Another great thing about the 2013 Halloween season is that it isn’t just about the heavy hitters. Fruit Brute and Ghoul-Aid Jammers may be getting the bulk of the press, but even plenty of the simpler things are amazing. Don’t overlook ‘em!

For example, take Fruit by the Foot’s Halloween “Mini Feet.” They’re easy to ignore in the sea of so much top shelf stuff, but if you make time for a closer inspection, your reward is a spooky snack that’d have to try excruciatingly hard to be any better. Twenty-six adorably small “Tropical Terror” rolls, fronted by a cigar-shaped mummy in orange bandages!

They inspired me enough to make a video:

Have an excellent Saturday. This is one of the eight left before Halloween. Don’t waste it.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who entered Dino Drac’s “Terror Tires” art expo. I’m gonna start assembling the entries today, which will take a while, since it looks like there’s more than eighty of them. Wow.

Some additional FBTF photos, just because: Read More…

Posted by Matt on 09/07/13
Permalink | 36 Comments

If you’re around my age – and even if you’re not – you should be able to remember a dozen times when McDonald’s sweetened the Halloween season. From McBoo pails to the costumed McNugget buddies, Ronald McDonald has often seemed like Halloween’s Santa Claus, always ready to reward the burger-eating boys and girls with marvelous plastic baubles.

Course, not all of the “spooky Happy Meals” were exclusively for Halloween. Actually, some of the best ones weren’t. Here’s the case in point!

From 1987, it’s The Real Ghostbusters Happy Meal! I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that RGB was the hottest cartoon of its time, but it was certainly one of them, and it was one of those rare franchises that everyone seemed to love.

It was just such an “untouchable” property. Nobody ever spoke ill of that show. Even as kids grew older and began shunning the things they enjoyed only a year prior, RGB always stayed on that weird pedestal. People talked plenty of shit about Garfield, but nobody messed with Peter Venkman.

Its Happy Meal series was one of my favorites, because it so completely hit every note that made Happy Meals such major moments in our lives. The set had amazing boxes (easy candidates for “best ever”), and the free toys were wonderful, even despite the fact that they adhered to McDonald’s sometimes-standard of giving us toys that weren’t exactly toys.

You’ll see what I mean in a minute. Let’s eat! Read More…

Posted by Matt on 09/06/13
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Gurglin Gutz was a smallish line of gruesome “stress balls” that made rude noises when you squeezed them. That about says it all, but I live to stretch!

The collection debuted in 1995, and as you can tell from the above example, the toys weren’t much different from the “unpackaged” novelties you’d find at most party stores at this time of year.

…and that’s partly why I like them. I’m hesitant to call a blood-filled, baseball-sized eyeball “simple,” but if you’re familiar with this sort of thing, it kind of is. It’s barely a step above what you’d find in Oriental Trading’s Halloween catalog.

When I took this thing out of the package, I was aghast at the notion of doing a full blog entry on it. But 4Kidz had a strategy, and brother, it worked. They branded the holy hell out of these toys, providing pretty plain doodads with their own little universe. The line’s mascot was Dr. I.M. Gorey, and if I’m piecing everything together correctly, the various eyeballs, hearts and brains were meant to be HIS eyeballs, hearts and brains.

Bloody eyeballs are much easier to appreciate when you can imagine them being plucked from a mad scientist in dollar store scrubs. Read More…

Posted by Matt on 09/05/13
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