Written by Jonathan Wojcik
"CRAZY BONEZ" WISH FULFILLMENT
But while Crazy Bonez has continued to expand since 2015, it seems that 2019 is the year they've cranked their bone machines into serious overdrive, and before you continue, I implore you to refresh your memory of the first time I reviewed the line, since I ended that review with a number of my own most wanted skeleton items. SIT TIGHT!
Miniature Skeleton Unicorn
Before we get to the BIG surprises, part of this year's fresh skeleton crop consists of some humorous, whimsical critters like this little unicorn, whose grinning mouthful of teeth may not be anatomically accurate to any ungulate, but it sure looks delightfully freaky anyway...and who's to say a unicorn doesn't have teeth all the way up its jaws???
SKELETON TEDDY
Next in the more lighthearted set are the bones you find when you open up a care bear. This is the kind of novelty item people would (and probably will) love year-round to hang from backpacks, rear view mirrors and bikes, and I really like that the bones themselves have stitches on them. I feel like visible teeth might have added a lot, but on the other hand, that might have been rather predictable. There's nothing wrong with a Pooh-bear face that just happens to be made out of bone somehow, and the cute normalcy of it even makes the skeletal body all the eerier in contrast!
SKELETON DUCKIE
Another skeletal take on a highly iconic toy, and just a really fun, cool looking item to display just about anywhere, especially a more gothic bathroom. I'm pretty sure its holes reach just low enough in the sculpt that it would sink almost immediately, which feels like a bit of an oversight, but I could be wrong. It looks like it might barely have enough of a dish-like bottom to float around on calm enough water.
SKELETON ANGLERFISH
So, you DID re-read (or somehow very vividly recall) my original Crazy Bonez post, right? And how the very first thing on my list of future hopes was a deep sea fish?! Yeah!? My general request for a fish was already fulfilled by several sources a couple years back, but only Crazy Bonez themselves stepped up to the plate with an abyssal angler, and it's already looking downright flawless! It's got the underbite, a reasonably lifelike set of fish bones, rad looking black eyeballs instead of the usual empty sockets and a lure that, on at least some models, will ACTUALLY light up! It's not alone, either...
SKELETON ELECTRIC EEL
While not something that had crossed my mind, an eel is an excitingly unexpected addition to this series, an animal I don't think I have ever seen before as a Halloween decoration or even as a skeleton creature anywhere. It's not exactly what the skeleton of Electrophorus electricus would look like, which really is their Latin name, yes, but it's plenty close enough and needed a bit of dramatic flair anyway; the real thing is far too cute and dorky to make all that spookular a specter. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL...
SKELETON OCTOPUS
OH MAN!!! A Cephalopod of any kind was my very next 2014 suggestion, including tentacles made up of phalanges or vertebrae! It's not like it's that big a leap from forming a spider out of bones, either; with its saclike body, eight limbs and venomous (yes, almost always venomous) beak, is an octopus not just a water-elemental spider? One missable detail I really love about this is that the tentacles may appear to be spinal columns, but the knobs of the vertebrae are still shaped a little more like an octopod's suckers! How thoughtful!!
And yet, with three home runs in a row, they STILL weren't done with the oceanic undead.
MINI SKELETON SEA LIFE
ABSOLUTELY STELLAR. They didn't have to crank out even more bony sea friends, but they did, with a cheaper, smaller, non-illuminated selection that includes a goldfish, a crab, and a seahorse! All three look absolutely awesome, and with the mermaid skeletons that cropped up last year, you've got enough of a selection to do up a whole room in nautical skeleton monsters. The seahorse is probably the coolest looking, but it's hard to really pick a favorite from any of these, and feel like every last one is taking a chunk of my money this year...maybe more than once, because who could possibly be satisfied with only ONE crab made out of a rib cage?! Not to mention my 2014 promise to use skeleton anglerfish as lighting for an entire room. That might take a few more than is financially feasible, but, we'll see.
Actually...are Crazy Bonez aquarium safe? The temptation to put these in actual water with actual aquatic organisms is probably going to be a strong one for a lot of people, but of course you shouldn't put anything in with your fish or shrimp or leeches if it wasn't made of materials and paints specifically cleared for that purpose. Could be another market to look into, guys!
This would have all been exciting enough, for sure, but they're actually going at least one more extra mile...
MINI "GARDEN BONES"
I probably gasped when I saw these. Insects of any kind were more or less tied with gastropods for my #1 wish, and while there's no Diptera on offer, we get both Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera to pick from, both looking positively wicked in bone form! Look at the lacey details of those wings! The bee recreates insect anatomy 1:1 out of vertebrate bone, while the butterfly is a more fanciful, fairy-like critter that stands on just a single pair of vertebrate-like legs, and I gotta say that makes for a really cool design in my eyes. It's not just a butterfly that happens to be made of bones, but a weird fantasy creature all its own, like some ghostly fairy from a dreadful garden of poisonous black flowers!
The "garden" set is completed by a hummingbird, which is fairly standard for the Crazy Bonez birds, but it's not a bird I've seen in spooky context before now, and also novel as the tiniest bird in the line!
ALL of the new additions are cool enough that I could still die happy if these were the last-ever Crazy Bonez items, but let's hope these sell well enough (and why the heck wouldn't they?) to encourage even wilder, more surprising choices in the years to come. I'm especially intrigued by "gardening" themed Bonez, and perhaps in 2020, these guys will hit on another of my proposals by getting in on Halloween's recent, highly welcome love affair with carnivorous plants?
Thank you, Seasons, Inc, for your ongoing service to the Halloween bone gods and just plain brightening my life.
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