Halloween 2013

Oof. This one’s gonna be bittersweet for me. I’ll tell you why in a minute. Guys, it’s Shrunken Apple Head’s TENTH birthday! Shrunken Apple Head first appeared on X-Entertainment in 2003, as part of my ill-fated attempt to review an ancient Vincent Price “Shrunken Head” kit wit

Holy shit, it’s Halloween. Finally? Already?! The 2013 Halloween Countdown isn’t over yet (COME BACK TONIGHT!), but I hope you enjoyed it. More importantly, I hope you enjoyed the whole damn season. I know I have. Usually, Halloween gets here, and there’s a tiny voice inside me screa

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 sq

Rocks & Bugs & Things may very well be the strangest toy line of all time. Made by Ideal in 1985, there was nothing typical about these “hungry hunters with hidden horrors.” This much should be obvious just by looking at the box. No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. No

I’ve been absent for a few days, owing to several minor things that snowballed at the WORST POSSIBLE TIME. The assumption is that life went on without those three or four extra posts about candy and costumes. In any event, now I’m back, and I have more Classic Creepy Commercials! Here�

Okay, this has gotta be the weirdest edition of Vintage Vending yet. LOOK AT THIS THING! No formal title for the collection was provided, I guess because “Bugs & Fish Guts” would’ve been more polarizing than fetching. Everything about it is off. I’ll describe the indivi

After spending half of August gushing over Monster Cereals, I deliberately took a break from covering them – even as those swank retro boxes started piling up at Target. Please don’t confuse my silence with dispassion. I bought those fuckers in bulk the second I saw them. Even over a m

Halloween is JUST TOO CLOSE. Since it falls on a Thursday, I can’t shake the feeling that everything will putter out like the last season of Heroes. For all intents, Halloween is this weekend, and that is JUST TOO CLOSE. So I’m sort of just grabbing at everything now, determined to do

With another assist from Larry P., here’s the next batch of Classic Creepy Commercials! (You’ve read Volume 1, right?) Exactly zero of these have any clear link to the Halloween season, and yet, all of them are undeniably Halloweeny. If you’re in need of a late October sp

Madd Matt sure spent a long time making this video! Never heard of Spider Bites? Made by Topps in 1990, it was a collection of ghoulish spider figurines that dispensed awful, colorful candy. They came in a really great box! Thank you.

I’m back with another edition of “hey here are some videos sitting around the house that are tangentially related to Halloween.” Enjoy, and make sure you've read parts one and two!

The Vintage Vending series returns with an incredibly seasonal addition. From 1994, get a load of the HALLOWEEN HORRORS collection! We’ve seen better prizes in the past, but on card art alone, this may be my favorite entry yet. I’ve seen plenty of vending assortments with “horror”

Okay guys, I have some big news. But before you get too excited, there’s a pretty major catch. MOUNTAIN DEW PITCH BLACK IS BACK! Yup. No joke. That’s a 2013 can of Halloween’s unofficially official soda. But here’s the catch… You’ll need to import it from freakin’ Malaysi

Without meaning to, I’ve amassed a pretty diverse collection of Freddy Krueger merchandise. I guess the best explanation is that it’s very easy to do. Especially in his heyday, Freddy Krueger really stood apart from his slasher brethren on the merchandise front. His steady evolution in

Introducing GORZAK, one of the best toys you’ve never heard of. Made by Tyco in 1994, the battery-operated behemoth stood around fifteen inches tall, feeling much like a cousin of the Inhumanoids. Here’s the commercial, but I warn you: Nobody can watch this without making the acquisiti

This article is about GUM. New gum and old gum. I’m grouping them together because they’re brothers from different mothers. The Big League Chew packages are new for 2013, while the mysterious “Shreds” are… well, actually, I have no idea when they’re from. 1977? 1995? All I know

If you were reading last year, you’ll probably remember the Creepy Commercials Countdown, where I did reallllly long reviews of old spooky commercials all throughout October. Given my failure to keep it updated last year, discontinuing the feature wasn’t a tough call. It took a little

Hungry? Try these! I’m calling them Screamin’ Pumpkin Spice Chips Ahoywiches. When you can’t come up with something clever, come up with something long. Shown above is everything you’ll need. You could swap every ingredient out for another and make some other bizarre Halloween ice

While killing a few minutes at Walmart last night, I stumbled upon a costume that I could NOT leave without. This one: The UNKNOWN PHANTOM costume! The chances of me actually needing a Halloween costume this year are slim, but who could turn this down? It’s a full-body reaper outfit with

It’s October. Officially October. Undeniably October. I’m happy it’s here, but I’m also petrified. The Halloween season is moving so FAST this year! September flew by in what felt like a week, and I’m sure October will be no different. Be sure to make the most of it, guys. A good

October is just around the corner, which, of course, is our universal signal to kick our spooky celebrations into second gear. I have much to prepare, so pardon me if I rush through this! Everyone knows about the Goosebumps books and TV series, but have you ever seen the amazing merchandis

I’ve been scouting Toaster Strudel for years now, waiting for Pillsbury to come out with the inevitable  “Halloween edition.”  Well, they finally did it! Course, it’s not as much a Halloween edition as an autumn edition, and even then, it’s not very explicit. Whatever. I don’

I saw House on Haunted Hill on its opening night – October 29th, 1999. A stone’s throw from the last Halloween of the ‘90s. I wonder if that’s why I have such fond memories of it? I really do. I think it’s amazing. Too many people focus on its admittedly dopey ending, and forget

If Imperial’s “Classic Movie Monsters” seem vaguely familiar… GOOD. That’s the best way to describe them. “Vaguely familiar.” The small collection of laaaarge Universal Monsters figures arrived in 1986, and in one way or another, I’m convinced that everyone on the planet ha

On Saturday night, a bunch of us went to Times Scare New York City, a restaurant slash haunted house that I’ve been spying on for years. This group also included my friends from Freddy in Space and The Sexy Armpit, so before I get too deep into the more boring parts of this review, let m