Vintage Vending #5: Frankenstein’s Spare Parts!

I’m in a good mood today.

It’s important to use good moods for good things. I can think of no better way to channel my positivity than by describing fake vomit. On with another edition of Vintage Vending!

Frankenstein’s Spare Parts Collection came out in ’89, though it looks decades older than that. These sorts of toys were more commonly seen during the ‘60s, when monsters and severed body parts were still very much in vogue.

They’re some of the most gruesome vending machine prizes ever, insinuating a parallel universe where tiny people are transformed into dismembered charms, and where puke is treated like diamonds. I wouldn’t want to live in that universe, but it sure is nice to visit.

The crude organization of the prizes looks like the work of a madman. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything’s placement. They didn’t even try to leave the printed face of Frankenstein’s Monster in clear view. (Look closely around the skeleton keychain’s skull. Frank’s near there.)

Between that, the dark colors and the ghoulish prizes, this was Halloween at its purest.

Picture it! Grade school kids trading quarters for bloody brain charms. We can be sure that Frankenstein’s Spare Parts paved way for a rising sense of depravity within yesteryear’s youth. The next time you hear about a thirty-something killing and eating his family, it’s likely that the accused was collecting butchered plastic organs back in 1989.

All of the little body part ornaments rock, but this one’s my favorite. I can’t tell if it was intended to be an assaulted woman or an undead zombie, so I’ll split the difference and name it “Woman Zombie.”  With a small loop on top and a length of lanyard running through it, you can wear Woman Zombie around your neck. A decapitated zombie head that doubles as a necklace really is the best kind.

The other charms included a hand, a foot, fingers, a skull, a brain and a heart. Each is made more disgusting by the addition of blood red battle damage stickers. Take Woman Zombie, for example. Not only was she decapitated, but her assailant saw fit to stab her in the eye and mouth, too.  And because her assailant was a sick son of a bitch, I bet he did that after she was already decapitated.

If the collection had a chaser, I guess it was the full-body skeleton keychain. It’s around seven inches tall, with painted highlights to make it look like genuine aged bone. Stifling the realism but not the awesomeness, this skeleton has emeralds for eyes.

He also has GIANT TEETH, helping to form an unmistakable smile. I completely understand why he’s so joyous. With emerald eyes, everything looks fractured and green. Total pine-tinted kaleidoscope action. He probably has so much fun, just looking around.

My favorite item, of course, is the fake vomit. I’m easily grossed out, but for some reason, fake vomit never hits me that way. The fact that I’m eating chunky tomato soup as I sit here describing it proves this.

I’ve bragged about my fake vomit expertise before, but the short of it is, I know my phony puke. I know that there is good phony puke and bad phony puke. And this, my friends, is good phony puke.

Most faux bile is fashioned in hard plastic, but the best types use soft rubber. This one is all rubber, baby. It needs to be, since the Parssine Group would’ve never been able to fit it in vending machine capsules otherwise.

It’s vile. Utterly disgusting. Judging from the contents, the puke provider spent the five previous hours eating nothing but grapes, pineapples and bird shit. No wonder he threw up.

The best part? Whoever organized the prizes saw fit to cut the loop off of a plastic spider ring, and position that spider to make it seem like it was eating the puke.  This is at odds with everything I know about spiders.

Clearly, this is no normal spider. It’s an alien spider with pencil thin mustache legs, who eats upchucked grapes. A tribute to Jimmy Buffet and puke, all at once.

That alone justifies my rating for Frankenstein’s Spare Parts: A+!!!