"Lighted Hair Critters." I never would've predicted that this phrase could hold such meaning for me, but here I am.

There's a definite trend with this year's gamut of Halloween toys and novelties. Whereas many companies formerly marketed their spooky-themed "little things" as giveaways for trick-or-treaters, there are no such illusions this year. I've mentioned it before, but Halloween toys are now treated like veritable stocking stuffers, and I'm sure that it's only a matter of time before we can buy giant socks made out of black wool and fishnets. It's sad to see old fashioned trick-or-treat items in such a slump, but if the end result is a three-pack of "Lighted Hair Critters," change is good.

I buy a lot of crap for these Halloween Countdowns, but not all of it gets written about. Some of the stuff just ends up being too mundane to score even a few paragraphs off of, and I certainly worried that this trio of souped-up Koosh balls would end up in my growing bin of regretful purchases. But over the past week, I've found myself just growing more and more fond of them, and at press time, I'm like five smiles away from christening these worthless entities as my favorite things in the universe.

I don't know what it is about them, exactly. Maybe it's the innate oddity of rubber bushes with eyes that gets me, or maybe I just admire the Wild Time company for having the balls to try to pass these things off as "Halloween" toys. I'm not sure if there's anything macabre about rubber sea urchins with Mr. Potato Head eyes, but since the packaging comes in black-and-orange with spider web graphics, we must accept them that way.

They toys can be thrown or stretched, but since you can say the same for nearly everything on the planet, Wild Time devised an additional gimmick to help the Lighted Hair Critters stand out: They blink colored lights when you punch them.

Part of me feels that I've been tricked into celebrating a bunch of repackaged cat toys, but so what? I can play like a cat if I want to. I can write like one, too. I'd follow this up with three paragraphs filled with nothing but the word "meow" if I wasn't sure that you'd consider it a deal-breaker.

Fortunately, acting like a cat is only fun for about a minute and a half. Let's move on to the true reason for this entry: It's time to find out how my "Grow Your Own" Haunted Castle turned out! Yes, it's already been ten days!

I really shouldn't have limited my castle's growth to that empty peach jar, because it turned out to be a pretty incredible little toy. A lot of these "growing things" never live up to the textual hype on their packages, but this one was definitely on the road to victory. Given that it spent ten days trapped in a small, sealed jar, it grew as much as it possibly could. It also somehow turned itself upright, which is either a small miracle or kind of spooky.

I'm tempted to reward my castle for its stellar showing with a properly sized tank and larger amount of holy water...but then I'd have to remove it from the jar, which would feel akin to breaking the glass bottle and pulling the wooden ship out. Just wouldn't be right. Instead, my new goal is to hatch a Sea-Monkeys in there. While it's true that the lightweight chemicals used to provide the castle with its magical growing abilities may kill them, I don't think even PETA bats an eye if you slay a few brine shrimp. It's not like they have it any better sitting all dehydrated in a foil packet. Shrimps aren't Kool-Aid.

Finally, we have a pocket-sized Halloween-themed Etch-A-Sketch, a series of hyphenated words that only further proves what I was saying earlier about the new crop of spooky stocking stuffers. Etch-A-Sketches in this exact scale are available at Christmastime as well, only with a red and green color scheme.

I've been doing X-Entertainment for nearly ten years, and at one point or another, I'm sure I claimed that I love Etch-A-Sketches. It's time to come clean: I don't, and I never have. They're awful little things. Oh, sure, my complete inability to create even the most basic works of art with an Etch-A-Sketch may play some part in this opinion, but I just don't see any point in mastering the process when all it would take for someone to destroy my art was a few quick shakes.

I'm out of things to say about all of the above.

So marks the end of WEEK 2 of the Halloween Countdown, and in hindsight, I think the wealth of entries has been a little too fluffy. This is the season for blood and badness. Next week, I'll cover some stuff that's a bit more ghoulish. Read at your own risk.

Oh, and this place doesn't completely die on the weekends. Come back tomorrow to see more of the terrific entries from the "Draw Jason Dancing" art contest, and to maybe watch a few horror movies while commenting on how bad the effects are with other people in other places who are watching the exact same movies. It's what the Internet is here for. That and this. And this. And that.