Spooky Goat day eighteen! SPOOKY TOYS
7SPOOKY TOYS!
When I was little I was the proud possessor of a Weebles Haunted House, lost many years ago in a flood (most probably).
/image weebles haunted house
/youtube weebles haunted house
I was deeply, deeply envious of family friends who 1) lived in a forest (as far as I knew) and 2) owned a Mattel Thingmaker Creepy Crawlers.
/image mattel thingmaker creepy crawlers
Now I just have a bunch of Monster High stuff and am mildly disapproving of their current reboot. Here is my small collection of MH stying heads, in the basement of my old house:
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Ohhh - I knew a boy who had that Creepy Crawler set and I desperately wanted one for Christmas. There was a package under the tree about the right size and shape - !!!
I was so bummed. My mother could have at least given me better yarn with it.
BUT when I opened it, it was a weird weaving loom made of plastic that came with hideous red and white shiny cotton yarn.
@Kyeh I had an Incredible Edibles set - it made candy bugs and snakes and such. I even had a little business going with the other kids at school until the teacher shut it down. (Spoilsport!
)
@macromeh I had a little commercial enterprise in grade school too, sewing clothes for troll dolls (all the girls were collecting Wishniks!) I drew a little catalog and sold the outfits for a nickel apiece. But my teacher was a spoilsport too.
And I still have the trolls, because I’m a packrat. Dresses made from a scrap from my mother’s dress (L) and an old scarf.
Another troll joined their ranks a little while back:
They could use dusting.
@Kyeh Those are adorable! (Hi, Irk!! It’s kinda like a mini version of “Where’s Waldo?”… Bonus!)
@ircon96 @Kyeh
I was curious to know where everyone keeps their IRK pin! Love your collection!
@Kyeh @macromeh We had the Incredible Edibles too, but it didn’t survive like the Thingmaker did.
As I recall, the taste of the Incredible Edibles was not very incredible, more like barely edible.
@ircon96 @Lynnerizer Thanks!
@blaineg @Kyeh A couple of the flavors were OK, but yeah, most were pretty lame. Of course, the main attraction was the novelty shapes.
Had the creepy crawler set and the Fighting Men set too! There was a flower set too.
But the best was the Green Ghost game that glowed in the dark! You’d open one of the 3 doors and reach in thru “bat feathers”!
Back Panel
Glow in the Dark!
Bigger pics:
Green Ghost Instructions
@MarkDaSpark
That looks sooooo cool.
@Star2236
It was, to an 8 yo! Reaching in to the box with “bat feathers”!
Evidently they used a black light to get it to glow better … now I wish I still had the game!
Good timing with this topic, i just happened to see this on the local news yesterday. Adorably creepy. I love the mother’s comment about the fear of having her soul stolen!
https://news.yahoo.com/girl-goes-viral-love-her-170425839.html
@ircon96 Crazy!
@ircon96
She’s most likely going to work in the service industry, caring for people in some way. I think it’s adorable!
I loved my Thingmaker! (OK it was probably my brother’s Thingmaker.). I think it’s floating around my house somewhere. I remember making glow in the dark skeletons.
@sammydog01 I never liked any of sets except the Creepy Crawlers; I wanted to make tiny lizards and spiders so badly!
I rediscovered my Creepy Crawler stuff in the cellar a couple of years ago, and filled out some missing pieces via ebay. The nieces & nephews loved it.
https://www.patti-goop.com/ is a modern source for replacement Plastigoop. But Plastigoop is nothing more than Plastisol, which you can buy in bulk from fishing supply stores. It’s used for making lures.
https://www.jannsnetcraft.com/search?keywords=Plastisol
I’d recommend using some of the “hardener” as the base stuff is a bit too floppy and wiggly. It’s really more of a “firminer” than hardener.
https://www.jannsnetcraft.com/044020100005
It really depends on if you want the convenience of ready to go bottles, or want the bulk savings and want to fiddle with your own mixes and colors.
@blaineg Wow kinda pricey. It was probably a nickel back in the day. (That’s a joke.)
FOUND IT! Looks like a fire hazard.
@sammydog01
Lucky you!
Are you going to try it out?
That little bat was a favorite of mine too.
@sammydog01 Oh god, there was a shrunken head!? PEAK weirdness!
@mossygreen @sammydog01 Perfect for the budding serial killer in your life!
@sammydog01
It’s amazing looking back at the things we were allowed to play with as kids. I’m sure the thingmaker gets hot as fuck and many kids burned the crap out of themself but it was fine. Today it’s so not okay for kids.
My brother had a creepy crawly set thing in the early 90’s and you slid the disk in an oven to bake so you wouldn’t burn your fingers.
@sammydog01
Now that is what I remember, those big clunky metal plates! I LOVED making that stuff!
I remember mixing all the colors (sometimes getting ugly brown) for pretty flowers!
@mossygreen @sammydog01 Yes, and the shrunken head mold has an insert so you turn out a thin shell of plastic, instead of a solid block. That saves a lot of Plastigoop, but the inserts for molds are often lost.
There’s a few other insert molds, like Creeple People.
