Crystal Lake Memories / Friday the 13th Documentary

Most of you reading this have probably seen at least 1 Friday the 13th movie. Some of you may have seen them all. If you haven't seen any, maybe don't start by playing the NES game. Jason has become a staple in horror since his debut in 1980. The story behind Jason, the franchise creation and the questions we have all been asking like, "is he immortal? Is he a zombie? Why did he age so much from the 1st movie to Part II??" are all discussed in loving detail in this highly recommended documentary, based on the book of the same name by Peter Bracke.

I stumbled across this 6+ hour gem and have not regretted it. I won't give you a full review as it dives into every movie released, but I will tell you that the interviews are so worth the time. Even if you are not a big fan of the franchise it is a captivating documentation on one piece of cinema that has permeated pop culture. All of this hosted by none other than Corey Feldman.

As some of you already know, Corey shows up as a boy named Tommy in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter in 1984. We all know it wasn't the final chapter... I won't spoil anything if you haven't seen it, but his character had a twist that amounted to pretty much nothing.

My favorite interviews are with the director, Sean S. Cunningham. It's so interesting to hear the story behind the cop out ending of the first movie.

We even get some excellent interviews with some of those behind the mask like Kane Hodder and Ted White.

If you're looking to take a tip back to re-live some of the memories of the making of the film, or even just hear how the sausage is made, I can't recommend enough for you to take some time to watch any, if not all of Crystal Lake Memories.

Halloween Mountain Dew

Ahh... The season is upon us. The higher-ups at Pepsi decided to bless the masses this season with the following, directly from their website:

VooDEW^® is a devilishly delicious new mystery flavor to help you get into the spirit of Halloween early.

Look at the above add.. amazing! I can't thank Pepsi Co. Enough for the effort they put into this. It brings a purple/green tear to my eye and makes the bats in my chest flutter. Excuse the effortless pun, but they are DEW-ing it right in my eyes. 

I found some 20 oz bottles at a local gas station, Maverick, followed by a 12 pack at Walmart. All this after spending the last 2 weeks periodically going out of my way to see if the "brickseek" UPC code I was using would yield results. 

After tasting some, it's quickly become my favorite after Baja Blast. I just wish it was zero sugar so I could drink it guilt free. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what it tastes like and I love that! There's not a finite flavor announced yet, allowing people to really experience it! To me, it smells like Skittles. I catch hints of caramel, maybe candy corn and cotton candy. I think the intended flavor may just be a generic "candy" flavor. There's definitely a bit of a Surge aftertaste I pick up and I love it!

The can and box are the BEST thing about it. The color scheme of orange, black and yellow against a purple backdrop with an orange grim reaper tells me whoever created this really put some thought into it. It's definitely an official Halloween drink and it's only around for another 62 days from today. I honestly couldn't have thought of a nicer surprise to kick off my favorite season! Let me know your thoughts and experience with Voo Dew in the comments! 

Great Horror Movie Villains

The 80's cultivated a lot of horror movies. Popular culture powerhouses were defining a genre for today's avacado toast generation and we were too close to see. Freddy was coming to get you if you fell asleep. If you had plans to promiscuously camp near a lake, you might want to stop living your best life for a few days. Want to petition Halloween to be on the last Saturday of October instead of the 31st? You would need to survive the pursuit of an impossibly whiter Captain Kirk.

These were the unholy trinity. Sure, there have been other greats that have spawned many sequels like Scream and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the original three made it fun to see a horror movie. Freddy was the talkative one. So much so that he was able to get DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince to write an unauthorized song about his antics, be sued by New Line and subsequently "lose" their copies of the music video. Do yourself a favor and watch the music video that was recently unearthed. It's fantastic. 

I still remember Jake Bunts coming to my house when that song released. It was at the time that Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff were at the peak of their music careers. Jake had a cassette with the single, "Nightmare on My Street." My dad wouldn't let me near something that could possibly terrify my fragile child mind, but he was in the backyard and we were perfectly cognizant of that fact.

