Vintage Vending #4: Wacky Goulies!
If you thought the Vintage Vending series was taking a break during the Countdown, you have no future as a psychic. Some of those old prizes absolutely scream “Halloween,” and if you think I’m reaching, just take a look at this one: A macabre mix of Madballs and Ghoulies!
Meet the Wacky Goulies, a collection of “gross, ghoulish weirdos” with enough charm to magically transform all who view them into giant scented happy face erasers.
While the title and logo steal a page from the Ghoulies playbook, the toys are obviously inspired by Madballs. Consisting of rubber, semi-flat monster heads with suction cups on the backs, each Wacky Goulie can stick to glass for nearly seven whole seconds.
Look up “perfect” in the dictionary, and you’ll see a picture of a Delfa Roll. But if Delfa Rolls never existed, you’d see Wacky Goulies.
Every last one is a Madballs ripoff, and blatantly so. See the one-eyed gargoyle? The one that comes in purple AND green? That’s Hornhead.
And that weirdly small Wacky Goulie on the upper left, who looks like a melting man? Skull Face!
The teaser card dates them as a 1986 release. Suffice to say, had I found them at that time, my shit would’ve spent the last 25 years in a perennial state of flip.
240 words never won anyone a Pulitzer. Let’s see if we can get this to 500. Read More…
Matchbox Con-Nec-Tors from 1990!
If you were reading X-E last November, you might remember my tribute to Matchbox’s Con-Nect-Ables, a line of plastic cars which broke into pieces that could be mixed-and-matched to create bizarre vehicles that were part truck, part helicopter. If I had to guess, nobody came here expecting that opening line.
Well, this is a similar idea, but way cooler, because we’re replacing the cars with monsters and aliens.
Made in 1990, Con-Nec-Tors is a strong candidate for the coolest action figure collection you’ve never heard of. With strange characters running the gamut from vampires to mummies to alien bugs and even a husky football player, each figure had removable body parts that were completely interchangeable.
Like, see the dinosaur up there? In two seconds flat, he could have the head of that generic punk rocker. Read More…
Cadbury Screme Eggs!
If my hunts so far have been any indication, we’re in for one hell of a season on the Halloween candy front.
So many new goodies for 2012! I’m actually frightened by how many I’ve located so far. I mean, it’s only September 4th. As much as I love giving Halloween two full months to be awesome, I want October to have its glories, too.
On the other hand, I was ecstatic to find Cadbury Eggs with creepy green filling on one of my first outings. As hard as it is to imagine, I just hope one of the later entrants somehow manages to top this.
Full disclosure: They’re not really new. They were widely available in the UK last year, and may have even had limited runs in the US, too. Today, we’re playing pretend.
Cadbury Screme Eggs! You can just imagine my delight upon spotting that cardboard display. Between the slimy filling, the witch-hatted rabbit and the logo that looks like a cracked spoiled egg, my eyes darted rapidly and independently of one another, as if I’d become a giant mutant anole.
This is hot stuff. A quick search of X-E shows that I’ve been lamenting the lack of Halloween Cadbury Eggs for years. It’s just such an obvious and obviously cool spin. Whether you consider them new, newish or not new at all, they’re new to me, and I couldn’t be happier to kick off the 2012 season with fondant that looks like demon snot. Read More…
Halloween Bread?
Pepperidge Farm may have peaked with their Goldfish crackers, but this comes close. Keep an eye out for a new pair of autumn “Swirl” breads, in the style of raisin bread, but with fruity bits that are far more appropriate for a season filled with death and monsters. Yes!
On the left, Caramel Apple. On the right, Pumpkin Spice. It’s amazing what simple words like “caramel” and “spice” can do. If these breads had plainer “Apple” and “Pumpkin” titles, I’d be less interested by a factor of forty zillion.
Maybe fifty zillion on the Pumpkin Spice bread, actually. I really need that “spice” in there. Pumpkin is something I’ve never been able to accept as food. The only way I can eat bread stuffed with chunks of pumpkin is with the knowledge that said chunks have been doused with enough edible incense to make my kitchen stink like a 1997 head shop. Read More…