I’m currently working on a big ass feature. It has the potential to be great, but it also has the potential to be terrible, so I’m gonna need some time to wrap that baby up. With panic setting in over the thought of a Monday with no new content, I dived into my stock of goodies and yanked out, uh, candy slime.

I don’t know if they’re new, and I even have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve reviewed them before. Googling around the old site brings up nothing, so I will assume I’m in the clear.

New or not, Hubba Bubba’s Halloween Squeeze Pops are some of the best candies available this season, wrapping everything we love about Halloween up in a couple of extremely strange packages.

Never had a Squeeze Pop? They’re filled with what’s best described as “candy gel.” Not quite liquid, not quite solid. The goo is messy, and eating more than a drop of it will make your stomach perform the Caribbean beguine, but Halloween is the exact right time for this kind of grossness.

On the left is cherry Vampire’s Blood, fronted by a yellow-eyed vampire who totally stole my trademarked placement of mouth blood.

The only weird thing is his pendant. It isn’t the typical evil cross, or even a bat. It’s just some big, purple dot. I can understand why Hubba Bubba wanted to avoid any religious connections, but still, a purple dot? It looks like he’s wearing a giant grape. That doesn’t work with a cherry Squeeze Pop.

On the right, Mummy Slime. Even if I’m loyal to blood and even more loyal to cherries, I have to admit, this is the more creative of the two Squeeze Pops. With a goofy, slime-drenched mummy as its mascot, the sour apple sludge is 120 grams’ worth of good good good. Read More…

I’ve been waiting for Eggo to make “Halloween waffles” for nearly as long as I’ve been doing the Countdown. I guess my feeble attempt to summon them by way of a voodoo crock pot was more effective than I imagined it would be, because finally, THEY ARE HERE.

You know, I’d seen mentions of these over the last few weeks, but I totally forgot to add ’em to my mental checklist. Imagine my surprise to spot them as I strolled through the freezer section of Stop & Shop, searching for frozen raspberries. (If you’ve never experienced a frozen raspberry, do everything in your power to change that. Each one is like a tiny-sized snowcone. I love them so much.)

Right next to the raspberries, there they were: Eggo Seasons “Pumpkin Spice” waffles, in great boxes peppered with pumpkin and cinnamon stick graphics.

Thank God it was late and the place was almost empty, because not even my legendary self-consciousness could keep me from celebrating with what’s best compared to a Penguins of Madagascar dance number. Read More…

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. Read More…