Cool Things From Target 2020!

Last Year, Target knocked it clear out of the park with their "Ghoulish Garden" line of decorative, imitation plant monsters. Perhaps due to the Ghoulish Garden's tremendous success, but perhaps also because of the end of the world and all, most of last year's collection has come back relatively unchanged...but what is new is pretty solid!


PLANT MONSTER PUMPKIN FACE

Target's plant obsession now extends to their exclusive plastic pumpkin faces, as this one can turn any pumpkin at all into a critter with a single, giant flower-eyeball! I feel like it doesn't really need the goofy mouth, but I guess that's cute too. Maybe I'd put it above the eye, though, just to be a little less humanoid, y'know??



PREYING POSIES

These awesome sucker-mouthed flowers were a part of the 2019 release, but only as a single, small flower and a couple in a plastic terrarium. Now, they're in a giant size potted version with an official name for the first time!



ORCHID CLOCHE

They don't give this plant a name, but it's a brand new variety resembling animal-print orchid flowers with spooky, catlike eyes! Great to see a brand new "species" in the garden, and in an entirely different style from the vast majority of Halloween plant monsters out there!



PITCHER PLANT TERRARIUM

Another brand new one! And the very, very first time I've seen pitcher plants as a Halloween decoration! Heck, outside Victreebel, pitcher traps are still woefully under-represented among botanical monstrosities. Naturally, this is the one I actually bought this year, so I've even got some close-up shots for you!


The pitchers themselves are fairly simple plastic shapes, but with fabric tongues, fabric lids, plastic fangs and goofy little snake-like eyeballs on top! Actually, is that why they have those long fangs? Are they meant to feel "snakelike?"


But as if the pitcher traps weren't marvelous enough, the terrarium also includes a single eyeball flower, and it's very clearly modeled after a species of - I shit you not!! - a stapeliad!! A STAPELIAD!!! Can you BELIEVE that!?!? Obviously I don't have to tell anybody that a stapeliad is the carrion-mimicking, fly-pollinated flower of succulents in the tribe Stapelieae, and obviously you're just as excited as I am that somebody put one in a fake terrarium for Halloween. Virtually nothing from Target this year could be more phenomenal...could it?



"EXOTIC BEASTS OF THE DEEP"

This is a fake book that's actually a decorative storage box, but just look at that diving helmet octopus! So totally my kind of design! Is it on anything else, though!?



WOODEN "PIRATE" FIGURES

Well, it's on a wooden cut-out "figure" at least, packed with a couple of skeleton pirates and a couple of pumpkins. I'm gonna say they're all friends. But, come on, the octodiver's gotta be on at least one more little thing, right?!



LIGHT-UP OCTOPUS TOMBSTONE

And here I was delighted enough by the regular octopus tombstone Target released some years back. Holy cow! An entire decorative headstone modeled like an octopus, with a diving helmet, with a human skull inside!? A human skull that lights up a radioactive green?! GOD that's a radical combination!


It even looks great when it's not lit up, too, since the stylized skull takes on a lovely pale seafoam coloration and peers out from a clear, plastic bubble in the helmet!

What's more, the entire thing is a blow mold item. That means it's made out of a tough, hollow, ever-so-slightly flexible plastic that can resist lifetime after lifetime of wear and tear. This isn't just the best novelty tombstone I've ever owned, it's one of the new coolest items in my entire collection!

And yet...


As superb as this is, as cool as it looks, I still wish this character design didn't end here. A full color, sculpted figure of any size would have been better still, let alone something like a "life size" creature prop or a plush doll. You can't leave this poor thing with just a headstone, a box and a tiny piece of wood, Target! You've GOT to do more with this design in 2021!


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