Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Slimy Sludge: SECRETS REVEALED

   So if you've been following these posts closely enough, you know how delighted I was to stumble upon "Slimy Sludge," a series of oozing mutants and malformed ghouls I went all-out collecting until I amassed what I believed to be as complete a set as possible, photographed them all with loving care, crafted a delicate personal canon around this world of tiny, plastic lampreys and gas-masked corpses, and wrapped it all up with the hopes that, perhaps, there might be a follow-up series some day.

....And then, I saw the truth.

...What!?

   As it turns out, what we know as "Slimy Sludge" here in the states is a product of the New Zealand based toy company, "Joker," which produces a number of different toy lines under their "Slimy" label. One of these lines is "Monsters and Zombies in my Slimy," which they decided to give a little test run in a few other countries. An incomplete test run. A test run with only two of five different monster teams.

NNNOOOOO

   Gone is my vision of only a post-apocalyptic world dominated by the Sludge Monsters and the Rot Zombies. In its place, a more diverse but chaotic land where Sludge Monsters must share their pungent ooze with sentiet garbage, the seas are stalked by sharks with arms and the skies buzz with the flying saucers of metallic space demons. I thought it sucked that nobody could find Mitch Machete, and here it turns out there are thirty-freaking-four more characters under this banner. That's three additional teams, two additional sludge monsters, and two additional rot zombies they didn't deem worthy of American children. At least not worthy enough to risk the extra manufacturing costs, I guess...and no, the company will not ship me an entire crate of them by air mail. Yes, I checked. Of course I checked.

And so, it is with a heavy heart that I present to you thirty four more tiny, plastic, slime-dwelling monsters I may or may not ever get to hold in my grubby hands.

The Slime Monsters

   We'll start off with the teams we're already acquainted with. "Slimalot" isn't a huge loss, I guess. I mean, he's no Billy Terrify or Slimepede, but his face is still pretty hilarious. He's like Slimeyeti's half-melted, grouchier grandpa. The real tragedy is that we didn't get Crocoslime, a heap of snot with reptilian jaws and adorably off-kilter snail-eyes. It actually looks slightly more like a hippopotamus than a crocodile to me, but I guess it could also be both. If they truly had to cut two characters, they probably made all the best choices, but still...CROCOSLIME. Also, Slimy Blob was supposed to be called Silly Blob, which is just darling.

The Toxic Zombies

   Again, we have one missing monster I'm more or less impartial to and one that is sorely missed. "Hexago" is cool, I guess, with its pig-like appearance and robotic legs, but "Barrel Barry" is a screaming, melting, tumorous blob of a corpse seething out of a toxic waste drum, and that's exactly what's missing from the shelf where I put all my plastic garbage monsters. He's sure as hell more exciting than Zooka, even if I do rather like Zooka.

The Humanoid Alienz

   I'm going to guess that if the full series had come stateside, these would have been the fan favorites. You know, if these had a fandom outside of me and like two of you. Spiny, metallic cyberdemons are a lot more popular than slobbering ghouls and sticky caterpillars, but not really my style, so I'm glad we at least got the two teams that we did. Not all that "humanoid," I feel like the Alienz would be the clear villains of this world, perhaps accidentally creating the zombies, blobs and other mutants when they exterminated all human life. I'm sure the terrifying, Predator-like "Megamouth" would have been the most sought after, but my favorite is the remarkably unsettling "Lady Chills," who looks an awful lot like Giger's space succubus thing from the movie Species.

The Trash Treasures

   Yes, one entire team of this series is kind of just a knock-off of The Trash Pack, but it offers a few characters even more lovable than many of the Trashies. The barfing fly-man is a natural must-have for me, seeing as I even have a shelf in my bedroom devoted just to fly people and I've drawn enough fly people for parts of the internet to believe I might be some kind of fly furry, but my actual favorite here is just Boney F. I love me some living fish skeletons, and I really enjoy how Boney walks around on his still-attached fins. Also how his eyeballs are on the same side of his skull, indicating he was once a flounder.

Fuzz the Moldy Sandwich is another good one, almost a turtle-like thing with a bread shell and moldy food-sludge body, or maybe it's just peanut butter. Zombie Soda, Sloppy Sammy and Madder Bananner are also extremely Trash-Pack like, but their designs a little ghastlier, and strongly reminiscent of the artwork of John Dilworth (Courage the Cowardly Dog!), so, big plus there.

....And what is Timmy Smellytoes? A mutated foot? A fungus? A foot covered in mutated fungus, again not unlike we've seen on Courage?

The only let-down: Cool Roach Dressing just isn't quite adorable, monstrous or cockroachy enough for me. What's with the food names for the bug guys, anyway?

The Deep Sea Creatures

   It's actually some of this last team that I pine for the hardest, and I'm sure you can see why. "Big Mouf" is one of my favorite, seldom-seen monster archetypes, the creepy fish head with legs, as we've also seen in another "test market" casualty. "Deeah Abyss," meanwhile, is the best kind of mer-person after the reverse kind, a lovely lady sea hag with a slavering fish-face. The seemingly related "Happy Murray" and "Murray Reef" are two of the most adorable Moray Eel characters I've ever seen, and "Ruff Puff" is fairly fun, even if he's just lobster claws tacked on to a pufferfish.

I think you all know which one I'm really building up to, though. Lil Slug is one of the most glorious creature designs I've seen all month, if only because it's just so, so rare to see any nudibranch representation in pop culture, let alone a nudibranch so close to the anatomy of the real thing. The mouth is in the right place, the oft-overlooked eyes are in the right place, about all they added were teeth. Lots of teeth. Even some teeth under its eyes, to give it a sort of "second mouth," and that name. "Lil Slug" is far too cute for something that looks like it can bite open your abdomen and suck out your liver, and that's everyone's favorite kind of cute.

The remaining characters are nothing to sneeze at, either - I'd certainly accept a King Crab or Hammer Fins - but Lil Slug. AUGH. Why can't I have Lil Slug!? Why can't everyone have Lil Slug? Come on, Joker. Me and like two other nerds have been buying up "Slimy Sludge" like mad. Surely your test run has gone well enough, right? Right? That means we can get Lil Slugs now, RIGHT?

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