Horror Spitballs, from 1989!

The rumors are true. I have eight balls.

Made by Entertech in 1989, the SPITBALLS collection turned our favorite slashers, monsters and ghosts into… well, spitballs.

Each set came with two hollow rubber heads, with pinholes in the mouths. Squeeze ‘em underwater to fill ‘em up, and squeeze ‘em again to make ‘em… Jesus Christ, that’s too many ’ems. What I’m trying to say is that they SHOOT WATER, over a purported distance of eighteen feet. I don’t think I need to test that; Entertech was clearly exaggerating.

Would you look at this lot? Freddy Krueger! Jason Voorhees! Slimer! Dracula! Turning such beloved murderers into tiny squirt heads might seem like a waste of the licensing fees, but I look at it like this: While there are plenty of action figures for each of these characters, there’s only one Spitball.

The Freddy and Jason sets are my favorites, and for every possible reason.

Let’s start with the packaging. Both franchises had a sort of evolving style guide, but this is NOES and F13 at their visual best. I love it when Freddy has that whole “Photon arena” vibe, and I love it when Jason looks like he’s celebrating the Bicentennial.

Each slasher came with a “victim” Spitball. Freddy’s looks a bit like Pee-wee Herman. Note the slash mark on Pee-wee’s face, and how the wound is both red and yellow. I can understand Entertech wanting to dilute the gore, but there’s a difference between toning things down and making it seem like Freddy was a hot dog vendor gone wackadoo.

Jason’s victim doesn’t look like anybody famous, but he does look like someone who is desperately – and I mean desperately – trying to shit. This would make much more sense if he resembled Miguel Nunez.

The “Monster Spitballs” pale in comparison to the others… at least until you look closely at the packaging, and realize that Dracula and Frankenstein are settling their differences with self-indulgent squirt heads. Swoon!

Last but by no means least, Slimer and the Ecto-1 (!!!) star in The Real Ghostbusters set. Slimer is great because Slimer is always great, but that super-deformed Ecto-1 might be the best Spitball Entertech ever made. It looks like something you might see rolling around in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and from there, it’s only a short leap to imagine Ernie Hudson teaching that bitchy lady puppet how to make paper mache. A Fucking Plus.

Every Spitballs set had a pictorial tutorial on the back of the card. The fact that they drew pictures of a process so self-explanatory is bested only by the fact that they drew pictures of a RUBBER FREDDY KRUEGER HEAD, SQUIRTING WATER.

So now I have a pile of terrifying water-squirting heads. And one car.

This is the first day of the rest of my life.

Also, “Entertech” sounds like robots selling donuts.