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A Bad Case of Worms!!!

A Bad Case of Worms is in all likelihood the earliest toy I can remember specifically asking for, and praise Nord the Barbarian, it's in my arms again.

God, how I loved these. People call you a liar when you say you remember things from when you were 4 or 5, unless you arbitrarily decided you were kidnapped or molested as a child after catching a Melrose Place rerun. I swear to you, I remember getting these. I remember getting these from the KB Toys in the Staten Island Mall, back when it was called "Kay-Bee Toys," and back when there was a McDonald's next to it filled with lightweight tin ashtrays with the golden arches etched in. The ABCOW tiny toy briefcases were stocked near the register along with all of the assorted candies and other impulse items, and every time my mother brought me to the mall, I got a new ABCOW toy. I cannot express the joy I found in these things, but I think I can explain it. I was really young. Maybe young enough to still have some lingering traits from that whole animism period all children go through. To me, these sticky and impossibly cute rubber worm figures weren't rubber worm figures at all -- they were pets, alive, ready to party and needing me.

For almost twenty years I sat by candlelight every night trying to remember what the fuck the toys were called, and it was actually an X-E blog poster who shed light on the mystery back in January of 2005. After that, I researched the holy hell out of ABCOW toys, not finding much outside of a few old marketing articles retelling the success of the toys' ad campaign. I have no idea if I wanted the toys because of the cool commercial or just because they were there, but after finding and reviewing the TV ad, the sight of bad cases of good worms made my mission clear: I had to find them again. And, as you've seen above, I have!

Each small plastic briefcase opened to reveal a pair of sticky (like, sticky for crawling down walls kind of sticky) worm figures in various colors, and because God loves me this week, the pair I found are greens, which was my favorite as a child because it was harder to roleplay faithfully with neon orange worms. The figures look much more like snakes, each with the most adorable facial features you've ever seen, including a smile that will make the day my parents die not as bad as I'm thinking it will be. Though the whole idea behind ABCOW toys was in their supposed "gross factor" and the idea that you could throw them at stuff and watch them creepily crawl down, I never saw them as anything but my own cute little pets. I treated them like gold, carried them everywhere and never once gave into the obvious temptation to turn their briefcase house into a coin purse. When you're five-years-old, every container is a piggy bank waiting to be had.

I purchased them recently at a price so ridiculously overblown that I'll never confess what it was, but that's the only ABCOW toy I've ever seen for sale since the line's retail days. If you're thinking what I was thinking, stop thinking it, because the chances of you finding A Bad Case of Worms toys are about as good as the chances of me living past 40. In other words, I'm here to brag and I'm here to spite you: I got worms and you don't, motherfucker.

Use the comments section to talk about some of the weirder, lesser and more obscure toys you worshipped as a kid. And get your damn hands off my worms.

Posted by Matt on 04/12/2006. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 193 comments
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Holy Crap…I’m first?!

And I must bow down to your search-a-tude to these things, man.

Reason #213 why I love this site so damn much.

Chestnuts roasted by Invader Norbert @ 04/12/2006 1:23 AM

Damn it Norbert, you invaded my first post!

I remember those worms and now I am jealous. Mom never let me have them because she thought they would ruin her new carpet.

Chestnuts roasted by Fishstix @ 04/12/2006 1:26 AM

I never had any worms, but I do remember the moment someone shed the holy light on what those things were called, right here in the blog. :)

Hmm, the first thing that came to mind for the more obscure toys was … ok lemme explain this, because it wasn’t really a toy. It’s just something like a family heirloom now. It’s one of those little tiny gumball machines that are about 3 inches high, and you open up the little flap on the front and tiny candy balls came out. I don’t even think they were gum. Well, anyhow, I had one of those and my dad drew a face and body on a peanut still in it’s shell. Yeah it was kinda like Mr. Peanut but way more crazy looking. He gave it to me and guess where I put him? Yes, inside the gumball machine. He fits right in there, and has been there for over 20 years. I have him in the desk drawer right beside me, and he’s still intact. :) But, as far as an actual toy, I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I must go to bed!

