In 1986, Topps (now smack dab in the middle of Garbagepailomania), had began to hatch a plan to sell a vending candy and toy product with several of their characters. Desginated "Cheap Toys" after an insider term for this sort of product, inside of a small plastic trash bag you would recieve one figure as well as Necco candy wafers embossed with GPK names. These entered the test market in the earlier half of 1986, and in late 1986 / early 1987, they would launch into mass production.
Though only ten were in the first series, Topps and Hong Kong based Candy Novelty Works who were actually doing the manufacturing had already designed (at least!) another ten for a series two. Alas, a roadblock quickly came in the form of a lawsuit from Xaiver Roberts, the creator of Cabbage Patch Kids. Though in the modern day GPK would be totally covered by fair use and parody, in 1987, this lawsuit would have Topps completely overhaul the basic character design. This obviously lead to a problem in releasing series two, as the sculpts still had Cabbage Patch faces! The workaround was to offsource the toys production and release to exclusively Canada through a small French-Canadian brand known as Novo Bonbon. These are extremely rare, and came in a completely unique plastic to their US counterparts, with a much more vibrant hue in color. Novo Bonbon for unknown reasons also used the series ones molds very sparingly, these are even rarer.
As well as the US and Canada, some level of EU distribution also took place. Most of this was centralized to the UK under the name "The Garbage Gang." These were released by Topps Ireland. These figures can also be quite rare and valuable, and have unique color variants. A release also made it to northern Europe.