Vintage 1980s Crater Face Gross-Out Monster Pin 📌 Cratered Grimace Pinback Button, Weird Retro Collectible

Size: 1.5 inches

🤢 Crater Face — Gloriously, Cheerfully Disgusting

Some things are supposed to be beautiful. This is not one of them, and that is the entire point. Meet Crater Face, a vintage 1980s gross-out pin-back button starring a lumpy, cratered, grimacing little monster head that looks like it crawled straight out of the decade when "gross" was the coolest thing a kid could be. It is a small, bright, wearable slice of that era's most gleefully revolting toy trend, and it is exactly the kind of thing that made grown-ups groan and kids grin from ear to ear.

Everything described here comes straight from the photographs, so what you see is precisely what will arrive. There is no invented backstory, no made-up maker, and no claim this pin cannot back up. Just an honest, funny, wonderfully ugly little collectible from the golden age of the gross-out.

👀 What You Are Actually Looking At

The art is a close-up of a bald, bulbous monster head rendered in that soft painted style the era loved. The skin is a pinkish, sickly tan, and true to the name it is pitted all over with dark craters and pockmarks, like the surface of a very unfortunate moon. A heavy, furrowed brow scowls down over two small, mismatched eyes — one glaring, one half-drooping — above a squashed little nose. The real showstopper is the mouth: a wide, straining grimace that bares a row of striped, rotten-looking teeth, with a smear of greenish drool creeping from one corner. A bruised purple outline runs all the way round the head, and printed clearly along the rim is the character's name: CRATER FACE.

It is a genuinely great piece of gross-out art — committed, detailed, and just cartoonish enough to be funny rather than frightening. This is a monster you laugh at, not one you hide from.

🎨 A Closer Look at the Art

It is worth slowing down on the artwork, because there is real craft in it. This is painted, not just drawn — soft, textured, and slightly grimy in the way the best gross-out art always was. The craters are shaded little pits rather than flat dots, each with a dark centre and a raised, sore-looking rim, and they are scattered unevenly so the whole head reads as genuinely afflicted. The two mismatched eyes — one glaring, one drooping — throw the face charmingly off balance, and the striped, straining teeth with their smear of green drool are the punchline the whole design builds toward. Even the bruised purple line around the edge is doing work, framing the head and pushing the colours. For a pocket-money pin, it is a surprisingly committed little portrait.

🧷 Made to Be Worn

The pin-back button is one of the great democratic objects of pop culture. Cheap to make and endlessly wearable, it has been the way fans have flown their flags for a century — and in the 1980s, a button on a denim jacket or a backpack strap was a genuine social signal on any playground. A kid wearing Crater Face was making a small, gleeful statement: that they were in on the joke, that they liked the gross stuff, that they were not going to be told monsters were too disgusting for the fridge door. That is the spirit this little button still carries. Wear it and it does exactly what it was born to do — catch an eye, start a grin, and find the other people who think a cratered, grimacing monster is the best thing they have seen all day.

💀 A Small Survivor

Objects like this were never meant to last. They were made cheap, sold cheaper, and treated as disposable fun — which is exactly why a bright, unworn Crater Face turning up decades later is a small pleasure. Most were pinned on, worn to pieces and lost; the ones that survive intact tend to be the ones that were tucked away and forgotten, like this one. There is a quiet charm in that: a throwaway little monster that somehow made it through, colours still sharp, ready to be enjoyed all over again.

🕰️ The Craze It Came From

For a few glorious years in the mid-1980s, disgusting was the whole marketing plan. In 1985 the toy company AmToy launched Madballs — squishy foam balls molded into hideous grinning faces — and the same year Topps unleashed Garbage Pail Kids, the sticker-card sensation that turned cute Cabbage Patch babies into oozing, exploding little horrors. Parents were appalled. Kids were obsessed. That, of course, only made the whole thing more irresistible. A wave of copycats, tributes and unlicensed spin-offs followed, and cheap pin-back buttons like this one were the most affordable way for a kid to carry a piece of the craze around on a jacket or a backpack.

