The original cover for Ugly Kid Joe’s America’s Least Wanted puts the band’s cartoon mascot—usually a scrappy kid in a backwards cap— into the role of the Statue of Liberty, flipping the middle finger. It’s deliberately provocative and tongue-in-cheek, mirroring the band’s irreverent humor and the album’s title (a satirical twist on America’s Most Wanted). By turning a revered national symbol into something mischievous and confrontational, the artwork gleefully subverts patriotic imagery. Some pressings leaned even harder into the shock factor, swapping the torch or Declaration for an adult magazine.
The illustration was created by Moish Brennan, a high-school friend of vocalist Whitfield Crane who helped shape the band’s early visual identity. After retailer complaints over the offensive imagery, a censored cover was issued—showing the mascot bound, gagged, and chained with the gesture hidden (an image that originally appeared on the back cover of the uncensored version). Several major U.S. chains reportedly refused to stock the original artwork, which helped push the censored cover into wider distribution.
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