The Mausoleum of Madness!
Welcome to Dino Drac’s Mausoleum of Madness! Here you’ll find daily drops of creepy collectibles from my personal collection, all never previously seen on the site. Everything from eerie ephemera to terrifying toys. There are some major gems waiting to be featured here! Feature now complete for the season!
#14: McNugget Buddies Display! (1996)
This display once stood in a McDonald’s restaurant, there to promote the 1996 series of Halloween McNugget Buddies. It’s huge, cardboard and cumbersome, and I’ll spend my remaining days failing to find the right place for it.
Compared to the more iconic 1993 set of Halloween McNugget Buddies, things got pretty weird in ‘96. The costumes included a spider, a rock star, a fairy princess, a dragon, a space alien, and Ronald McDonald himself.
The six have absolutely nothing in common, save for the fact that they’re all anthropomorphized chunks of fried chicken. Course, now that I’ve typed that, it sure seems like enough.
PS, check out Ronald’s hair on that display. Has it ever looked better? You could run that on a box of Feria. My compliments to his stylist.
#13: Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes! (1983)
Did you know that there was an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes game for the Atari? Well, kind of. Released in 1983, Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes had no formal ties to the film, but it was obviously based on it. Anyone who says otherwise is a big stupid gaslighter.
The object of the game was to build walls around a horde of mutant, missile-firing tomatoes before they could take over the world. This being the Atari era, the graphics were quite modest, though they did an admirable job of at least making the tomatoes look like tomatoes.
As was usually the case with Atari, the concept was mostly sold through the box art, which was gorgeous. Interestingly, despite not being a canonical part of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes lore, the box feels like concept art for the action figure collection, which wouldn’t arrive for another seven years!
#12: Insane Beetlejuice Mask! (1989)
Since everyone is seeing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this weekend, it seemed like the right time to show off this extremely bizarre mask. Several online sellers say it’s a Don Post creation from 1989, and since there are no markings anywhere on the thing, I’ll just have to trust them on that.
It’s a particularly ghastly take on Beetlejuice. Between the platinum hair and bright red lips, it looks more like a zombie Breathless Mahoney from Dick Tracy. I have zero complaints about that. The weirder the better!
Honestly, it’s such an extreme look, I’m left wondering if this was even an official Beetlejuice mask. It’s high-quality by the era’s standards, but I suppose there’s a chance that it wasn’t actually licensed. Whatever the case, the stink of latex screams “Halloween” to me as loud as any pumpkin candle. I love this creepy thing.
#11: Telco Pumpkin Ghost! (1989)
Telco’s Motion-ettes of Halloween were large figures that moved, lit up and blared spooky sound effects on the power of two “C” batteries. They arrived in the ‘80s, and quickly became the chicest Halloween decorations at Kmart.
I’d collected a few of them this past year, but spurred by a discussion on the latest Purple Stuff bonus show, I finally took the plunge and bought the one I wanted most: This “Pumpkin Ghost,” a spin on the classic sheet ghost.
He arrived yesterday, and seeing him in person brought a few surprises. For one thing, his head is huge! I was expecting a head the size of an orange, but it’s really more like a grapefruit. Specifically one of those grapefruits that are so gigantic, you hesitate to slice it because no one person can eat that much grapefruit.
That was in the plus column. In the minus column was the second surprise. See, I knew he was going to make that same theremin-based “sonic” noise so many other Halloween novelties make… but I had no idea that it’d be so loud.
For whatever reason, he’s way louder than my other Telco figures. You could use this thing to alert a ship crew to a tidal emergency. If I left it on for five minutes, I think Rodan, Scylla and Methuselah would circle my apartment, waiting for further instructions.
That aside, he is a wonderful addition to my decor, and a promising new friend.
#10: Wendy’s Play-Doh Fingles! (1989)
Wendy’s is making a play to be the star of the 2024 Halloween season, but this isn’t the first time they’ve danced with the devil. Back in 1989, they gave out these super cool Play-Doh “Fingles” sets!
This was a collection of plastic molds that let you create creepy Play-Doh finger puppets. Each set came with one mold and a can of glow-in-the-dark Play-Doh. (I know it was non-toxic, but as the former east coast champ of Play-Doh eating, I gotta wonder if the glowing version was less safe than the regular stuff.)
There were six molds in all, including a cat, pumpkin, ghost, bat, witch, and then one only referred to as “monster,” who kinda looked like a bloated vampire. He was special to me.
Kenner was desperately trying to make this Play-Doh “Fingles” concept work at retail, so they really invested in these samples. The winners were, of course, kids who preferred square beef patties over Chicken McNuggets.
#9: Monster Catch Game! (1988)
Easily one of my weirdest finds, here’s a spooky spin on the classic magnetic fishing game that we’ve all played a million times. The setup and mechanics are the same, but in this edition, the fish are all UNDEAD ZOMBIES, which swim in a literal POOL OF BLOOD that’s called – get this – “EVIL DEMONS LAKE.”
I’m not making that up. A sticker on the base literally says it. EVIL DEMONS LAKE!
Loving the contrast between the happy-go-lucky boy, and that ominous line of text near his head. “CATCH MONSTERS FROM THE GRAVE!”
Where did this thing come from?! I guess whoever made it saw how flooded the “magnetic fishing game” market was, and reasoned that the only way to stand out was by adding gore and necromancy.
#8: McD’s Treat Certificates Sign! (1998)
This double-sided die-cut sign once hung from the ceiling at McDonald’s, to promote that year’s books of Halloween Treat Certificates.
I still say that those certificates were some of the best things a trick-or-treater could get. They diversified our loot, and they guaranteed us future trips to McDonald’s. In a sense, Halloween wouldn’t really end until we cashed those suckers in.
In the certificates’ earliest days, a small soda was the common freebie. When I was a kid, it was more typically sundaes, pies or McDonaldland Cookies. This version, from 1998, upped the ante with complimentary fries.
PS: If you don’t remember the green guy, that’s Iam Hungry, one of McDonald’s less-successful mascots. He was basically their version of that furry thing from Honeycomb Cereal.
