CRAZY BONEZ (and imitators) 2023!!

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

If you're new here, take a moment to read the site's first-ever look at Crazy Bonez Halloweend decorations, when the brand unleashed the first mass produced skeleton spiders - and a scorpion! - onto the world in 2015. Make note, especially, of my "wishlist" at the end of the article before you proceed.

The following are both official and knockoff Crazy Bonez items I've seen in only the month of August for 2023...



Knockoff Michael's Sklider

Is this Skeleton Spider, or Sklider, a brand new model? It might be, or this might just be my first time encountering it in person. Every Sklider is a precious gem, but the standard small Crazy Bonez model still has the most correct spider-like body plan to it, whereas imitators like this one are more fantastical. I mean, more fantastical than the fact that they're already made of bones. This specimen has a nice three dimensional ribcage abdomen and the eight legs aren't bad, though it doesn't have any palps, and the cephalothorax looks more like it's divided into an actual insect-like head and thorax segments. It's not bad, like I said, a sklider is a sklider, but it still pales in comparison to the original.



Skeleton Unicorn

This isn't the first skeletal unicorn I've seen, and Crazy Bonez already produces one of its own, but I do think this one's fairly cool; it's mostly a quasi-realistic horse skeleton, except of course for the horn, and the fact that it has a more reptile-like skull! It's like a little dragon or dinosaur skull with sharp teeth, rather than an equine one, and I like that because I like when unicorns in general aren't just fancy horses. They were often more chimeric in older literature and artwork, sometimes even more goat-like, and sometimes assumed to be carnivorous, so I have to say I wholeheartedly accept this design.



GOOSE!

You can tell this one isn't Crazy Bonez either, because of the dingy coloration, messy paint and somewhat lower quality plastic, however it is a weird inaccurate goose skeleton with creepy finger bones on its wings, and I know those inaccuracies frustrate some of you, but I think this is a cool looking piece. It feels pretty eerie, the kind of thing that might be hanging out at a demon summoning ritual in an old woodcut illustration.



Ferocious Dragon Skeleton

A number of dragon skeletons have cropped up in recent years, but this one is the "meanest" looking; really chunky, gnarly and toothy, with crooked horns and scowling eye sockets. It's over twelve inches in length and would make an incredible "miniature" for a tabletop RPG, I gotta say, an absurdly gargantuan Dracolich that could probably fit the entire party in its mouth at once.



Actual Crazy Bonez brand "Baby" Skeleton?!

Okay, the presence of teeth means this can't actually be a baby skeleton, but it is baby-proportioned, which is probably the closest you can come to selling a baby skeleton as a Halloween decoration without too many complaints. I feel like that's probably also why the little guy is molded to stand upright and wave, so we know for sure this baby skeleton is perfectly alive and happy! See?! This baby LIKES being a skeleton, so cool your jets!!!!



Tentacled Alien Skull

This and the remaining items are, I believe, Crazy Bonez creations sold exclusively through Spirit Halloween this year, the first of which is this "alien skull" really resembling a human skull with fleshy, bone colored octopus tentacles sprouting out of its head. It works just as well as another variety of skeleton octopus, of course, one with a human face sticking out of what would be the top of its body. Or the back of its body. Cephalopods are weird like that, they kind of have a "sure, whatever" upproach to the concept of "up" and "down."

The design of this skull, with the writhing tentacles where "hair" should be, also makes me realize how cool a medusa skull would have to look, and I'm surprised that's not been done yet as either prop, statue, or latex mask!

As usual, I save the best for last, and not only do I now actually own our next two entries, but I took them on a fun trip out to the woods so you could see them in their full, majestic, natural beauty.



SKELETON MOTH!!!

Crazy Bonez already makes a truly delightful "butterfly" and bee skeletons,the former a sort of human-legged skeletal fairy monster I still count among my favorite pieces of plastic, but I'm so glad they hopped aboard the newfound popularity of death's head moths, a truly natural fit! This large plastic moth has a nine inch wingspan, said wings formed from a lattice of eerily curly little bones, while the abdomen is a pointed, stretched out ribcage and the thorax is, of course, a humanlike skull facing out at us from the insect's back!


The creature's head isn't 1:1 that of a moth, but a very cool looking insectoid face that almost brings to mind some kind of Hemipteran; it has its own pair of eyes on the sides of the humanoid skull, a pair of blunt, finely segmented antennae and a short, sharp looking proboscis that no doubt feeds on more than nectar! Real death's heads are a variety of hawkmoth, a group that includes some of the world's only blood-sucking moths and a few species that feed on the tears of birds or mammals. Any of these would suit the bonemoth, I'm sure, but then again, maybe it drills all the way down to suck up some refreshing bone marrow?


