The Mausoleum of Madness, Part II!
Welcome to Dinosaur Dracula’s MAUSOLEUM OF MADNESS, PART II! Every day through Halloween, check back for another vintage creepy collectible – everything from deep cut toys to ancient store displays to at least one totally insane costume. Probably ten cereal boxes, too.
I won’t be plugging this on social media much, so you’ll have to remember to visit on your own. Maybe stick an orange Post-It on the fridge. (Yes, it must be orange.)
PS, if you missed last year’s Mausoleum of Madness, it’s over here.
#29: Los Temblors! (1991)
Of the three creeps shown above, two are stuffed monsters from the little-known Los Temblors collection — a Spanish riff on My Pet Monster.
Google tells me that “Temblors” is Spanish for “tremors,” which was a fitting name for battery-operated dolls that rattled erratically while blasting that same “sonic sound” so many cheap Halloween toys made famous.
The line had its own dedicated TV commercial, frantically illustrating how weird and awesome these guys were. While some elements were clearly borrowed from My Pet Monster – the neon fuzz and the plastic chains – they still felt distinct enough to graduate from “knockoffs” into something bigger.
I got lucky on a price for this working pair a while ago, but Los Temblors are generally very expensive. As far as I know, they were never available in the States, except maybe in border towns where informal trades of crops and vibrating monster dolls were common.
Today, discussion of these toys is mostly confined to the My Pet Monster collecting community. Turns out that a lot of different toymakers made a lot of different dolls that took inspo from him. Having seen many of them, I say with confidence that Los Temblors are on the higher-end of the spectrum. If you’re looking to splurge, you could do a lot worse than these screaming, shaking, furry acid trips.
#28: Halloween Devil Shaker! (1980s)
Can we go back to the era when Halloween decorations looked like this? Simple yet totally demented?
This wild-haired devil was part of a series of what collectors call “Shakers” – battery-operated hanging figures that light up, make noise, and violently vibrate until you turn them off. There were a million of them from many companies, but the best ones looked like cursed artifacts that might come alive and kill you.
Despite being kinda edgy by today’s standards, decorations like this were sold just about everywhere. You could be in the world’s friendliest mom-and-pop pharmacy, and you’d still find a pile of these guys situated right next to the spinning rack of sympathy cards. (Pick me up some Pine Bros throat drops while you’re there.)
While there are plenty of Halloween Shakers on the market, and most are cheap, you’ll need a lot of luck to find this version. He doesn’t turn up often. Besides, whenever the next one does, you’ll have to fight me for it. And I’m not above biting you.
#27: Halloween Ding Dongs! (2003)
I love that Hostess still does Halloween stuff, but I miss how hard they used to go on the packaging. 2003 was a particularly strong year for them, evidenced by this breathtaking box of Ding Dongs. (Now there’s a sentence that hasn’t been written before.)
While the Ding Dongs were unchanged from the norm – except for rebranding the creme filling as “s’cream filling” – this was a case where a simple box revamp carried the load just fine. I’ve seen most of Hostess’s spooky packaging from the early 2000s, and what strikes me is how the designs all looked like they were from the early ‘90s. Like, the ghosts on this box were way too pure to have lived through WWE’s Attitude Era.
So why are today’s Halloween Hostess boxes comparatively tame? I don’t know. Streamlined branding, market research, take your pick. Maybe ghosts that look like they were plucked from a 1995 Geocities clipart page just don’t have as much clout in 2025. A pity!
#26: Haunted Halloween Party! (1986)
This was one of the first Choose Your Own Adventure books I ever bought, from an elementary school book fair. I picked it because in my mind, that three-eyed pig costume on the cover had to be a reference to Ree-Yees from Return of the Jedi. (It wasn’t.)
Regardless, I loved the book, which told the story of two siblings who end up at a Halloween party full of real actual monsters. While I can’t recall many other plot details, I’m confident that there were some genuinely creepy endings. Hell, even Choose Your Own Adventure books that didn’t have the word “haunted” in the title had those.
There was a certain feeling I remember experiencing as a kid, right after I’d read or watched something that was outside my comfort zone. It was a moment of strange silence – like that split second between when you stub your toe and the pain sets in. The Choose Your Own Adventure series gave me that feeling pretty often. When one of these books dealt you a “bad ending,” it didn’t play around.
The “bad endings” were never terribly graphic, but they could hint at things that were. Upon reading one, the lights in my childhood bedroom suddenly seemed to dim. The window creaks grew louder, the air gained a chill, and when I could finally muster the courage to look up from that blondish page…
The End.
#25: Kellogg’s Ghost Detector! (1989)
Flashback to 1989, when a few different Kellogg’s cereals – like Apple Jacks – came with a free GHOST DETECTOR. These were thin pieces of paper that looked like various ghouls. If the paper magically curled up when placed in your palm, it meant YOU HAD GHOSTS.