I’m glad you got your worms, Matt! :D

Chestnuts roasted by Ryane @ 04/12/2006 1:42 AM

I had a hand-me-down toy I liked donated by some neighbor. It was a plastic guy with some kind of Union Army? or Cavalry? outfit, but best of all he was roughly Barbie-sized, and he came with his own plastic horse with moving joints. So the usual play story was that he and Barbie would ride off on the horse and have sex in a field somewhere. I guess I was a pretty messed-up kid.

Chestnuts roasted by Welsh Rabbit @ 04/12/2006 1:45 AM

Let’s see… I doubt anything is going to be really obscure on /this/ site, though. Boglins, MIMPS, RGB figures and light guns, and Dino Riders were always in my toy bin. As I grew older I got into the first big waves of Nerf and Super Soaker. Those were a lot of fun. Super Soakers were kind of lame because theyd always leak and there was the problem of if your friend had a bigger gun, it was subsequently better. That wasn’t really the case with Nerf, though. Sometimes having a small dart gun could wreck someone faster and more efficiently than a large bulky crossbow or even missile launcher. Especially in the dark. I think my absolute favorite Nerf gun was the "Eagle Eye" because it was at the beginning of their new futuristic model designs and it had a killer laser site. I also thought toys like Talk Boy and Yak Bak were really awesome because you felt like James Bond when you had it in your backpack.

Chestnuts roasted by Eddie Lightning Frog @ 04/12/2006 1:45 AM

Obscure toys….hmm. I’m not recalling anything that was REALLY obscure. I am remembering plenty of weird things, but they weren’t rare.

What’s coming to mind is the Dukes of Hazzard set of View-Master reels and Etch-A-Sketch overlays (Trace the General Lee! And Daisy’s curves!)

What’s unusual about that? Well, I’m a late 80′s–early 90′s kid. I have NO IDEA how I wound up with those. No idea where they came from, and when I used them, I had no idea what they meant!

Chestnuts roasted by Mars @ 04/12/2006 2:04 AM

I know this is a little behind, but I had a lot of Illusionaries as a kid. In fact I still have two of the smaller ones. One’s a wizard that turns into an owl and the other in an invisible man that removes his bandages.

Chestnuts roasted by mnpchan @ 04/12/2006 2:29 AM

And by ‘Illusionaries’ I mean ‘Super Naturals’ Illusionaries don’t even exist, I was thinking of the Visionaries. Anyway, yeah, I have Super Naturals.

Chestnuts roasted by mnpchan @ 04/12/2006 2:36 AM

Well let’s see…
-Army Ants
-Super Naturals (just the ghost figures)

Also, when I was really into virtual pets, I had a cheap one of a fish. The thing about it was it not only needed food and entertainment, but you also needed to adjust the tank temperature, dress it for the weather and read to it.

Chestnuts roasted by RewolfJ @ 04/12/2006 3:04 AM

Ryane’s story prodded my sluggish memory to cough up one of the finest, weirdest toys of my childhood–the Mr. Peanut Peanut Butter Maker. It was a thing of sick genius–a huge plastic-and-metal Mr. Peanut figure with a hopper in his hat. I think it was made in the late 60s and early 70s, and involved enough whirling-hopper-blades action that it would never be allowed today. Peanuts went in the hopper; eager, grubby hands turned the crank in Mr. P’s right ear; and, if you didn’t flip him over with your lack of advanced motor skills and complete failure to understand the ramifications of Newton’s Third Law, the mushed-up peanuts would ooze out of his left ear onto a tray he helpfully held up to it.
The appeal of earwax-colored goop that actually came out of a cartoon character’s ear is obvious (The defense calls upon Shrek as an expert witness), but there was also the fact that it was one of the few things my younger brother and I could do together without turning it into a two-man scrum–which meant Mom never refused to let us have the thing, even though it meant a ton of cleanup for her later.
Ah, Mr. Peanut…I see from a quick search that he’s going for about 12,000 Yen these days, which I believe converts to about $140…so it’s unlikely I’ll have one again anytime soon. But that was a great toy.