Another way you can recognize Crazy Bonez creations? Knockoffs often cheap out and go with a flat or hollow underside, but Crazy Bonez are often lovingly detailed from every angle! Our moth has six thin, bony legs sprouting from its sternum, thin but sturdy enough to stand on quite nicely, and we also see that the underside of the skull thorax is a second rib cage! What a cool touch! It needs to be hollow anyway to save on plastic, so you may as well do something with that and carve some rib slots into it!

Bonemoth is one of the coolest skeleton items of all time, clearly, and had it come out any other year, it might have been my #1 new favorite of the season, but it happens to share 2023 with an even bigger dream come true...


Yeah, that's right. If you read my 2015 wishlist, you know my #1 most wanted was simply any sort of Gastropod, and I mentioned it again in 2022, when I discovered this swirly snail shell skull, which was cool, sure, but unfortunately had no resident mollusk. SO close!


The idea of a snail or snail-esque monster comprised entirely of bone has captured my imagination ever since the Skelesnail (left) from Secret of Evermore, though admittedly its shell is its only element of snailiness. Its body is more like the upper half of a fanged primate skeleton, walking around ostrich-like on its arm bones. I absolutely LOVE that, but it's still not what you really picture when you hear the name "skelesnail," now, is it?

The concept cropped up much more recently in the "Skeletal Snail" from Elden Ring, but as it's an undead version of the game's snail-snake hybrids, its skeletal body is of Ophidian leaning, while the shell is simply a giant unmodified humanoid skull.

Why, in all my years on Earth, have I seen virtually no cases of full-blown snails that are simply also made out of vertebrate bones? It's obvious! It's a NO-BRAINER! Everyone loves snails! Everyone loves bones! Duh! What gives!? I'm pushing forty years old and I still haven't seen it done?! What am I supposed to tell myself when I go in time??? Well, now I know:



THOSE CRAZY BASTARDS DID IT

Nature didn't see fit to combine these two things, but these guys didn't name themselves Crazy Bonez for nothing. The CRAZY BONEZ SKELETON SNAIL, brand new at Spirit Halloween for Halloween 2023, is exactly what the words "skeleton" and "snail" should be used to describe together. A beautiful, perfect, adorable abomination of necromancy with a coiled snail shell that is also a human skull, a body made out of rib bones, and all four of a snail's knobby tentacles sprouting out of its lovable little jawless, toothless, rounded skull head! It has everything critical to a snail and everything critical to a skeleton (bones), neatly combined in the most obviously correct formula there could ever possibly be. Yes, I've seen a few gripes here and there that it doesn't have eyes on the stalks, but it's not like there'd be all that much room for them, and you may be surprised to know that there are some tropical land snails with eyes at the base of the stalks, like your typical cartoon-show garden snail, so there.


In fact, Crazy B. Sneleton (their full legal name, of course) actually averts one of the most common oversights of other model snails, in that the spiral of the shell is only on one side! The skull from last year, while still quite nice, put the spiral on both sides, more like an ammonite, and what, are you expecting us to believe SNAMMONITES are a thing?! Don't be silly!

So yes, the Crazy Bonez sneleton is in fact the most scientifically accurate a Sneleton can conceivably be. This does bring me to something that probably frustrates me a little more than it should, and that's how every time a new Crazy Bonez creation drops, the internet passes it around like it's someone's dumb mistake.


To be fair to Clint here, he does get into the fact that these are simply "Halloween Monsters," and that he's using them as a springboard to talk about bone science. On social media, however, this very sneleton receives comments ranging from "IRONICALLY I actually like this for some reason!" to "this makes me murderously angry," as though anybody truly believes that a plastic snail made of plastic bones was created with no self-awareness or any knowledge of where you can normally find non-plastic bones.

Perhaps a lot of it is in jest, but yes, internet, I promise you the folks at Crazy Bonez do not expect to find a skull inside an octopus. It's a little thing called Imagination, which is kind of entirely the reason anybody likes Halloween to begin with!

I can only hope that, like the Crazy Bonez octopuses, spiders and more, the overall concept of a Sneleton might take root and spread further through the public consciousness from here. They will likely never be half as good as this, but I want to see more plastic Sneletons on my desk PRONTO.



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