Fizz 'n Find is a brand of small toys that arrive trapped inside hard, sandy eggs which quickly dissolve when placed in warm water. While I'd bet that any Fizz 'n Find promo material writers devised a more appealing way to describe the brand's gimmick, my explanation was totally correct: They're dishwasher soap bricks with toys inside.

I've never paid the Fizz 'n Find collection much attention, but these new "Trick-or-Treat Surprise" editions are virtually impossible for anyone charged with finding something Halloweeny to write about for 45 days straight to pass up. The toys you receive are in no way worth the five bucks you pay, but much of the price bloating is justified by the experience. I've owned a lot of action figures, but very few of them were obtained by placing a sandy egg in a bowl of water and watching it dissolve into rabid dog foam.

I originally thought that I'd be dissolving that swank happy pumpkin, but as it turns out, the pumpkin is just a wrapper to keep the egg from crumbling prematurely. The actual fizzer is shown at top right. It doesn't have any particular odor, but since the happy pumpkin was so tightly wrapped around the egg that I had to use my teeth as a surrogate X-Acto knife, I can confirm that it tastes weird. Somewhere between soap and a lemon cough drop.

After dropping the fizzy egg into warm water, it immediately began to bubble, quickly transforming into a puddle of foamy trouble. Sadly, the foam is so thick that you really don't get to see the egg give birth to a toy. It's all hidden behind a big foam wall. Once a minute or two goes by, you're free to reach in and grab your surprise.

The "Trick-or-Treat Surprise" editions contain one of four Halloween-themed figurines. I bought two, and perhaps because the cosmos owed me a solid after that horrible Joker cereal toy fiasco, I got my exact top two picks.

The simple ghost (named "Boo") and super-deformed vampire (named "Trick") each have posable limbs and glow-in-the-dark features. Trick even came with a removable cape! The figures are detailed/painted well enough, but they're awfully tiny and kind of a ridiculous "end result" for parting ways with a paper Abe Lincoln. But like I mentioned, it's all about the experience. I've owned cooler toys that cost less than five bucks, but they weren't born of sandy, fast-dissolving eggs that taste like soap and cough drops.

The remaining figures include Wartsy (a witch) and Treat (a spin on Frankenstein's Monster), and the back of their packages suggest that we "collect them all." I may take them up on this. I stand by my statement that I already got the two coolest figures, but I just noticed that the one based on Frankenstein's Monster is holding a tiny teddy bear. Even without fizzy foamy eggs, ironic Frankensteins are well worth five bucks.

If you can't find these marvelous Halloween stocking stuffers in a store near you, click here to buy some online. I get a hefty commission if you do. Like, if seven thousand of you bought one, I might make enough to get that bear-boasting Frankenstein's Monster without yanking money from my vacation fund. I plan to visit Portugal to find my real parents.

Oh, and hey -- true Countdown entries such as this are only promised on weekdays, but come back tomorrow anyway. We'll ("we'll" meaning me) be running a one-day art contest for prizes valued in excess of thirty cents, and those around during the late night hours are free to join in the discussion of three horror flicks airing on cable television that I plucked from the TV Guide listings. It'll be almost as fun as going outside and doing something, like people do in the movies.