Plastic-Spooky-Fuzz-Face

Critters made a comeback and it was shitter than I could have ever anticipated. Balls to everyone who cacks on stuff for a quick buck.

Yet more spooky, boardgame, shinanigans that bypassed me! Oh cruel world!!

I never had this....my life is incomplete.......

Man, these was pure diamond steam! Rubber finger puppets - You stuck two fingers behind their eye pips and your thumb behind their cake hole, and blam! The illustion of actual life was second to none! Only truly worked with a crap ventriloquist attempt: “A gottle uv geer, a gottle uv geer!”.

More spooky shenanigans from one of Japan’s masters of the ancient art of making-you-shit-yourself  Kawanabe Kyosai. I’m not sure what type of yokai these little buggers actually are, but I do know that they’re fun on a mother-fuckin’ bun. More soon.

There are tons of spooky and grotesquely themed netsuke out there, but this one of a wolf chomping on someone’s hairy bulb is one of my faves.

Skellington aerobics from the sketchbook of Kawanabe Kyosai. So much calcified awesome.

Anyway no matter what I think, Boglins where the goddamned best, and even if they manage to shit them up the wall we still have the originals (bar those soggy abominations) to remind us just how magical toys used to be - I mean It was like having your own mini-monster-movie companion like Billy from Gremlins, and for a kid back then that was like bottled lightning!

Even McDonalds used to have good points. This is when their toys didn’t have to be made off the back of the latest, licenced, copy and paste, CG, kiddy, bullshit. Look at those spooky nuggets....there’s probably more nutritional value in them than there were the in real chicken nuggets back then.

The Friday the 13th game on ZX Spectrum used to scare the shit out of me. It was more about the whole “Video Nasty” mythology that went with the movies: that whole “inherently evil” cack that the press pedalled back in the day when people thought video games could instantly morph dear little Jimmy into a hideous crafter of corpses. It definitely had nothing to do with the actual game because it was a complete pile of sweetcorn-studded bum crumpets. It used to take half a century to load the lame-arse, lo-fi, scream that accompanied the equally terrible loading-screen rendition of the classic cover from part IV, and it was all downhill from there.

Cauldron 2 The Pumpkin Strikes Back - ZX Spectrum. Another wonderfully creepy jaunt through gaming nostalgia, for those with enough inner calm to not bludgeon a monitor flat with the base of a joystick that is. This time you play a pumpkin bouncing around a gloriously-mapped castle trying to dodge skelingtons and ghoulies and not get flung out of windows by book-tipping gargoyles. It will test your patience, but the spartan yet spooky visuals will buzz your nugglettes for sure! 

Cauldron for ZX Spectrum - an Awesome game with awesome, arse-kicking, difficulty to boot. You play the hag, and in true witchy style you must fly about on your broomstick flinging spells and collecting ingredients for some bubbly, stinking, potion. Landing your broom could be a darn risky business but the platforming bits were the true life crushers. Infuriating as it is spooky and gorgeous. An essential part of a spooky 80s kid’s gaming arsenal.

The best game map in history - Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back.