Most of the toys i had as a kid came from garage sales. So my Creepy Crawler set had no goop. I melted crayons into the molds instead. But I did have one of these new:
@walarney OH WOW. I could not have lived in the same house as that. I could not do it now. But I’m still SUPER-JEALOUS! Created by Alan Ormsby! Writer and star of Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things!
Edit: Ooh, maybe Alan Ormsby should be a daily subject…
@mossygreen I never made the connection! I have the Blu-ray pre-ordered since a few weeks ago.
@mossygreen @walarney Omg, like any disguise is gonna mask those super-creepy eyes!
@walarney Any luck getting the crayons back out of the molds?
@blaineg I think so? Or else it was a different but similar kit.
Not exactly scary, but I had Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent and his disguise kit when I was a little kid. Beany & Cecil was the cartoon, and Cecil was a master of disguise. I suppose it made sense somehow.
Cecil wasn’t scary, but there was blood involved, and that was scary.
I was misbehaving somehow, so Mom grabbed the soft stuffed animal and bopped me over the head with it. The only problem was Cecil was wearing his sheriff disguise, and the tin star cut my scalp. Well, you know how much head cuts bleed.
I thought Mom had killed me, and she probably did too. I’m not sure which one of us was crying more. Probably her.
Somehow we both survived.
@blaineg Hey, I still have one of these stashed away in the basement. It might even still work. I wonder if it’s worth something?
@macromeh The eBay listing I stole that photo from wanted $250!
DAMN IT, I HAD NO IDEA SO MANY OF YOU HAD CREEPY CRAWLER SETS AND PROBABLY LIVED IN A FOREST.
@mossygreen I vaguely remember a Creepy Crawler set in my youth, it was probably my older brother’s, he got all the cool stuff. We didn’t live IN a forest, but we were adjacent to one with a small stream, full of newts & salamanders, frogs, etc, to play with. Good times.
@mossygreen No forest, but there were several contiguous back yards with a lot of trees and brush, so it was nearly the same thing for us.
Many epic cowboys and Indians battles were fought, pirates and spacemen too.
I too had a thingmaker. Can’t remember which.
@brainmist DAMN IT AGAIN.
@brainmist @mossygreen
Sooo lucky, right?!
I had the universal monsters. Except I had the glow in the dark ones. I had the swamp thing on a shelf in my room till I was probably 16 then my brother stole it and it’s gone now. My dad and I still watch all the movies together when they play them on tcm.
@Star2236 I love those movies. They didn’t creep you out at night, glowing and all?
@Star2236 I have Dracula, the Phantom and the Wolfman. They look like crap and went through a flood, but I still have them. I was able to save them because they were in the drawer of a vanity that was still intact after being underwater for a week and then sitting in a wet, mold-filled basement for a week after that. I also have a carded Dracula, except it fell off the card. But it didn’t go through a massive flood, so there’s that.
@sammydog01
No I was a weird kid. I was all about monsters and great whites. I have a book “all about me” from when I was 4 and my favorite movie at the time was thriller ( I was a movie in my mind).
@mossygreen
So jealous you still have them. I was looking on eBay and their so expensive.
@Star2236 It’s a MIRACLE that I still have them, we literally had 7 feet of water in the basement. I do appreciate your jealousy, thank you.
There was an episode of Collector’s Call recently where the collector had a horror collection and they offered her a full set in exchange for a Queen of the Dark Forest Barbie. She turned them down, which was probably the right decision, but man…
![][1]
Here’s the glow in the dark creature from the black lagoon I had. Other pic was ones I just found all together
[1]:
@Star2236 Geez - I think your brother owes you $100!
@Kyeh
Tell me about it. About 5 years ago he threw away my heman comics I had saved from the early 80’s along with some 90210 stuff I had put in the very top of a closet at my dads house (it used to be my room and was my hiding spot). He didn’t put anything up there he just saw it and threw it away bc he felt like it.
@Star2236
Wow! If you have anything else stored there I hope you take it away! How obnoxious!!!
@Kyeh
He got it all unfortunately
@Star2236 Whadda jerk!
We also had the Mattel Strange Change Time Machine.
Contrary to the ad, you didn’t make anything, just heated up Starburst shaped (though a bit bigger) plastic squares to let them unfold into their premade shapes. Still very entertaining, and fun to reheat them and mash them back down into squares.
I still have the machine and a few squares, but the plastic dome is long gone.
And the Hot Wheels Factory. Molten plastic and die-cast injection, the perfect kid’s toy!
Not much creep, and no spooky mold additions, though I think there was a military jeep mold.
@blaineg
Our Cub Scout Den got to go visit the factory (at the time, it was here in Southern California in Hawthorne. A Brownie troop(?) was visiting at the same time.
We got Hot Wheels and they got Barbie dolls!
Is it a toy? Maybe? Is it Spooky? Heck yes!
Surprised no one has mentioned it yet!
@MarkDaSpark Oh, good one!
@MarkDaSpark My library had one when I was very young. We were so disappointed that it didn’t seem to work.
@brainmist. Well, obviously you weren’t in a New York City Library!
/giphy Ghostbusters-Library-New-York
@brainmist @MarkDaSpark Toy or GATEWAY TO HELL?
@MarkDaSpark
Those things always freaked me out. I watched the exorcist at a young age.