Halloween at Petsmart 2021!
Carnivorous Plant Tug Toy
Home Depot brings us retail's first-ever carnivorous plant animatronic, and I do believe Petsmart has now produced the first-ever carnivorous plant pet toy, with a durable rope stem and an adorable plush plant head!
Oogie Boogie 3-in-1 Toy
The one other Nightmare item we'll go over is definitely the most amusing, an Oogie Boogie with two removable, crinkly plush worms! You can also hide other small toys or treats in his body, which includes a squeaker, for hours of grotesque entertainment as your canine slowly mutilates the Boogieman.
Sea Monster Plush
Moving on to wholly original characters, there's actually a couple different plushes of this three-eyed fish monster, another creature category I don't think I've ever seen in this format before! In fact, plush fish monsters are pretty rare in general, and every case I can think of was from some sort of existing property, like the original Gill-man, or Lovecraft's Deep Ones, or Warcraft's Murlocs. This is just a unique scaly critter with an adorably blank expression.
Halloween Cookie Stack
The cutest sugar-fiend at Petsmart this year is a stack of what appear to be macarons, with cute little eyes in their creamy filling! I kind of find the texture and taste of macarons disgusting, but I think that would just make these cuties feel safe and secure in my home. I don't think anyone I know would eat them, actually.
"OMG! SURPRISE" Frankenstein with Brain
This is one of those newfangled plush dog toys with a smaller, rubber toy hidden inside for when destructive pups to discover. I love these as a concept, and they already get hilariously morbid year-round - such as plush snakes with horrified mice in their stomachs - so Halloween monsters are a natural fit, and when a dog finally gnaws through Franko's head, they release a rubber brain with a deeply haunted facial expression, actually the second squeaky rubber brain Petsmart's produce!
2021 Skeleton Fish
Petsmart made a quirky, cartoonishly stylized skeleton fish aquarium ornament last year, but this year sells a more "life like" version of what appears to be the same fictional fish species, still sort of cartoonish, but less angular and more organic looking. The pale green interior of the eye sockets may also be a glow in the dark feature, or at least bright under aquarium lighting!
"OMG! SURPRISE" Werewolf With Moon
This one is a bit moe abstract, with a small rubber moon concealed within the frightened werewolf head. I guess it represents the curse of lycanthropy, though I feel like it should actually be a little rubber lumberjack head, right???
Carnivorous Plant Pet Costume
You must be so tired of all these generic Audrey II's delighting me every single time, or how many times I'm going to ask why the heck it took so long for them to become major Halloween symbols. This has to be their first mass produced pet costume, and it gives your cat or dog no less than three chomping vegetable maws!
Evil Clown Pet Costume
This apparently came out last year, and it unfortunately has some negative customer reviews. Apparently the clown and its platter are both too limp to function as intended, which is tragic, because the concept of this costume is just hysterical. An evil clown holding your pet's severed head on a plate. I don't think I've even seen many store-bought pet costumes this morbid and grotesque, either.
Scorpion Costume
Spider pet costumes are absolutely everywhere, but a scorpion is pretty novel! What's great about this, though, is what a big, goofy stuffed scorpion it makes all on its own, with delightful red-pupiled googly eyes and a shiny leather texture that really looks like the real thing's exoskeleton!
And while regrettably impossible, this would also be a really funny costume for a giant frog.
"OMG! SUPRISE" Spider and Fly!!
"OMG" is right!! They finally made one of these especially for me! A frightened plush spider conceals a rubber fly, and it's just about the most perfect a simplified, cartoon fly can ever possibly be:
Top Fin Sea Monster Mouth
So this last one actually isn't a Halloween-exclusive item, but it did come out only shortly before 2021's spooky season, and how positively AWESOME is this thing?! "Sea Monster Mouth" far from captures what we're looking at here; a tentacled serpent with scaly, blue-green fish skin and an eyeless, wormlike head with a circular maw of six sucker-lined, fleshy petals! This type of creature mouth has grown significantly more popular in the years since Stranger Things and its "Demogorgon" took off, though you know I've always been a BIG fan of the trope, and it's amazing that you can just buy a statue of such a cool creature design at any old Petsmart. I bet it would also look great with real leeches slinking in and out of it, but unfortunately, you never know how the paints and resins of these items might affect some aquatic organisms, so my "Sea Monster Mouth" will have to remain purely ornamental. I mean, ornamental for humans, rather than for its intended context.
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