This set is designed to poke a bit of gentle fun, or satirise wildly, some common household products. Several companies so parodied were not that happy, and some cards were subsituted. This led to a whole lot of confusion, but stick with me. It seems to only appear in our original British Trade Index, part three, published in 1986. That says :
TOH-18
Wacky Packages - 1975 Issue. 89x 63. Two series, inscribed "Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., Prtd in U.S.A."
1. 1st Series of 38, in two sections
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(1) Back with series title and checklist of the 29 subjects in part 2. Nine subjects. Fronts sectional cards forming a puzzle picture.
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(2) Plain backs, without series title. Sticker cards, front per TOH-18.1. 29 subjects as per checklist on backs of part 1
2. 2nd Series of 38, in two sections
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(1) Back with series title and checklist of the 29 subjects in part 2. Dated 1975. Nine subjects. Fronts sectional cards forming a puzzle picture.
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(2) Plain backs, without series title. Sticker cards, front per TOH-18.1. 29 subjects as per checklist on backs of part 1
Directly beneath this is
TOH-19 :
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Wacky Packages - 1979 Issue. 89x 63. Front per TOH-19, inscribed "Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., Prtd in U.S.A.". Nd.(66) Backs with sectional picture, or "Wacky Packages - Series No.1 Checklist", with list of the 66 subjects.
Now American collectors say that this set, or sets, started in 1967, and that the first ones were cut to shape rather than being the black outlined shape on a white card, like ours, which followed in the early 1970s. The idea was that in the middle of the black outline was a pre-cut line and you peeled the sticker part out of the inside leaving half the line and the white card behind, and if you look at ours you can hopefully see this clearly. And someone has already contacted me, on seeing the front alone, to say that there is a great resource online at Wikipedia/Wacky - as well as a whole website devoted to them at https://wackypacks.com where we find ours, listed as being from the 7th series of 1974. However it is entirely possible that we did not get them over here until 1975.