Chestnuts roasted by Hodsthorn @ 04/12/2006 3:35 AM

I saw that Mr. Peanut thing featured on Disturbing Auctions.

Chestnuts roasted by RewolfJ @ 04/12/2006 3:37 AM

hmmmn… i can vaguely remember a random furry toy worm that was attached to a piece of ‘invisible’ string. I think the idea was to pull it around so it looked alive but i just kept one as it felt kinda hairy’n'nice – also doubled up as a great killer snake monster to battle my SW figures… ooh, according to Googglees they’re called Squigglees.

Chestnuts roasted by Toeknee @ 04/12/2006 4:08 AM

not obscure, not wierder, but one toy that ruled my childhood was the Real Ghostbusters ghost trap. That thing was amazing, and I still love it, have since thought about bidding above $40 to pick one up on ebay when I can barely afford to pay rent. I remember my little brother and I saving up for a new one for two months because ours broke, and then finally going to Toys-R-Us to buy a new one, and then finding out that they discontinued all the traps, and one had some of the slime guns from GB2 movie. We were crushed. oh my god, I’m going to start crying if I think about it for too long.

But yeah, Ghostbusters Trap.

Chestnuts roasted by danglad @ 04/12/2006 4:31 AM

I don’t know if this toy is really so rare (judging by ebay) but it was certainly not very popular for long… The Galoob Star Trek TNG action figures circa 1988.

http://members.aol.com/RDBousquet/Galoob.html

I only had a Picard and a Worf and my sister had a Geordi LaForge but the adventures they went on.
I know the Playmates series that replaced those little guys is superior in almost every way but my heart still goes out the the original series… of erm the Next Generation, shit now this is getting confusing!! heh heh.

On that note here are some bootleg Star Trek toys that are pretty funny:

http://www.bootlegactionfigures.com/ startrektng.html

Actually the WHOLE site is worth a look.

Chestnuts roasted by rockasoo @ 04/12/2006 4:42 AM

Ryane: With smells-like-peanut action?

I think the weirdest toy I had growing up was probably a stick. No, seriously. It was a squared-off log about a foot long and maybe two inches to a side, with a knot coming out of one side about halfway off center. It was usually pressed into service either as an aircraft carrier for my green army men to assault or as a gun/truncheon to get my cousin and I seperated for the rest of the day. I kept it in my toybox for years, and when the time finally came to pack my toys away, the Stick went with them.

Of course, I lived on a farm complete with our own junkyard, so I spent a great deal of time playing with scrap metal and fence posts, and my first secret clubhouse was a gutted combine harvester, but still. The bonds between a boy and a stick should never run that deep.

Chestnuts roasted by Jedoc @ 04/12/2006 6:36 AM

Ok, I can think of three obscure toys

1. Mexican Jumping Beans – those were really cool to see in the store and even more fun once you got home and put them on a heat pad.

2. Spiderman webs – it was this glue like substance in which you could make webs. It was a mess and lasted about 2 hrs before I had put so much webbing up my mom nearly killed me

3. Spiderman webslinger – it shot a suction headed dart attached to some string. It was very cool but I think I like the silly stinger webblasters better.

Chestnuts roasted by Greg @ 04/12/2006 7:00 AM

Nothing wrong with a stick. I stand by the opinion that a refrigerator box should have been number one on I Love Toys.

Oh, I’m all about obscure toys, but mine lean toward the girly persuasion. Wish World Kids were three inch high dolls with little playsets that transformed into a different playset. For example, one had a chair that transformed into a car, one had a bathroom that transformed into a bowling alley, and yet another had a desk that turned into a rockin’ keyboard, I think. There were tons of them, and they were SO AWESOME, with great accessories.

Even more obscure were my favorite toys: teeny tiny dolls and horses with a sprig of hair called Cutie Club and Cutie Colts. I could stuff a handful of them in my pocket whenever we went somewhere and have a whole array of toys to play with. I still have about 80% of them, and that’s a lot considering their "easy to lose" value.