Jake saw his moment and went for it. He quickly dropped the cassette into the boom box in the garage and turned it up to a less than reasonable volume, considering the circumstances. The song immediately painted a picture so vivid in my mind of how this whole Nightmare on Elm Street series worked, that I can still remember most of that thought process today. I hadn't even seen any of the movies yet, only caught glimpses of my parents watching it on a VHS they rented from local favorite, Video Shark. Regardless, there was no way I was going to get a good night's sleep for at least the next month. 

 

This all leads me to something I found in a boutique shop. It's a book called Great Horror Movie Villains Paper Dolls by Erin A. Ellis. It feels like something that was made in the 80's because these days it is rare to see something with psychopathic killers marketed towards young kids. I mean, Aliens, Predator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day action figures were massively successful (by today's standards) R-rated movie toys, but that's not something I've seen attempted since. This is why I say it feels like something from another era. 

The art is definitely on point in here. I don't want to spoil too much from the book, but I snapped some shots to give you an idea of what you'd be buying. 

Freddy and Nancy are some of my favorites. The book even lists the actors names at the bottom of the dolls. 

We even get a nice little throwback to bag head Jason. The attention to detail is outstanding! 

Last but not least, a peek at Mr. Halloween himself. Although I found this in a boutique store, I was able to find it on Amazon. Enjoy the season folks. It's just getting started. 

Halloween Crunch Is Back!!

I love this time of year! Call me a nerd or childish but my favorite  thing to do is catch wind of some fall/Halloween themed product and then spend the next few days looking for it, from store to store. Life is about those little moments. My kids and I don't look back and say, "Remember when we found Halloween Crunch?" We look back and say, "Remember when we spent time driving all over TOGETHER looking for Halloween Crunch?" We find joy in the mundane this time of year. Every journey to somewhere like Target or Bath and body works is an adventure on the search for the trail to Halloween. 2019 was the trip to Target to see if they had Halloween Crunch and Target delivered!

This stuff originally came out in 2007 with Cap'n dressed like a mummy. I didn't find out about it until 2015 (my original 2015 post) and now I look for it every year! The box art is amazing and didn't change, but I'm biased with an attraction to anything glow-in-the-dark green and Halloween themed. It seems like they skipped 2018 as I couldn't find it anywhere, so that's why I'm so excited about it this year. 

It's pretty rare for cereal to have a toy in them anymore, but I feel like the effort put into the theme here more than makes up for the lack of prize. It tastes just like any other crunch berry cereal, but the milk turns green! No, it doesn't glow and the green is pretty off base, but in my eyes, this stuff beats out all the General Mills monster cereals like Count Chocula and Boo Berry. Disagree? Tell me why. No one where will talk to me about it, so you might as well. 

Ecto Cooler

I never thought I would see the day that as an adult I would be drinking Ecto Cooler again. I tried to prepare myself once it was announced, but the marketing was so good with the advent of social media. 

I mean, just look at this! We are in a time where we can easily interact with the company producing the green nectar. It only took me stalking every Cinemark in the valley for the better half of a week, but it finally paid off!!

      So cool to see this in the theater! 

          $3.25 a can is SO worth it!

 I don't remember it being this green, but I love it!!

 I remember riding around on my Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Big Wheel, slimmer horn and all with a box of Ecto Cooler in tow. 

My random RGB intro ghost stickers were peeling off the front wheel and there was a few toys shoved into the holes that the adjustable seat could be moved into, but I didn't care. I was in heaven. Now instead of drinking a 6oz juice box full of the good stuff on said Big Wheel, I get an 11.5 oz can sans Slimer in my 2007 Toyota Yaris Sport ( it has a spoiler so I can go... faster?) But none the less, that first sip took me back to those days of wheeling around the sidewalks, watching The Real Ghostbusters cartoon in the afternoon, drinking Ecto Cooler and ending the night at Hardees to get a Ghostbusters II Sound FX keychain and Slimer Sunday. (None of the sounds were actually from Ghostbusters, but it had a sweet sticker!)

       https://youtu.be/CSE0Nh5D9Fc

Going to have to find some of these on eBay. 

