Dino Drac’s Halloween 2018 Funpack!
I’m finally ready to unveil Dino Drac’s 2018 Halloween Funpack! Sadly, there’s a catch!
UNITED STATES ONLY!
This one is already sold out! At least, it will be by the time most of you see this! (Sorry, but I warned ya… the best way to guarantee yourself a Halloween Funpack was to make sure you subscribed to a previous one!)
If you’re already on the list, I think you’re gonna be happy about that. The 2018 Halloween Funpack is an international affair, with spooky collectibles from all across the globe!
There are 10+ items in every box, from toys to snacks to trading cards. If you’re hoping to get one of the last boxes available, scroll to the bottom to see if any are left. Otherwise, keep reading to learn about everything you’ll receive in this month’s Funpack — it’s a Halloween party in a box! Read More…
Horror Toys from Old Cereal Boxes!
I’ll be honest: I wrote the rest of this article first, and saved the intro for last. Then I forgot to write it. Now I’m five minutes away from my arbitrary publishing deadline, and I have no intro. Words. Aalsalslals. Aososdoso. There, now this looks like a paragraph.
Below: Three cereals from three decades that each came with a horror-themed freebie. I like my article themes to be abstruse.
Boglins Mask!
Kellogg’s Rice Krispies (1988)
I’m generally not fond of “cutout” premiums, but if you don’t think that I’d make an exception for Boglins masks, you don’t know me at all.
This was just one of three different Boglins-themed giveaways from Kellogg’s — an amazing volume for such a modest toy line. Previous prizes included Boglins stampers (complete with ink pads) and sheets of like 60000 Boglins character stamps.
It’s too bad that they couldn’t figure out a way to tie these masks in with stamps, just so I could spend the rest of my life wondering what the fuck was going on with Kellogg’s, Boglins and stamps. Even 2 out of 3 warrants sleepless nights.
Anyway, I’m always down to ruin collectibles if it gets me a few easy paragraphs, so yeah, I cut out the mask. Below are the results:
(Note: To pick up the slack for all of the jerks who go #nofilter, I used every filter.)
That the mask didn’t fit me was no surprise, but I have a hard time believing that it’d even fit over a typical eight-year-old’s face. What’s bigger than a grapefruit but smaller than a cantaloupe? Whatever it is, this mask is that big.
It’s almost exactly as wide as one of the actual puppets. Like, to the point where it could stand in for one during some tropey sitcom segment between a complaining Boglin and his “good friend” who is totally there listening and not at all watching a Boglins baseball game back home.
There were three masks available, each representing a different Boglin. I got Vlobb, who according to the box was the smartest Boglin. I bet that’s why his brow looks like pages. Read More…
Classic Creepy Commercials, Volume 21!
I’m halfway back from an unexpected break, because October likes to hand me more tricks than treats. Here’s the latest edition of Classic Creepy Commercials.
Garfield’s Halloween Adventure! (1998)
This CBS promo from 1998 celebrated the first airing of Garfield’s Halloween Adventure in NINE years, which means that the special was completely absent throughout most of the 1990s. (It premiered in October of ‘85 and ran consistently through ‘89.)
I knew that the special ceased its annual airings prematurely, but I didn’t remember it being that severe.
Weirder still, Garfield and Friends (the Saturday morning cartoon) was in production until 1994, and still on air until late ‘95! It’s hard to argue that this was a simple matter of Garfield losing his shine. Maybe the special was locked away over some annoying rights issue?
From what I can tell, Garfield’s Halloween Adventure aired in ‘98 and then again in ‘99, and then had a couple of shots in the early 2000s. (And maybe a few more if you count oddball airings on cable networks. I don’t.)
I still think there’s money in a network running a “retro special night” during the Halloween season, with Charlie Brown and Garfield leading the charge. ABC already has the rights to It’s The Great Pumpkin, so imagine if they grabbed Garfield and then had the cast of The Goldbergs do the bumpers. SO good! Read More…
WPIX’s SHOCKTOBER Marathon, from 1992!
I know you’ve heard me sing this song before, but before now, I didn’t have the proper materials to hit the right notes. Indulge me, please. I need to talk about SHOCKTOBER.
SHOCKTOBER was an October-long stunt that WPIX ran in the early ‘90s. Every weeknight at 8PM sharp, WPIX broke from its normal menu of cartoons and sitcom reruns to air a horror movie. Put so simply, it hardly seems worth the fuss I’ve made over the years. Trust me, it was!
I went into greater detail about this several months ago, but to summarize, WPIX is a broadcast TV station (rooted in New York but with tentacles reaching into many other states) that back then was every kid’s “home base.”
You didn’t flip to WPIX for first-run sitcoms or any “big” television events, but it was the only non-cable channel that almost constantly aired things kids could be satisfied with, whether it was a Cheers repeat or an episode of Rescue Rangers.
Many kids had televisions in their bedrooms, but very few had cable access on those televisions. *I* didn’t, at least. WPIX became my “default” channel — the one I left on in relative perpetuity, only breaking for here-or-there hours on the bigger networks. In my bedroom, WPIX was the nightlight and the soundtrack.
SHOCKTOBER started in 1991, but I didn’t seriously latch on until ’92, which appears to have been the final year for the stunt. Though I wasn’t much of a horror fan in October of 1992, I was thirteen years old — the perfect age to start dipping my toes into the many pools that previously freaked me out. (Horror movies stuck, mayonnaise didn’t.)
Judging by my research, the 1992 version of SHOCKTOBER began on October 1st and ended on the 23rd. That left enough slots open for seventeen different movies, most of which aired on school nights. In many cases, I didn’t so much “watch them” as simply “leave them on.” I’d occasionally glance up from my homework (comic books) to marvel at the mayhem, but even that was enough to give the 1992 Halloween season a true “horror” vibe.
Other movies grabbed my attention outright. I first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 as part of this marathon, and I completely fell in love with it. I can still remember laying sideways on my bed, and being super pissed that Taryn and Will — my two favorite characters — didn’t survive. I’ve seen the film a hundred times since that night, but I’ll always associate it with SHOCKTOBER.
Check out the 1992 lineup, which I’ve reconstructed from old TV listings: Read More…