The Mausoleum of Madness, Part III!
Welcome to Dino Drac’s third annual MAUSOLEUM OF MADNESS! From now though October 31st, I’ll be posting teensy tributes to vintage valuables from Halloween’s petrifying past!
Check back every day for new updates, and get set for an eerie onslaught of everything from decorations to old advertisements to weird toys and beyond, all with a spooky slant! (You can also check out the prior Mausoleums here and here.)
#35: Garfield Paint with Water! (1988) 🎨
If you don’t remember Paint with Water books, the coloring pages were imbued with dried specks of faint paint that spread like magic when brushed with water.
Creating art with these books took little talent beyond brushing within the lines, but the price for that convenience were waterlogged pages that looked like test subjects from a 1980s Bounty commercial.
They were often a special treat when I stayed home sick from school, which makes sense, because I mostly remember seeing them sold in pharmacies.
Picture me at the dining room table, age 7, struggling to see straight through a 101-degree fever, but still determined to turn Garfield orange. Lipton soup on the stove, saltines at the ready, and The Price is Right theme blaring in the background. Back then, even the flu was fun.
Paint with Water books were so ubiquitous that it wasn’t really a question of “if” a popular kid-targeted entity had one, but rather “how many.” In Garfield’s case, I think he had like 15 titles… including the one shown here, an all-Halloween edition!
#34: Ghoul Run T-Shirt! (1990s) 🍕
Starting in the late ‘80s and continuing at least through the early 2000s, Little Caesars sponsored something called the “Ghoul Run,” which as I understand it was a Halloween-themed charity walk.
It was never a national thing, but rather something the pizza chain did with various charity groups across the country. My assumption is that Little Caesars covered the costs of these events, and in trade got to brand them as their own. (And probably scored some swank tax writeoffs in the process.)
This stunningly ridiculous day-glo orange Ghoul Run t-shirt is likely from the early ‘90s, and was a prize for anyone who completed the race. I’m not one for arduous walks, but if you wanted to get me moving, the promise of a demonic Little Caesars skeleton shirt would be a massive motivator.
My shirt is a true vintage example, not some lousy bootleg. Among other clues, there’s the fact that it’s wildly small. If you’re experienced with vintage promo tees, you know that they were only produced in two sizes – stupidly small, or excessively enormous. There was no in-between, ever.
#33: Super Big Gulp Cups! (1990s) 🥤
This is a trio of 7-Eleven’s “Super Big Gulp” cups from the early ‘90s, and if that Universal Monsters artwork seems familiar, YES, it’s the exact same character art Pepsi used on their 12-pack boxes during the Halloween season, at the exact same time!
Details are murky and require some conjecture, but I’ve seen enough evidence to say that during Pepsi and Frito-Lay’s big Universal Monsters brouhaha, 7-Eleven was a “soft partner.” They carried all of the soda and chips, they put up the associated store displays, and here we see that they even cribbed the famous “Party Monsters” artwork for their own cups – something that couldn’t have happened without some sort of partnership.
The character cups included Dracula, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. If you’ve never had 7-Eleven’s Super Big Gulp, just know that the cups are comically enormous, and can house more soda than anyone should reasonably drink in one sitting.
#32: Jell-O Halloween Pudding! (1990s) 🍮
My first thought was to spend four paragraphs gushing about the uniformly-awesome design choices on this ancient box of Jell-O pudding, but y’all know my vibe by now, and you could probably write those paragraphs for me.
HOWEVER, it did occur to me when looking at this that I haven’t had homemade Jell-O pudding – or any homemade pudding, for that matter – in over thirty years. I’ve done Jell-O’s prepackaged pudding cups a few times, but that hardly counts.
It was a weird realization, because Jell-O’s chocolate pudding was all over my childhood. My mother made batches constantly, and my father was even more into it than I was. (He was also a big fan of Jell-O Pudding Pops, which was one of the few things we had in common. Pro-wrestling, an overreliance on the f-word, and Jell-O Pudding Pops – that was pretty much it.)
Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with chocolate pudding, and kinda convinced myself that it grosses me out. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just seen it at the sad end of a dessert buffet too many times, with that weird film of hardened slime on top. I’m man enough to admit that it was wrong of me to judge all pudding based on that pudding.
I don’t know when or if I’ll eat sugar again, but if I crack, I’m gonna give homemade chocolate pudding another try. Maybe I’ll even garnish it with a few pieces of candy corn, like Jell-O did on this box. It’s genuinely the only time I’ve seen candy corn and thought, “wow, that looks pretty good.” Read More…
Dino Drac’s September Funpack is here!
Well, Dino Drac’s Spooky September Funpack is finally ready to launch, and if you’re wondering why it’s going up so late – or why I’ve been mostly MIA lately – I’ll point you to this post, for the truncated tale of my terrible two weeks!
That said, all subscribers boxes were shipped between Wednesday and Thursday, and they’re on the way. While subscriptions are maxed out, I have a small number of spares to offer on an individual basis. As always, the cost is $25, and that includes shipping to anywhere in the United States. If interested, zip to the bottom to see if there are any left!
Now, let’s dive into Dino Drac’s annual Spooky September Funpack to see what ghastly goodies are in store… Read More…
Dino Drac’s Gloom Bags & Frightening Flats!
Okay guys, I have TWO count ‘em TWO surprise merch drops for ya today. (Well, “merch” doesn’t feel like the right word for what I do, but whatever, let’s roll with it.)
This is your limited-time chance to grab either Dino Drac’s GLOOM BAG or Dino Drac’s FRIGHTENING FLAT, or if you’re feeling extra spendy, feel free to buy both!
The GLOOM BAGS are toy-focused sacks of spooky collectibles from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and are $50 shipped.
The FRIGHTENING FLATS include a few high-value slices of eerie ephemera from the 1990s, and are $40 shipped.
Details on each are below. If you decide to order, ensure you’re clicking the button for the correct item you want! (Unless you want both, in which case, I guess just click everything?) Read More…
The Horror Hall of Fame II, from 1991!
On the eve of September, we’re ready to drop a highly Halloween-appropriate episode of the Purple Stuff Podcast. As for the subject matter, well, picture the Oscars, staged from HELL!
It’s the Horror Hall of Fame II! This syndicated television special from 1991 was a sequel to the original Horror Hall of Fame, which we covered years ago. The second edition was just as stuffed with celebrities, corny cheese, fog machines, and a particular reverence for a genre that wasn’t getting a whole lot of respect from outside its bubble.
While we couldn’t tackle everything that happened on the two-hour broadcast, this latest episode definitely hits the highlights – like Richard Moll giving a posthumous award to Bela Lugosi, and Vincent Price namedropping Child’s Play 2 like it was no big thing.
Live from Universal Studios Hollywood! Hosted by Robert Englund and the Crypt Keeper! Tons of canned crowd noise! This baby has it all.
Click here to listen to this month’s show!
…which is also available on Apple, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
…but wait, there’s more!
Our pal Lincoln rescued this obscure television special from the depths of a dusty VHS tape, and he was generous enough to let us share the whole thing on YouTube! That video features the entire two-hour broadcast, with the original TV commercials and all! (We talk about some of those on the podcast, too. Hard not to, when the TV spot for the Nightmare VCR game ran 37 thousand times!)
As a reminder, the Purple Stuff Podcast is also on Patreon, where we drop an exclusive bonus show every month. Join now and you’ll hear the exciting tale about us playing glow-in-the-dark Ghostbusters frisbee. (And get immediate access to our back catalog of nearly 100 bonus episodes!)
Thanks, all! The Halloween season is here! Let’s make the most of the next two months, because we’ll sure miss ‘em when they’re over!