Last call if anyone has donations for this year's Halloween Countdown. Old games, toys, pop items, weird ass decorations, and especially old VHS tapes containing specials or Halloween-themed episodes of sitcoms or spooky commercials. E-mail me if you've got any goods you're willing to part with -- the fun starts soooon!

Oh, remember those neat "Projector Pops" I talked about last Christmas? They come in Halloween styles, too! "Spooky Projector Lollipops" are candies with secrets. Beneath a somewhat conspicuous shell of green apple, blue raspberry and other flavored pops lies something so sinister and evil that the treats have been outlawed in several Bible Belt states.

Each lollipop's handle has a small button that, when pressed, shines a specific ghoulish shape against the wall. Obviously, the trick works better in the dark and from a specific distance, but I think you can all deal with that considering how few candies there are that let you put on puppet-light shows. I only picked up two because three's a crowd, but I saw at least four different flavors available, with just as many different projector shapes. The green apple pop came with a pretty lame spider projector -- the spider's legs are all rounded and unrealistic, and because it's red, I can't stop thinking I have a crab projector. These facts conspire to get the spider projector NO PICTURE! Instead, we focus on the blue raspberry pop's much cooler ghost guy:

I've seen enough lollipop projector shapes to know that this qualifies as an awesome one, with a good amount of detail proving the good amount of effort that went into creating it. I know you could draw that ghost in five seconds with no arms, but it's a lot harder to convert something like this into a beaming light hidden inside candy. One grainy picture cannot do the effect justice; you haven't lived until you've made a ghost who communicates via stomach thought balloons dance across your living room, kitchen and various household pets' faces.

They were around two bucks each, which is kind of expensive, but not so much when you remember that this is the cheapest method possible of making ghosts and spidercrabs turn your wall into a clubhouse.

Posted by Matt on 09/05/2006. E-mail me!