Is that the Great Pumpkin above us? No, that
is my cat and best friend WIllow dressed up as the Great Pumpkin
for Halloween. She seriously hates me right now, but if she wants
to celebrate the season of ghosts, ghouls, and witches she has
to come prepared to pay the price. She only latched onto my face
for about 4 hours after this photo was taken.
It is only a few days until Halloween and I
have been trying my damndest to get into the season, but for some
reason I haven't really been able to this year. I don't know if
it is the lack of cool products, the lack of good candy , or possibly
that I am just fat. I have amassed a few items out there that
I thought were good enough to buy for the article, but overall
this year has been pretty disappointing as far as products go.
Well, lets take a look at what I found to be "hot" this
holiday season.
Last year gummy body parts were
all the rage. Target had an awesome selection of gummy candy to
choose from, but this year it was slim pickins. I spied House
of Horrors Gummy Candy at my local Walgreens and just had to pick
some up. Not only was the packaging cool, but it appears a "peeping
tom" was just at the window in ecstasy and the skeleton saw
him and is trying to grab the sick voyeuristic bastard and make
him clean up the mess he left on the window sill. Yes, I am deranged.
House of Whores...erm...Horrors
lets us pick from 5 different shapes of their tasty treats. All
of the molds are pretty good. I know what 4 of them are supposed
to be, but one of them has me sort of stumped. They did use the
elusive white gummy filling as well to give the skeletons a little
visual pop, which is a nice touch. The candies taste pretty good
and I don't mind scooping up handfuls of them at a time, heading
back to my couch lair, and consuming them en masse as I watch
TV. Below I will post photos of the different candy shapes:
This shape is pretty good because
it is easily identifiable as a skeleton in a crypt. Either that
or a cadaver on a embalming table and I am completely fine with
that interpretation as well.
Next up we have the classic skull,
which looks really nice. I like to think of them as Smurf skulls
as I eat them.
The Mummy was a nice addition,
because Mummies in general don't get a lot of product time, even
if he is a grape Mummy....or the Michelin Man.
The bat is always a nice surprise
in any product form and I am glad to see that this bat is wrapping
itself in a cocoon for the coming winter months.
This thing is interesting. I have
no idea what the hell it is supposed to be. If you look at it
upside down it kind of looks like a flamingo, but if you look
at it the way I have it orientated in the photo it kind of looks
like one of the statues in Mumra's tomb. It is some sort of weird
alligator man or something...I have no idea really. I still like
the scary flamingo idea myself.
Every year something takes the
public by storm and this year it was little shrunken heads. I
found these little bastards everywhere from actual Halloween stores
and Target, to Walgreens and Mexican street vendors. You can do
a lot with little shrunken heads like use them for space in your
fruit bowl. Would you like an apple, pear, or decapitated shrunken
zombie head? Everyone wants the zombie head because they taste
like butter.
Though there were many styles of
heads to choose from I choose 3 of my favorites for the article.
2 zombie heads that were either screaming or had their orifices
sewn shut and 1 creepy ventriloquist's dummy head. The dummy head
was just bizarre, so I had to buy it. Check out the photos below:
Did he just see Grandma get out
of the shower naked? Was he on the Press Your Luck game show and
just landed on a Whammy? We may never know, but he seems quite
distraught over his last vision. He has some nice detail built
into him with feature rich teeth and spinal cord.
More of a questioning look graces
this shrunken zombie head. Is he thinking about why he has a Jerry
Curl hairdo like Lando Calrissian? Is he thinking about whether
or not he left the coffee maker on before heading to work this
morning? Did he forget to pay his mortgage payment? We will never
know, but the people who manufactured him in Taiwan probably have
all the fun in the world making these puzzling expressions for
$.02 per day.
Last, but not least, is the shrunken
dummy head. This thing is both bizarre and creepy, just look at
it. What the hell are they using for teeth? I vote for demonic
kernels of corn. Maybe he is a corn
face? It is hard to see, but I have to mention, that while
the rest of the neck stumps had gore and blood this little guy
has black goo and wood shards. This thing gives me nightmares
just having it in the next room as I sleep.
I am not normally one to buy glassware
on Halloween, but this little witch's cauldron with a skull on
it caught my eye. I picked this little gem up at Target and am
quite happy with my purchase. There isn't much to be said about
it other than it will rock your ass off, but you could fill it
with whatever you'd like. From candy and green beans, to squid
and eyeballs, this thing can hold your cooking or snacking needs.
The one good think I found about
the skull cauldron is that it holds 3 mega bags of Halloween M&M's.
The more pounds I can gain in one season the better! Plus, I don't
burn extra weight by having to get up and get more M&M's because
I can vacuum suck the skull cauldron directly to my face and use
it as a feedbag.
I found this little creepy bastard
at the very start of the season. It is some sort of spider made
up of various skeleton parts. When our eyes locked at my local
grocery store I knew it was love at first sight. Well, it wasn't
so much our eyes locking as it was this thing screeching across
the store and biting me on the neck. It is poseable, weird, and
sort of scares the mexicans who clean my car at the Classic Car
Spa on Fridays.
