Man, I feel trivial. I skipped the last five minutes of the Obama show to guarantee that this, a review of light-up rubber organs and My Little Pony dolls, would be safely posted by midnight. If anyone I know in real life asks, I’ll just tell them that I needed to take a wicked piss.
These didn’t photograph well, but they are AWESOME. Distributed in Spirit stores but probably sold in many different packages at many different places, this pair of light-up rubber organs seem to evolve past simple Halloween decorations to become the sort of things that people need to keep close year round.
The “Light Up Realistic Heart” and “Light Up Realistic Brain” have fairly oxymoronic names. We are not of E.T.’s species and do not have light-up internal organs; thus, they are far from realistic. But they are fantastic, and that shares a suffix.
Even without the illumination, the organs are incredible. Finely detailed and ominously colored, the brain and heart are of the squeeze variety — they’re toys you can smoosh, but you’ll never actually find the pinhole that’s ejecting and inhaling the air. I like my fake hearts with a dab of mystery.
Though Spirit (or more correctly, the foreign nation that mass-produces the organs for Spirit) has foregone a true sense of scale to make the brain and heart seem equally worth the money, it’s not like we needed the brain to be bigger and the heart to be smaller to enjoy them. Frankly, I’m tired of rubber organ producers making such a fuss over a true-to-life scale. They only do it because the other guys figured out how to make the same rubber organs burst in a rainbow of battery-operated holy light.
I still use Jasc Animation Shop for my animated gifs, so please don’t take the above picture as a literal interpretation. In reality, the light-up gimmick is far, far cooler. Eerily shifting between hues, the brain and heart actually have on/off switches, so you can let them do their shiny shake for hours without needing to continually push buttons or pinch their underbellies.
I’m trying to conserve their battery power, which brings me to the only sour point about these little miracles. The organs utilize those really small watch batteries, and the compartment cover is protected by one of those tiny screws that can only be defeated after a trip to the eyeglass repair shop. You know how it goes with batteries like that. Once they’re dead, it’s fucking over.
When I bought the organs a few weeks ago, they were ten bucks each. I realize that those prices would be a dealbreaker for many of you, but if you find them after Halloween, I assume the price will be much less.
In news that couldn’t be related less, Hasbro has unveiled a new pair of Halloween My Little Pony dolls for the ‘08 season. The packaging style is a bit different from the 2006 editions, but still pumpkin-themed.
I have no use for ponies and never have, or maybe I’m just saying that to cover myself. Either way, they’re distinct Halloween editions from a major toy brand, and it wouldn’t be right not to review them. So, a review:
There are two Halloween ponies, including “Scootaloo” and “Starsong.” Scootaloo seems dressed more for a parade float than trick-or-treating, but it’s also possible that my limited brain simply cannot process the idea of a horse dressed up as a flower.
From the back of Scootaloo’s package: “In her pink flower costume, SCOOTALOO™ spreads Halloween spirit all around PONYVILLE™!” Ponyville? That’s where My Little Ponies live? Why would the lead ponies decide on such a boring and literal name? That’s like naming your entertainment website “X-Entertainment.” The fact that these ambitious ponies came upon an undiscovered plot of land and managed to claim it before some other ragtag group of talking animals could is totally amazing. It sucks to see such a grand feat disempowered by a shitty name like “Ponyville.”
Starsong is dressed like a witch. I’ve owned a different My Little Pony doll dressed like a witch, and this kind of scares me. From her package: “STARSONG™ wears a witch hat on Halloween to trick-or-treat with her friends!” Oh God, the thought of My Little Ponies going trick-or-treating was so worth the time and money it took to review these things. Imagine the older ponies opening their front doors, nudging candy bowls towards little horse rascals with their snouts. Oh God, it’s priceless. It needs to be animated and released as a TV special, scored with the Undertaker’s Corporate Ministry-era theme music.
I would like to point out that this was technically two Halloween Countdown entries, so if you thought I missed 8 or 9 of them this month, the number is really just 7 or 8.
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
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I’m going to name my first kid Scootaloo.