Halloween 2006: October finds part II

Looks like I was wrong about October being a minor month. DEAD WRONG!!!    I SAID DEAD!!!

October 18 - Wal-Mart

-Some more hanging cloth guys-

As I may have mentioned somewhere or other, Wal-Mart lays claim to the dangly-hanging-cloth monsters with the most detailed and sinister heads of 2006. Lord only knows why there's no official competition for this, as I imagine there would be a pretty interesting-looking trophy involved. I can't even imagine what it would be, and I can usually imagine quite a bit.

October 20 - Halloween Adventure

-Little plastic cat-

This is a little mundane, but there was something about it that, for 75 cents, I definitely had to have.

-"All New STICKY Toy"-

Click the card back for an enlargement of these adorable and poorly-worded instructions; the sticky toy smashed!    I wonder what makes this an "All New" sticky toy when the exact same sticky toy (and every other toy in the set) has been packaged in various ways for generations now and is also featured in the "THAT'S GROSS!" generic toy line.

-"Scene Setters" Border Roll-

These "scene setters" decorations have been a Halloween staple for some time now, and consist of a plastic sheet designed to cling statically to most types of wall. It doesn't always work, and they only look good from a distance thanks to the rather fuzzy printing, but the moment I saw this I knew it was just the thing my bedroom has been waiting for all these bleak, borderless millenia. Temporarily moving enough objects to actually put this up is a project I may end up putting off for untold aeons, but when I finally do --- watch out!    I especially like the completely ficticious green bugs seen in the close-up scan here, and the fact that all the other arthropoda are in gaudy, unnatural colors except for the centipedes and nondescript worms.

-The Holy Grail of Rubber Bugs-

The picture says it all, but that won't stop me from telling you all about it anyway. NOTHING has ever stopped that, and nothing ever will.    I almost didn't see this monster until I was ready to leave the seasonal Halloween Adventure warehouse, and knew right away that I had been born to own one. Something like this would have given me a seizure of joy in my early childhood, and I would have no doubt carried it around as an imaginary pet of some sort.    Naturally, the centipede is just one member of an entire collection of titanic, highly realistic vinyl insects and arachnids that first cropped up back in 2003 and has gradually expanded ever since. I've already owned the cockroach since I first ran across them, and have been hunting the larger, more detailed version of the mosquito. Also available are an ant, spider, honeybee, and disappointing fly (too simplistic), but none nearly as large as the thousand-legger here.

October 22 - Weis supermarkets

-Musical Grim Reaper-

I knew that pet toys wouldn't let me down this year, and the fuzzy wuzzy angel of death is definitely too cool to let the dog slobber on. I think the manufacturers were well aware of this, having provided a string to hang him up wherever you may need his comforting, eyeless gaze to get you through the day.    And sure, he kinda looks more like an invisible eskimo than an anthropomorphic manifestation of death, but the scythe begs to differ...and so does the sound clip. Yep, every squeeze emits the classic murder-mystery jingle we've all heard time and again but so very, very few of us know the origins of. I know, but I'm not going to tell you.

October 22 - The mailbox

More stuff sent to me from Florida by my mother!

-Yet another new variety of Pocket Screamer-

This gangrenous zombie is much cooler-looking than any pocket screamer I've run across in the past, and is even slightly larger and rubberier! If I were to actually keep one in my pocket, it would probably be this guy...but their screaming mechanisms are so sensitive that my pocket would be howling in undead rage every single time I hugged some ranting homeless guy who dresses like Donald Duck and gives out Chick Tracts outside a Mcdonalds with tissue boxes on his feet, and that would get old fast.

-More movie-monster Windups!-

Easily rivaling the previous two is this delightful imitation of "Blade" from the Puppet Master series and an invisible-man detective! I particularly like the latter's outfit and that he carries a briefcase. He may have turned invisible, but he has work to do!!!

October 27 - Wockenfuss Chocolates

-"Scary Screamers"-

These great little guys are made of hard ceramic, with a button on the back to make their eyes blink while they emit that same generic ghost-sound as so many other items. They're just the right combination of adorable and sinister that I love so much.    Sadly, there was one exceptionally interesting variety that I didn't notice until leaving, and I would have felt awkward asking to buy something else so soon (I'm borderline obsessive-compulsive about that sort of thing) so I continued shopping elsewhere and came back twenty minutes later to find it gone. For the curious, it was some sort of cutesy werewolf or dr-jekyll sort of character in mid-transformation, wearing a top hat. Nuts.

SPECIAL UPDATE: NOVEMBER FINDS

Scavenging the season's corpse for two more weeks!

November 1st - SPIRIT clearance sale

-Giant Latex Buzzard-

Twenty dollars is a bit too much to pay for a rubber bird, but the post-halloween price of ten bucks made them pretty enticing. What better to accompany the giant rubber hangman head??

November 2nd - Hot Topic

-Gift-card caddies-

Many people suffer an aversion to Hot Topic, as it carries a lot of "trying to be cool" stigma, but anyone who cares even that much about the sincerity of a T-shirt store has, in my opinion, already become that which they profess to hate. I don't think twice about where I buy anything, and neither should you.    Especially when we're talking about these great little goblins who are actually intended to come with a gift card but can be bought alone all the same. They actually come out every year in a new style, but the only one I previously felt the need to own is a pale blue, skull-faced version. Now, these guys join it on my (COMPLETELY MASCULINE!!!) giant pile of stuffed bugs and Halloween monsters.

November 4th - "Giant" Grocery Store

-Spooky cups-

A skeleton version of these plastic goblets has been around for years, but I didn't notice these two newcomers until a day or two after Halloween. "Giant" decided to be extra-generous with its clearance sale at 75% off everything spooky, so these wound up less than a buck apeice. I like the scarecrow the most, but I had to get the mummy as well.

-Adorable flip-top Halloween cards-

Also from "Giant", these poor unpurchased greeting cards immediately called out to me as perfect wall-decor, though I'm not sure what I like the best; the outside of the zombie card, or the inside of the skeleton card. I don't even know what's going on inside the Zombie's brain, even if those four random monsters are quite lovable in their own right.

November 7th - Goodwill

-Wobbling metal ghost-

I actually bought one of these years ago at Michael's, but its head broke off and I never saw them for sale anywhere again...until now. Several days after Halloween, this guy popped up in the nearby Goodwill for an incredible TWO dollars (original price: $24.99). Born to BOO, baby!

November 11th - Ebay (won November 8)

-Starbucks Halloween buddies-

Somehow, it never even occured to me that Starbucks sold seasonal knick-knacks, but a late ebay search for "Halloween 2006" revealed that which I had shamefully overlooked. All three of these guys are adorable, and it's hard to pick a favorite, though I'm leaning mostly towards the ghost.

And finally...

November 14th - Bumpinthenightproduction.com (ordered October 25th)

-LIFE-SIZE LATEX "FIEND"-

From my all-time favorite 50's monster movie, "Fiend Without a Face", I had actually been eyeing this bendable latex prop for over two years, but the ludicrous price kept me from ordering one until 2006. I won't say what that ludicrous price was, but there's no way I could have lived without one of these.    Brain-creatures have always been one of my favorite monster subtypes, and the Fiends are definitive brain-creatures. They come from brains, they eat brains, they are brains. They are also invisible until the latter quarter of the otherwise tedious film, when the budget was blown on glorious stop-motion animation and splattering "gore" that truly horrified audiences of the 1950's.    I like how brain-creatures were both my first and last 2006 acquisitions.

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