Fave Things To Get While Trick-or-Treating!
Welcome to October! I wanted to do something special to kick off this most awesomely unholy of months, so surprise, you’re getting a Friday night video:
Click here to watch it on YouTube!
Join me for ten minutes as I tell you about the best “unusual” things I used to get while trick-or-treating, like McDonald’s gift certificates and teensy tiny comic books. My prime trick-or-treat years started in the mid ‘80s and ended in the early ‘90s, so if you’re around my age, this one’s gonna pack a big nostalgic punch!
What were some of the “weirder” things — good and bad — that YOU used to get while trick-or-treating? Confess and boast, in the comments!
Thanks so much for watching the video, too! The vids will be a big focus this month, so you’ll definitely be getting a few more. Enjoy the start of October, and I’ll be back early next week with more. In the meantime, you can visit Dino Drac After Dark for late-night chats with fellow Halloween maniacs.
Purple Stuff: Spooky Songs Volume VIII!
A lot of folks asked if we’d be doing another Spooky Songs episode of the Purple Stuff Podcast this year. Well, of course! It’s our most popular series and one of our favorite subjects!
Get set for the EIGTH volume of Spooky Songs! This year, me and Jay from Sludge Central are coming at ya with ten tracks that NEED to be on your Halloween playlist.
We’re both insane mega fans of spooky music, and we probably take these episodes a little too seriously. No joke, we start building our lists like ten months in advance! I think we’ve got some very strong selections in Volume VIII. You’re gonna love ’em.
Click here to listen to this month’s show!
As a reminder, we are also on Patreon, where you can grab an exclusive bonus show each and every month. September’s is already there, if anyone wants to hear us raid eBay for the best and weirdest Elvira collectibles. Next month’s bonus will also be Halloween-themed, of course!
Thanks so much for your time and your ears, and for sharing the show around. We appreciate y’all to death, and we both feel very lucky that you’re still paying attention to our gibberish all these years later. Enjoy the new episode!
2021’s Best Halloween Junk Food, Part 3!
This is the third edition of 2021’s Best Halloween Junk Food, and I bet I can do another three before October 31st. As I’ve been saying, this is a crazy year for Halloween snacks — like to the point where I can barely keep up.
Compare this year to most years, when the well seemed dry by the second week of September. 2021 is one of the books! Enjoy it while you can, and worry about the extra pounds in 2022.
Ghost White Ding Dongs!
(Found at Stop & Shop)
Recentism is surely shading my perspective, but frig it: This genuinely might be my favorite snack of the 2021 season. Ghost White Ding Dongs smother cream-filled cakes with white fudge, and they are DIVINE. They look like albino hockey pucks and smell like a birthday party.
It’s a big surprise from Hostess, which has spent the last several Halloweens only offering repeats. Nothing against ScaryCakes and Chocolate S’cream Twinkies, but if I’m gonna eat 42 grams of carbs in 4.2 seconds, I need it to be on something worth Instagramming.
GRADE: A+. They taste orgasmic — I don’t know how else to put it — and their cellophane wrappers are adorned with witches and dead trees. Add that gothic box and a solid euphemism for my junk, and yeah, this is an easy A+. Read More…
Classic Creepy Commercials, Volume 31!
This edition of Classic Creepy Commercials features everything from candy to Candyman. It’s kind of my “cleanout special,” as I’ve been sitting on some of these spots since last year.
What I like about this particular assortment is how off-the-nose it is. When you want to dig up memories that you haven’t already processed a billion times, sometimes you gotta look sideways. I hope this batch sparks a few for you:
Beetlejuice HBO Movie Intro! (1989)
Make sure you watch the whole video, which not only includes a Beetlejuice promo, but the whole dang HBO intro that played before the movie. God, HBO used to be so good at that shit. I still get goosebumps!
I’m thinking back to those long, boring days when I mindlessly flipped through the channels looking for an oasis. There was nothing like catching a comfort movie on HBO right when it was starting, and knowing that you were covered for a solid 90 minutes. The overindulgent intros were a big part of it.
Say it was a Saturday afternoon. You remember what Saturday afternoon TV was like, right? In everything from the sad programming to the even sadder commercials, it was just a constant reminder that you should’ve been outside. A packaged HBO movie was a whole different story. It was permission to be a slug.
The Great Pumpkin Sponsors! (1980s)
These sponsorship pages aired during It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Generally speaking, they were “added value” for companies who ran commercials during the special.
Looking back, those short shoutouts were often more effective than the actual commercials. A regular Almond Joy spot was easily ignored, but you put a photo of the candy over *official Peanuts music*, and suddenly coconut bars seemed like the chicest thing in the world. This was basically Snoopy knighting Almond Joy.
(Are fun-sized Almond Joy and Mounds bars still a big trick-or-treat thing? They already seemed fogeyish when I was a kid, and that was a hundred years ago.) Read More…