Chestnuts roasted by Julie @ 04/12/2006 7:57 AM

Well. Purr-tenders, but I think they did hit mainstream when BK made mini versions. There’s always Sweet Secrets of which I only own the MIP Crystal Bright, though hoping to add on to the collection. I had a thing for puzzles, too. My mom used to order me the odd ones that they used to offer in the back of the Avon catalog. Cupcake Dolls, Lady Lovely Locks…. I dunno. I’m a chick, most of my toys are kinda obscure. Damn male dominated internet.

Chestnuts roasted by Mystie @ 04/12/2006 8:07 AM

Favorite obscure toy ever? Back when NO ONE was making 12" figures, in 83 I got a 12" super articulated Ninja action figure. No idea what line it was from, but I LOVED that awesome Ninja.

Second place? Spiral Zone baby! 1987′ey goodness…awesome plot, 65 episodes and I bought every toy in the collection on clearance. Woooo Spiral Zone! Check out Spiral-zone.net for more awesomeness.

Chestnuts roasted by Terror Claws Cole @ 04/12/2006 8:14 AM

It’s not a toy, but does anyone (would probably have to be a girl) remember those little rectangular tins of lip balm that were flavored like strawberry or watermelon and they slid open? I would always have one of those on me when I was about 6 or 7. It seemed all the little girls had one.
Also, the boat happy meals. Where the whole meal came in a plastic boat. LOVED those. I’m gonna go on ebay and look for one right now.

Chestnuts roasted by kb @ 04/12/2006 8:15 AM

I remember the lip gloss. I don’t know why. I had an older brother so I mostly had to play with boy toys. for some reason, i remember loving these little plastic/rubber monsters. they were a little bigger than a quarter and came in a bag of a million. i think we got them at the dollar store. and don’t make fun, Pittsburgh in the early 80′s was not exactly booming.

Chestnuts roasted by bitchpants @ 04/12/2006 8:24 AM

I remember I had a stretch armstrong style Junkyard Dog (the wrestler) figure. Over time I punctured his skin to reveal his weirdy goodness inside.

Chestnuts roasted by Geoffinsanity @ 04/12/2006 8:28 AM

I have a few. I remember the boat Happy meal but more importantly the toys thta came with them. For some reason, I was never allowed Legos (I later found out why at about 2am during a cussing fest after my father stepped on one). but Happy Meals came with Construx. They were these little plastic girder things, and they had little eight sided joints to hold them together. Made all kinds of crazy stuff with those.There were also Stompers, little battery powered 4wd cars that inevitably lost their battery doors and therefore usefulness. And then there were these one things, and for the life of me, I have no idea what they were called. But they were like little balls with round "ports" coming out of it like on each side of a cube. Some had gears in them, some had driveshafts, some had differentials, some even had little electric motors. You could build all kinds of stuff with them, moving cars, boats helicopters, but mostly, implements of death and dismemberment.

Chestnuts roasted by mndsm @ 04/12/2006 8:39 AM

The most random thing I remember as a child were these little dressed up mousies. There was a store at our default mall called "Let’s Pretend" which was the type of place that sold Playmobil, dress up costumes, dollhouse furniture, etc…one of the items they sold were these teeny fur mousies, very similar to the fur mousie cat toys, except these mousies were upright, had teeny pipe cleaner arms, and were dressed in a variety of crazy outfits. I had SO MANY of these and I absolutely loved them. I forgot about them until last year. I asked all my friends if they remembered them, and only one of them did…I learned they were made in West Germany at the time and just called "real fur toys." I ended up buying one on eBay last year and he is my desk mascot…you can see him here:

http://www.geocities.com/scarfire2001/Bertha/skimouse.jpg

Chestnuts roasted by B-Dawg @ 04/12/2006 8:58 AM

One of my favourite things was the bizarre ‘tank’ thing that He-man and
man-at-arms used to bust around in, the cockpit would slide from one end to the other and the back part would switch over, to allow the cockpit to slide forward again … it looked pretty cool .. but it would have taken ages to get anywhere in it, and youd probably vomit before the end of the journey.

Chestnuts roasted by MgwR @ 04/12/2006 9:02 AM

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