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. 

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