In actuality, the heat-sensitive paper always curled, and worked on the same principle as those old “Fortune Teller Fish” toys. Kellogg’s did not instruct kids on how to handle the prospect of sharing space with malevolent entities from beyond the grave, confident that while they had a legal duty to post nutritional info, ghosts were firmly out of their jurisdiction.
The Ghost Detectors were a September/October thing, and joined a long line of cereal prizes that were clearly meant to tie in with the Halloween season, even without any formal mentions of it. (I’m guessing that was because cereal didn’t expire quickly, and the companies didn’t want people to stop buying boxes on November 1st just because they had stray jack-o’-lantern graphics in a far corner.)
#24: Rolling Bendable Bladers! (1993)
“Rolling Bendable Bladers” is what happens when you can’t legally say “Rollerbladers” but don’t want to invest more than twenty seconds on an alternative. IT’S CLUNKY, is what I mean.
This was released in 1993, when inline skating was the coolest thing going. Made by Spearhead under their “Creepy Creatures” banner, this ridiculous skeleton turned up in toy stores, department stores, pharmacy chains – basically any place that had a kid-targeted Halloween section.
(Spearhead was already a big costume supplier, so it was easy for them to spread little skeleton figures like a virus. You know how Viacom wouldn’t give cable providers Comedy Central unless they also took Spike TV? Well Spearhead wouldn’t send Kmart vampire makeup unless they also bought Rolling Bendable Bladers.)
Back then, there were far fewer Halloween novelties that passed as “real” toys. On the action figure front, this was about as close as you could get. Skatin’ Skelly isn’t much by 2025 standards, but when you were a kid in CVS’s seasonal aisle, and the only other toys were coloring books and orange-and-black jelly bracelets, he was practically Optimus Prime.
#23: Kellogg’s Snack-Pak Ad! (1954)
Kellogg’s Snack-Paks were multipacks of single-serve cereal boxes. They’d later be rebranded as Fun Paks, which are still sold today. (The single-serve cups have become more popular than the boxes, but they’re still on shelves if you look!)
This magazine ad from the ‘50s pitched them as the perfect thing for trick-or-treaters, and I’m here to fully endorse that idea. When I was a kid, I would’ve loved to get a little box of cereal on Halloween. Maybe not from every house, but a few well-placed hits of Corn Pops and Honey Smacks would’ve been a welcome departure from the norm.
I’ve said it time and time again. We all had our favorite candies, and we knew which ones were “worth” the most in street cred, but working some variety into your treat sack was essential. Like, Snickers might’ve been your top pick, but it would’ve been pretty boring to go home on Halloween with nothing but those, right?
Seriously thinking about taking this 69-year-old ad’s advice and handing out cereal when the kids come knocking on October 31st. I have no idea if I’ll be heralded as a hero or vilified as the neighborhood idiot. In truth, they’ll probably just think I forgot to buy candy. I don’t care! I’m doing it!
#22: Walgreens Halloween Circular! (1989)
Here’s a positively stunning Sunday circular from Walgreens, which landed on doorsteps just before Halloween in 1989. Remember how Gumby could walk into books and live in their worlds? My version would be using old newspaper ads to teleport into pharmacies.
There are a lot of goodies on this page. If you haven’t noticed them yet, it’s probably because you’re laser-focused on that “HALLOWEEN” logo, magnificently misshapen and surrounded by bats. I don’t blame you.
Let’s start with the candy. Miraculously, every single one of those things is still in production. Even the 5th Avenue bars, which have somehow survived despite nobody referencing them in over 15 years.
Then there’s that swank Real Ghostbusters treat bag, which would’ve been the perfect Halloween accessory for any kid who planned to dress like Ray, Egon, or Murray the Mantis. (Though it did appear to have a construction more in line with gift bags, so I hope that shit didn’t rip while trick-or-treating!)
Finally, there’s a smattering of cheap horror videos. During the Halloween season, they were as common a sight as Tylenol in pharmacies. In addition to expected titles like Day of the Dead and Amityville 3-D, Walgreens decided that Rodan and Son of Godzilla fit the bill for Halloween. I won’t argue.
Your challenge: It’s 1989, and I’ve blessed you with $25 to blow at Walgreens. Study this page closely, and decide what you’re buying!
#21: Garfield and the Halloween Party! (1990)
God, this pushes so many of my nostalgia buttons. I lived for these square books as a kid, which spanned endless topics but always had this same shape, plus that irresistible bonus of “12 collector stickers,” affixed to a sheet right under the front cover.
Such books were staples of elementary school book fairs, and I couldn’t get enough of them. Course, it helped that so many of the titles would’ve grabbed my attention even without the promise of free stickers. From pro-wrestling to Ghostbusters, all of my favorite things seemed to have a book like this.
That included Garfield, who actually had several of this sort. This was easily the best of them, because by 1990, Garfield and Halloween were firmly established as peanut butter and jelly. (His creepy cartoon special had been running annually since 1985, and even five years later, it still ruled over the season.)
If you’re wondering what Garfield and the Halloween Party is actually about, let’s have Grade School Matt answer that question:
“I don’t know, I tore the stickers out and now I can’t find the book.”