Crater Face belongs to that wider gross-out moment. It is an independent tribute pin made in the spirit of the trend rather than an official Madballs or Garbage Pail Kids product — and that little bit of outsider-art charm is part of what makes it fun.

🔍 An Honest Look at the Back

Turn the pin over and you get the plain truth of it. It is a classic pin-back button: a metal shell with the printed art sealed under a domed clear film on the front, and on the back a dark gunmetal surface fitted with a working gold-tone steel safety pin. Here is where I stay straight with you — there is no maker's name, no company logo, and no copyright or trademark mark anywhere on this pin. That absence is exactly why I do not, and will not, call it an official Madballs or Garbage Pail Kids button. It carries no such licensing, and I will not pretend otherwise. What it is, honestly and completely, is an unbranded 1980s gross-out tribute pin, with its own character name printed on the face and nothing on the back but the pin itself.

📏 Size and Scale

This is a compact, wearable button — roughly an inch and a quarter across, comfortably larger than a US quarter. So you never have to take my word for it, several of the photographs include a real quarter set beside the pins for scale; line them up and the true size is obvious at a glance.

✨ Condition

It presents beautifully. The printed colours are bright and unfaded, the domed film over the art is clean and glossy, and the safety pin on the back is intact and works exactly as it should. It reads as unused old store stock — bright, crisp and unworn, with only the light, ordinary handling you would expect from a small object that has spent its life tucked away rather than pinned to a jacket. As with any genuine vintage piece, tiny surface signs of age can be present, and the photographs are the definitive record; what you see is what you will receive. Offered exactly as pictured, nothing altered and nothing hidden.

💡 Ways to Enjoy It

• 🧥 Wear it the way it was meant to be worn — on a denim jacket, a hoodie, a hat, a tote bag or a backpack strap — for an instant hit of retro gross-out attitude.
• 🖼️ Pin it into a shadow box or a frame alongside other monster and gross-out pins to build a whole wall of cheerful ugliness.
• 🎁 Give it to the friend with the darkest sense of humour, the horror-movie fan, or the kid who thinks slime and monsters are the greatest things ever invented.
• 📌 Drop it on a corkboard, a lanyard or a battle vest as a weird, grinning conversation starter.
• 🤢 Or just keep it as what it is — a small, honest, wonderfully disgusting piece of 1980s pop culture.

❓ Questions Worth Answering

Is this an official Madballs or Garbage Pail Kids pin?

No. There is no maker, brand or copyright mark anywhere on it, so I describe it honestly as an unlicensed tribute pin made in the spirit of that 1980s gross-out craze — not official AmToy or Topps product.

Does the pin say "Crater Face" on it?

Yes. The character name CRATER FACE is printed right on the front rim, and it is quoted here because it is genuinely there in the art.

How big is it?

About an inch and a quarter across. A US quarter appears beside the pins in the photos so you can judge the exact size.

What condition is it in?

Bright, glossy and unworn, with a clean working safety pin, presenting as old store stock. Offered exactly as pictured.

🧼 Keeping It Bright

A pin like this asks almost nothing of you. The one firm rule is to leave the printed front alone — never clean it with water, sprays or abrasives, because the thin domed film sealed over the artwork can cloud or lift, and that cannot be undone. A soft, dry dusting is all it will ever need. Keep the metal back dry, since damp is the enemy of any steel pin, and if you are storing rather than wearing it, lay it flat in a sleeve, a button box or a display case so nothing rubs the face. Treated gently, it will look exactly as it does today for many years.

💀 Why It Is Worth Having

Some collectibles are prized for being rare and expensive. This one is worth having because it is real, funny and true to its moment — a genuine 1980s gross-out pin with its own grinning, cratered monster and its own printed name, preserved in bright, unworn shape. It carries no invented pedigree and needs none. What it offers is the thing itself: a small, honest, wearable piece of the decade when being disgusting was the height of cool. Crater Face is ready for his next jacket.