Comment below with your Ecto Cooler/Ghostbusters memories!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Kid Ecto!

Nothing says fall like a farmer putting down his salt-pellet-firing shotgun and opening up his private property to the local urban community. Instead of being fired upon for trespassing, visitors are welcome to trade green paper currency for orange organic vegetables. 

Look at that lense flare! J.J. would be proud. A lot of families have traditions surrounding Halloween and pumpkins, I'm sure. Going to an actual farm where there are other activities to draw you in like corn mazes just to grab a pumpkin seems to have developed within the last 10 years or so in America. I think there are at least 4 Crazy corn mazes within a 5 mile radius of my house. 

In the 80's and early 90's we would run over to the local grocery store to get a pumpkin. There was no pageantry surrounding it. My mom and dad weren't trying to polish the turd that was taking me and my constantly fighting younger brothers to pick out a pumpkin that we would carve, then days later have smashed on our porch. The event wasn't getting the pumpkin. The event was carving it. 

Not only did we go to the local patch that has a corn maze, but it also had Mater from Disney's Cars as well as a hay ride on the back of a tractor. 

More lense flare. I'm available, Hollywood. I love how it is now with so much extra sensory overload. So many things to do to turn the mundane task into an event. Makes it more fun. We used to just carve the best faces we could draw into our pumpkins. If I could nail the design of the McBoo pail, I was happy. 

Now, thanks to sites like ZombiePumpkins.com, if I want Slimer on my pumpkin I can have him!

What memories do you have of the Raiders of the Lost Ark-like adventures of getting your pumpkin? What about carving stories? Leave them in the comments below. 

Halloween Crunch

Picture this: It's 1980 something. You wake up Saturday morning and immediately turn on the tv. You flip through your basic channels because Cartoon Network hasn't been invented yet. And there it is... You've found it. Your favorite cartoon to wake up to. As you settle in you hear, "After these messages.... We'll be riiiight back!" in a singsong jingle. 

You notice your not alone. Something is just as cranky as your mom and dad would be if they were to awake at this hour: your stomach. You need to get something to eat during this commercial break. You've got your classics; Trix, Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes. But what if we had this: 

Halloween Crunch! Oh how much better our Saturday morning would have been. I seriously wish I could time travel and give the younger version of myself a box of this on an early October morning, along with the replica Mattel Hoverboard I finally own, but I digress.  The Cap'n and his team finally got rid of the Soggies and turned it up to 11. 

The box art is nothing short of amazing with our favorite cereal scourge of the seas now donning ghost captain garb. They even we're kind enough to throw in some reading material on the back, for those mornings where there was nothing on tv and your attention span was too short to keep flipping through the channels only to find Rambo: First Blood playing on Fox again. 

So, you've seen the box. If you don't buy it based on this alone, you've probably looked in the corner and noticed that last piece of text that makes you shout to your legal guardian, "WE HAVE TO GET THIS!" 

You're sold! This is what really got me. Normally, as an adult, I don't care what color my milk turns. I'll usually just drink it. This time, it called for me to pull out my phone to document it as my significant other looked at me and realized her life had reached a new low. 

Not 100% accurate for a glow in the dark color, but it was close enough. It tastes just like regular Cap'n Crunch, if you care. The fact that it does something different than the normal pink berry color was enough to get me excited. My wife, not so much. So there you have it. Halloween Crunch. And a 1080p picture of greenish milk.

Let me know if you tried this stuff in the comments. Tell me about your favorite Saturday morning rituals. As sad as it sounds, I'd honestly love to hear them. 

- Kid Ecto