Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Thirteen Halloween Treasures III

   We've got at least one more round of knick-knacks to go through; your maybe-final tour of the goofy, cheap toys and decorations I either purchased or spotted in my weekly hunts!

Flesh Phone - Spirit

   This telephone made from stitched-together flesh and teeth is pretty awesome looking, though all it does is ring when you walk by. I'm not sure if it even speaks or anything when you answer it; all I know is that the phone itself isn't explicitly personified as a monster, but obviously I prefer to think it just imitates the sound of somebody calling you to get your guard down.

Spooky Cups - Food Lion

   From the same place I got the blood-crying skeleton bucket, these adorable monster cups imply you're sucking the brains out of severed heads who couldn't be happier about it. I bought the skull, because there's just something about a skull with a pink piggie nose that I really love.

Scarecrow - Spirit

   Similar to the not-slenderman from our first miscellany post, this thing has a creepy enough face, especially with the shiny black alien eyeballs that would have to belong to something alive, just under the burlap, but not actually human. It also has the same pale, white hands they stick on almost all these hanging decorations these days.

Murder Bear - Walgreens

   This fluffy teddy bear wields a knife (which is horribly bent on every single one), wears a hockey mask, and actually plays the "Friday the 13th" theme music when activated. This is all made much funnnier by how cutesy it is; they weren't even seemingly aiming for a humorous "twisted" take on something innocent, there's no blood stains or gore...it's just a teddy bear who's really, really into Jason Vorhees.

Wind-up Zombies - Walgreen's

   I've noticed a sudden new trend of wind-up toys with jiggly, soft rubber bodies, which was kind of a long time coming. Both types of toy date back generations, how did this take so long to go mainstream? You know I'm always happy to see colorful, cartoonishly gory zombies, and they're even more delightful with waddling feet and virtually no legs, like rotten human torsos under the control of unseen penguins.

Skeevy Ducks - Party Depot

   I've seen a lot of Halloween ducks, but they're usually more specific seasonal icons like pumpkins, witches, ghosts or skeletons. While I've seen a few "zombie" varieties, these don't necessarily look like they have to be dead. These are just kind of ambiguously "creepy" ducks. Ducks who may not necessarily be dangerous or even bad people, but you probably don't want to touch them.

Eyeball Rings - Party Depot

   These are cast from the same molds as some eye-popping rings I found last year, but these are made of stretchy rubber with "rolling" eyes embedded in them. The ones with teeth are the coolest, of course, but I also like those thick tentacle-like lashes on the others.





   The eyes also easily pop out of these things, and fit just as snugly in the "ring" part, so you can kind of turn them into entirely different, standalone rubber monsters.

Mount Gloom - Micheal's

   I'm afraid a lot of this post is going to be bittersweet, because a lot of it is comprised of items I couldn't even afford. "Mount Gloom" here is by far one of the coolest additions ever made to the "Spooky Town" miniatures line, barring maybe the flower shops with the carnivorous plants. This is like where Spooky Town's token "bad guy" would hang out, if Spooky Town had some sort of "plot" behind it. Apparently that bad guy is a grim reaper, and I say "a" because there are like thirty other grim reapers around this damn town.

Spooky Tree - Walgreen's

   Nope, I didn't buy this either, as awesome a creepy tree as it is, with arms that wave and all sorts of weirdness going on in its mouth. Apparently somebody's buried in there, and their skeleton awakens just to spoon with their tombstone every Halloween. There's also a procession of animals and one human skull who march around the grave in a circle. How does the skull get around? Whose skull is it? Just visiting?

Giant demonic toad - Halloween Megastore

   This was sixty bucks, just a little more than I'm willing to spend on a big piece of rubber that isn't even an invertebrate, but maybe that was a poor decision. I mean, it's a big, clawed toad with fangs and pustules. You don't often see attempts to make frogs this menacing and gruesome for Halloween, except that "zombie" frog Spirit was selling last year. I guess that's another reason I didn't need this one...I already got an even more putrid amphibian hanging around.

Skull Bat Knife

   I'm totally cheating now; this isn't even a Halloween item, I just found it at a thrift store while looking for costume parts, but where else am I going to review it, and how could I resist it? Look at this stupid thing. It's a skull and crossbones with a giant knife sticking out of its mouth like a metallic tongue, with its own set of bat wings and a "body" that's almost entirely legs.





   I have no use for a decorative knife - and yes, it is razor sharp - but this is such a preposterous skelebeast that I just wish I'd found it in time for my Skeleton Miniatures article earlier in the season. Presumably, the whole knife part just flies away when it needs to stab shit, the legs and hands either waiting around patiently or perhaps just curb stomping the knife-head's victims.

"Dinosaur" Skeleto - World Market

   Augh. I was GOING to buy this. I was so gonna. It's a beautiful fake bat skeleton for a very reasonable price, but I posted about it on tumblr to laugh at how somebody thought it was a "dinosaur" and obviously took it to be a pterosaur, which isn't a dinosaur anyway. Not long after that, they sold out completely. World Market should send me a paycheck.

Coat Rack Monster - Spirit

   I only just noticed this today, while trying to find a lab coat or surgeon costume that didn't have a sexual pun embroidered on it (I failed, until I went and bought a real one from a uniform store). None of our Spirit stores have this monster out on display to play with, which is sad, because I love the idea of a coat rack monster and would have enjoyed sharing a video of one in action. Clearly this cannot just be a monster hiding in a coat rack, because that would be boring. This is, of course, a monster that only ever disguises itself as a coat rack, and was quite possibly born from a coat rack.

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