Obscure Horror Toys found on eBay!
While searching eBay for goodies to cover during this year’s Countdown, I discovered several items that were perfect in every way… except price. I’ll take a dive on certain items, but I gotta stop short of paying 400 bucks for rubber sharks.
Still, some of those items were just too cool not to feature here, so if you’ll pardon me for borrowing photos from faraway eBay sellers, I think you NEED to see these seven Halloween and horror toys from decades past. If you’re a fan of monsters who just happens to be flush, go make some bids. I’ll be jealous as fuck.
Titles below link to the auction listings, and if you’re seriously interested in any of this stuff, I assume that most sellers would be willing to haggle. The rest of us will satisfy ourselves by ogling from afar!
Halloween Monster!
Asking Price: $184.95
The Soma Toys company — no strangers to making bizarre figures with a quirky, generic appeal — really hit it out of the park with this guy. Originally (and more famously) known as 1986’s Monster Man, a quick upgrade to the packaging turned him into the official Halloween Monster!
He’s part of a larger series of similar figures, all equally weird, which seem to have been crafted as the low-rent, lower-price answer to Hasbro’s Inhumanoids.
It’s easily in the top ten figures that I simply MUST OWN before death, and while loose versions can be found for a hundred dollars cheaper, that tacky Halloween packaging is so worth paying double.
1975 Jaws Figure!
Asking Price: $399.99
As absurd as the asking price sounds, the truth is that vintage Jaws memorabilia really can sell for tons. (And the closer you get to the film’s debut year, the higher the price!)
Since that shark likely used the same mold as many other rubber sharks sold without movie branding, most of your money will be going towards the packaging. Even the most devoted and able fans may balk at paying four hundred bucks for a dollar store shark toy, but in certain niche circles, owning this would make you KING.
1980s Monster Meanies “Kong” Figure!
Asking Price: $175.00
Here’s another one that I’d kill — actually, literally kill — to own. You can’t get mad at these sellers for the high asking prices, since even if very few people are actively hunting such obscure toys, they’re still insanely rare. When it comes to figures like this, your choices are to pony up the big money, or wait a potential lifetime for sellers who don’t know what they have.
Actually, I’m not at all interested in the Kong-inspired bendy figure, but rather his packaging. That coloring book haunted castle, with its odd-colored buzzard and kidnapped princess, is all sorts of great. Not 175 dollars’ worth of great, but still.
Freddy Krueger Window Figure!
Price: $24.95
This one is reasonably priced, so if you’re a bigger Freddy Krueger fan than me, I urge you to buy it. After all, I’ve been scouring eBay for ANOES merchandise for almost fifteen years, and I’ve seen this weirdo exactly once.
The plastic head seems too well-molded for a bootleg, but the clothes tell a different story. I can’t imagine that a licensed Freddy Krueger doll would have him dressed like a cliched high school dropout from 1994, but then, what better way for Freddy to lull kids into a false sense of security?
1986 Weird Ball “Rockhead” Figure!
Asking Price: $239.95
Weird Ball, a little-known but super-inspired line of creatures that was immortalized in everything from trading cards to Madballs-esque toys, also had an all-out action figure assortment. These figures are ridiculously rare, so considering that this one is still packaged, I can’t fault the price.
Disregarding the history and taking this character at face value, he’s a mix of a Madball and an out-of-shape Rambo. If you can’t get behind that, you are no friend of mine.
1987 Boglins Mask!
Asking Price: $800.00
Oh, wow! As crude as it looks, this is a legitimate, licensed Boglins mask, complete with tags. I never even knew that such things existed until finding this auction, and I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time researching those monsters.
The seller actually has two different Boglins masks, both similarly styled, and both with the ginormous asking price. It’s hard to envision even the biggest fan parting with 800 dollars for this, but judging strictly by rarity, I can’t say that it’s not worth it. Some of the standard Boglins puppets routinely fetch more than a hundred bucks, and this is at least eight times rarer than those.
Ghostbusters Power Cycle!
Asking Price: $1000.00
Ghostbusters collectors are a ravenous bunch, so anything resembling a rare find almost always goes for a high price. Even so, there are limits, and I can’t describe this seller’s price as anything but wishful thinking. (At the same time, good luck finding another one of these!)
I don’t know if Power Cycles — or in generalized terms, plastic tricycles — are still a thing, but when I was a kid, everyone had one. (Mine was Gobots themed.) This particular version doesn’t seem very heavy on the action features, but it does have a sweet assortment of ghost stickers lining the front tire, as if it were a disc-shaped, dual-purpose containment unit. Nice!
So, let’s tally this up…
If you wanted to buy everything shown here, it’d cost you $2824.84… and that’s before shipping. Yikes. That’s like a week’s vacation in Disney World, resort, parks and all. Not sure that I’d pick making one dusty shelf more interesting over a week at the Polynesian, but… ehh that’s a lie. I’d totally take the toys.
PS: Check back tomorrow night for the seventh episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast!