Here is a top view of the vile
creature. No, it doesn't get any less creepy no matter what angle
you view it from. It comes attached to some strings so you can
harness it up high and gander at it for all eternity. Ours lives
on the living room ceiling fan, as I am sure it will for many
years to come. It is quite the conversation piece, too bad we
never have anyone over to converse about it.
I picked this Zombie Fest movie
up at the Suncoast in the mall and it was only $8. For anything
to be priced under $400 at Suncoast it is kind of a miracle in
and of itself. It contains over 13
HOURS of zomboriffic content. I haven't cracked it open
yet, but I plan on having a living dead movie marathon on Halloween
night. I am sure my employer will love me the next morning. Thanks
Suncoast! Hello unemployment!
Next up is the pleasant and delightful
Chucky mask I bought at Walgreens. It will warm young children's
hearts to see this happy fellow walking around the neighborhood.
The main reason I purchased this mask is because my Dad is scared
shitless of Chucky, so I like to torment him as much as possible.
You'd be surprised how fast a grown man will run out of a room
when you come at him full speed on your knees.
Not only is a Chucky mask good
for scaring my Dad, it is also makes the chore of ironing go by
much faster. Would you rather iron some dress pants as your usual
self or Chucky? I think Chucky wins by a landslide. Anytime a
deranged reanimated killer doll and housework meets, it is a blessing
in disguise.
I found these little hanging monsters
at Target and I just had to buy them. They were sort of cute,
sort of scary, sort of inexpensive. I purchased a ghoul with a
top hat and a skeleton bride, but there were several more to choose
from. After I got them home I wasn't really sure where I was supposed
to hang them, so they have been hanging on our kitchen chandelier
ever since. Let me tell you, it really adds some class to our
bleak kitchen and my pasta cooking skills have double!
The skeleton bride really gives
a "come hither" look and I want to seduce her with the
fullest potential of my fat power. I sort of guess this is what
Nicole Ritchie will look like on her wedding day. Hopefully she
will marry me and I can crush her under my enormous weight.
I first saw this Vampire Bride
head back in 1999, but I was poor and in college then and the
$40 they wanted for the thing was just too far out of my league.
It is now 2006 and I have a good job and they dropped the price
to $20 so I was in like sin. If ever I wanted to molest a fake
vampire head this would be the time. This thing is just damn sexy.
Is it her white eyes? Her red hair? Her glistening fangs? Her
spinal cord peeking just below her neck stump? I don't know but
I like it.
You may be asking yourself: "What
would you do with something like that after you bought it?"
Well, I like to keep mine in the refrigerator next to all of our
condiments. I like to think if someone was trying to break in
and make a bologna sandwich they would have quite the surprise
waiting for them in the fridge when they go for that mustard.
I bought this for Lori at Walmart
late one night. It is a jack o' lantern that has a white and rust
glaze on it. It is sort of fancy and not cheap like my other purchases
so I don't really know what to say about it other than it sits
on our TV and watches me stare for countless hours in it's general
direction while stuffing my face with candy. Sometimes I throw
my dirty socks at it when I get bored.
This is the Jason Vorhese mask
and machete I purchased at Walgreens for under $8. The mask is
really nicely detailed and is created using some sort of space-age
foam. The machete is sort of lame, like all plastic faux-metal
weapons appear to be, but the blood splatter and gore is a nice
touch. They even have netting on the left eye so you appear to
be missing it like Jason might have been in the films. He also
might have been drunk.
I find that throwing on the hockey
mask and driving at speeds over 90mph really seems to relieve
a lot of stress for me. I think it helps me focus more on my driving
than avenging my dead mother and worshipping her decapitated head
on my shrine. It also works well as a dieting device since I can't
cram food into my mouth via the small air holes.
Last on our list this evening is
the Ghoulicious: Abbie Normal Bag of Brains. This bag of brains
really brings me back to last
years review of gummy candy. Nothing says Halloween like a
big ol' edible gummy brain. The stuff tastes pretty good and squishes
nicely when you bite into it. It has an odd texture to it kind
of like they pumped air into it to add to the ick factor. It is
about the size of a human fist, no aardvark fists will not work
in this instance, and is pack with enough fruity flavor to make
you swear you were eating a real brain in Haiti. I picked this
treat up at Target, which surprised me since they were really
lacking on the gross treats this year.
There it sits in all it's glory,
just waiting for me to bite into it.
I didn't want to disappoint it,
so I took the biggest zombie bite I could muster.
Well, that does it for this year's
Halloween article. I am sort of disappointed it wasn't longer
and I didn't get to waste more money, but there is always next
year. I hope everyone out there has a demonic holiday and that
you pack your candy full of weed killer and rat poison.
***BONUS CRAP***
Check out this sweet
video of me scaring the shit out of my parents on Halloween.
If you like this article you
might also like to check out:
Merry
Halloween!
Halloween
Candy Extravaganza
Costume
Help 2005
Bleeding
Brains Candles
-LaVarious
10-29-06
