Well it was a lovely Friday night extravaganza at the Brain Power Awards this year. I drank a whole bottle of champagne myself (hic). Unfortunately however, 2001 was a terrible year for wacky pack research. Though the hobby itself saw no loss of blood, reasearch-wise, all of the big hitters from 2000 disappeared from the scene. Is Scott, who was so prolific in 2000, past his prime? Did he burn himself out in 2000 with his amazing record of discoveries? Or does he just no longer have the youth to do the really deep contemplation necessary? But not just him, nobody seems to have been doing much thinking last year. Why this is, nobody knows, but the fact is, save a very few worthy nominations, the brain power research last year was just plain pathetic. In fact Fanatical and Sickly's amazing nine nominations make up 80% of the 2001 scholarship. Already the first quarter of 2002 has been more interesting than the entire year last year, and things only seem to be heating up. Look for stiff competition this year.

The committee had to deliberate for a total of 8 minutes. Because of the status of wacky pack scholarship last year we return to the two basic categories:

AWARD (1) Brainiest discovery. This means the discovery that took the most ingenuity and sheer brain power to solve. Something that may not otherwise have been discovered for a long time, but not necessarily something that has the most impact.

Third place runner up is: Tom Moore, his keen and acute perception led to the discovery that maybe the art was touched up on Bandage where the word "REPAIR" may have been replacing another word which may have been "SMOKE." Very cool discovery, and Tom is now the only collector to ever have been nominated on two separate years, with one award already on his shelf, who knows, this might be a dynasty.

Second place runner up is: Fanatical and Sickly and his ever so astucious Quake and Ache/2nd proof sheet discovery (BUSTEDFINGER gets honorable mention for keeping the topic alive).

And now......

First place: There really is no competition, the by far and away most brainy wacky research was conducted last year was by none other than Paul Maul and his 1st checklist order/1st sheet configuration grand wacky unified theory (WUT). Historians are referred to post 1214.1. Of course as typical in science, the WUT left a few loose ends untied, a challenge for future generations to unravel.

AWARD (2) The discovery that has the most impact on the hobby in both a deep and a broad sense.

Basically the committee was at a near total loss on this one. Nothing of deep and broad impact occurred last year. But taking what did happen and ranking it in terms of importance, we have no choice but to award the 2002 impact and relevance award to Fanatical and Sickly for the discovery of the very last 1977 sticker, Botch. Congratulations Fanatical, you're adamance paid off, you will be famous for Wacky Pack eternity.