for the next 5 years, along with back issues that required a postal order and a delay of at least 6 weeks to arrive. I still have them all, god help me, plus stacks of Mad paperbacks.

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

Scratch n sniff stickers were SO exciting weren't they. You're so right about the era of scented gubbins - I have a "theory" about why the 80s was a great time for childhood - that it was basically time when the line between adult and child taste totally blurred - everything was made of plastic, was tastelessly bright, lit up, was fun. All the stuff Tom Hanks filled his loft apartment with in Big, for grown-ups or kids... What a dreamy time!

I never got Mad magazine, I think that's so sophisticated of you! Imagine having to wait 6 weeks for anything now. It must have been amazingly exciting each time one arrived! Where do you keep them all??

Expand full comment
Joe Berger's avatar

I like your theory of the 80s - makes perfect sense to me. My Mad magazines are in a big pile in my studio with other later comics obsessions; superhero stuff then Love & Rockets, Eightball and Neat Stuff - more sophisticated indie comic fare :) I just dug out the first copy of Mad I bought, Jan '82, which has a fabulously garish cover - I'll put it on my insta in a mo ...

Expand full comment
Helen Hancocks's avatar

👌 Ahhh the ultimate dilemma with stickers. I have the commit phobia until I decided to stick them in my diary each year and then I got to see them on a regular basis but also they were used. This being said i still have a draw full of them 😂

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

A diary is a good idea... bet they are good joggers of your memory for what was happening at each time, too. I still have the amazing Bruegel temporary tattoos you sent me, for what occasion (maybe my own wedding?!?) could actually deserve them!

Expand full comment
Helen Hancocks's avatar

Oh I still have mine too, maybe a Brueghel inspired party ? 😂😬

Expand full comment
Danny's avatar

Love your art and your writing!

Thanks for sharing,

Danny

Cleveland Heights, OH

Expand full comment
Tor Freeman's avatar

Thank you Danny! Hello from overcast London!

Expand full comment
Reshu Singh's avatar

That's such an evocative portrait of Maud Wagner! I am in love with your work <3

Expand full comment