Such a nice night! It’s finally cooling off, the leaves are starting to turn, and there’s just enough creepy wind to make September feel like October.

I think you should waste it by sitting inside and listening to me and Jay ramble on for an hour.

The sixth episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast is now live!

Last week, Jay from The Sexy Armpit sent feelers out for reader questions. Tonight, we’re tackling ten spooky questions sent in by various listeners, covering everything from lame Halloween candy to our favorite scary video games. Give us a listen on the player below, or click here to access the MP3 directly!

Hey, we’re on iTunes and Stitcher, too!

Many thanks for the millionth time for making the show a success. So long as you keep listening, I’ll keep spending every damn Saturday trying to cut out all of our “uhhhs.”

And hey, wanna play along? Check out the graphic below, and in the comments, let everyone know how you’d answer the same questions raised in this week’s show. Read More…

I’ll say it again: This is a banner year for spooky junk food. Never before have I seen so much of it, and for those who sustain their spirits through creepy-looking chocolate, 2015 is freakin’ amazing.

Below are five scary things that you can eat and drink this year, mixing new commodities with some older favorites. If these don’t put you in a Halloween mood, you have better muscle tone than me.

Pumpkin Spice Latte M&M’s!

Larger and lumpier than regular M&M’s, I was a little confused when I first bit into one, as its flavor profile seemed unchanged from the norm. Then came the aftertaste. WOW. If we can assume that these were meant to mimic Starbucks’ famous autumnal offering, it’s a dead-on match.

Many pumpkin spice candies seem like they’re only in it for the novelty factor, with companies spying the movement and thinking, “Yes, yes… we can do this too.” By comparison, these come off as an honest attempt to make something delicious. The flavor is sharp and complex, and almost incongruously extravagant for M&M’s. They’re the fanciest M&M’s I’ve ever tasted! Read More…

Whenever I wish I was ten years younger, I try to remind myself of all the great toys I would’ve missed out on. Sure, it’s irritating to have hit that age when people start suggesting invasive exams of my most unmentionable areas, but at least I got to play with Mad Scientist toys as a kid.

Look, it works for me.

Unleashed by Mattel in 1986, Mad Scientist was a strange line of playthings that would best be described as the demonic love children of action figures and chemistry sets.

The commercial embedded above promotes the collection’s peak offering: The Monster Lab, which let you bring monsters to life, and then kill them in vats of acid. (Metaphorically, but also pretty literally.)

This and the other larger Mad Scientist kits had the air of arts & crafts projects, but whereas crayons and construction paper only let us satisfy our collective desire to create, Mad Scientist also let us satisfy our desire to destroy.

Between Madballs and Boglins and everything in-between, this was the golden era for “gross” toys, and Mad Scientist fit right in. Since most of the sets included parts that were never intended to last thirty years, you rarely hear about them in today’s collectors’ circles. Make no mistake: They were pretty popular!

Even more charming to me were Mad Scientist’s smaller kits, which were presented similarly to action figures, in everything from packaging to price. While lacking the “science experiment from hell” aspect of the larger sets, these had a sort of quiet charm. As much charm as an alien pig who blew fake snot from his snout could have, really.

The smaller kits had wildly different gimmicks, but they all boiled down to messing with some kind of toy slime. Sammy Sneeze — the weirdo shown here — was only worth five minutes of fun, but man, they were a great five minutes. Read More…