Toys “R” Us is in Halloween mode, but as has been the norm for several years, their attempt is a little halfhearted.  I guess there’s no sense for them to try to compete with the ever-growing number of dedicated Halloween costume shops that arrive in September and explode come November, but I’m always disappointed when I see TRU’s array of costumes and novelties limited to two sad mini-aisles.

When I was a kid, TRU was the definitive spot for all things Halloween, from costumes to colored hair spray, treat buckets, stupid reflective stickers and beyond.  Our local TRU used to turn its entire entrance zone into a gigantic Halloween section, with the costume selection starting at the floor and making its way up to the ceiling on dangerously rendered fences.  Shopping there was pure, glorious pandemonium, with parents and children alike using all body parts that could double as blunt instruments to push, shove and fight their way to the most desirable Don Post masks.

The Toys “R” Us Halloween section of today is just there to help them keep up appearances.  Only kids who are excessively young and/or really don’t give a shit about what they dress up as for Halloween would find shopping for a costume there acceptable.

I still go hunting for Countdown fodder at TRU every year, never expecting much and never finding much.  Traditions are traditions.  But!  Perhaps sensing my impending annihilation of his store chain with the written (typed?) word, Geoffrey the Giraffe slipped me one item that was totally reviewable — and something I haven’t found at the many other stores I loiter in at this time of year.  I take it back, TRU.  You’re aces, and so is this:

I first thought that this Play-Doh “Halloween Party Kit” would end up being one of those things with a really cool box and really boring contents, but I was so insanely wrong that I feel I deserve some length of jail time.  Play-Doh always tosses out one or two simplistic Halloween-themed doodads each year, but this kit is way more inspired than their typical efforts.  Only catch is, you need to pretend that you’re five-years-old to enjoy it.

Companies use the term “party kit” pretty loosely, but this was clearly a labor of love for someone at Hasbro.  Whoever devised this kit really thought about how Play-Doh could become the central theme of a Halloween party, and while I admit that it wouldn’t be the party to end all parties, there are certainly enough ideas and goodies here to keep your guests occupied for, oh, seven or eight minutes.  Again, assuming they’re okay with pretending that they’re five-year-olds.

For eight bucks, you get everything shown above.  Eight small tubs of Play-Doh, four plastic knives, four Halloween playmats and four INCREDIBLE display domes.  I CANNOT WAIT to tell you about the display domes, but they’re way too good to blow my wad on just yet.  You be patient over there.

The most endearing item in the kit is the “Halloween Party Guide,” a pamphlet detailing how to decorate for your party, what kind of food to serve, ideas for activities, and unbiased suggestions that you offer random Play-Doh items as prizes for Halloween games.  This pamphlet may prove to be a kid’s first exposure to the type of overpassionate verbiage found in the many Family Circle Halloween editions I go through like grapes, and that warms my heart faster than the sun growing a big, fiery leg and stepping on me.  If you think eight bucks is too much to spend on a big clump of Play-Doh and some plastic knives, trust me, this pamphlet makes up the difference.

You get four different playmats, each with a different spooky scene.  The playmats feature tutorials on how to make monsters and mayhem out of Play-Doh, but it seems a bit wrong to have something as open-canvassy as Play-Doh just to build whatever some stupid playmat tells you to.

Hypocritically, I do enjoy one aspect of the playmats.  They leave specific portions of the spooky scenes blank, so you can fill in the rest with Play-Doh pieces.  The ghost eyes and mouths shown above aren’t part of the art, but rather, they’re flattened black Play-Doh balls of my own creation.  Since the four mats feature different scenes and step-by-step how-to guides, we’re encouraged to swap mats with our playmates every now and again to mix and match the fun.

And now you can forget everything you just read, because the real reason I’m writing about this kit is pictured above.  DOMES!  Sweet, heavenly, GLORIOUS domes!  I have no right to love anything as much as I love…these…DOMES!

Domes!!!

So, the domes.  To be used as display cases for your Play-Doh creations, I at first thought that the inclusion of THESE DOMES was wonderful — but a little weird.  Only after reading that party guide pamphlet did I understand their purpose.  Since this kit is technically supposed to drive a Halloween party, THE DOMES will let your guests take their works of art home without risking the usual perils that await Play-Doh masterpieces in transit.  Genius!

Course, since I’m pretty unlikely to throw a Halloween party focused on Play-Doh, I’m free to claim all of THE DOMES as my own.  I like to consider them “specimen tanks,” to safely contain the myriad Play-Doh creatures I find on distant planets.  Two such creatures are shown above, but only the green slime monster in the foreground understands how much it sucks to spend life in a cheap specimen tank.  The yarmulke-donning snowman alien is just happy to be alive.

I love these domes!  Finally, a proper way to preserve our Play-Doh opuses forever and ever!

I don’t know if Play-Doh’s “Halloween Party Kit” would’ve been worth writing about if it didn’t come with domes, but since I did, here I am.  And now I’m leaving.  To check on my domes!  DOMES!

PS: I feel bad for starting this review off with ill notions about Toys “R” Us, for they have provided me with the true meaning of life: Play-Doh domes.  As penance, let us revisit this old Halloween Countdown entry.  Sorry, Geoffrey.  You’re my long-necked savior.

Yesterday was the first day of autumn, and on cue, the weather gods ended their colossal mid-July heat joke, providing a chill suitable for sweaters and non-glistening foreheads.  Love it.  I can’t promise that I won’t turn on the air conditioner, but that has more to do with its soothing, clanging hum than a heat reprieve.

Let’s celebrate by making a haunted house out of cereal.

Kellogg’s says that their Cocoa Krispies “Haunted House Kit” is “fun to make and great to eat,” but my matured, old man palette will only agree with them on one of those points.  Still, as one of the few “major brand” Halloween food kits available this year, it was well worth the money.  Can’t remember what it cost, but since everything else I review seems to cost five bucks, let’s go with that.

When I started doing the Halloween Countdown in 2003, spooky-themed cereal spinoffs were still in vogue.  It was always one of my favorite things about the season, as evidenced by the Greek-fonted “My Kingdom For A Cereal Marshmallow Shaped Like A Bat” tattoo running across my upper back.  The phenomenon hasn’t totally dried up, but each year, fewer and fewer cereal brands put on their costumes, and there’s only so much Count Chocula a person can take before they gun down a crowded shopping mall in misguided angst.

This kit helps, even if it isn’t technically a Halloween cereal.  It has Snap, Crackle and Pop dressed like mummies and pirates on the box, so I guess it sort of is.  Yeah.

The kit includes everything you’ll need to build a haunted house out of Cocoa Krispies.  This is admirable, since so many like-styled kits don’t.  If I had a nickel for every holiday food kit I’ve bought only to find myself running back to the store for cinnamon or some other such bullshit, I could fill a sock and beat you into a coma.

Contents include a bag of cereal, house-shaped cake pan, icing pens, assorted decorative candies, and a mysterious bag of gooey marshmallow sludge.  There’s also a handy printed tutorial, which separates the steps into stuff kids can do and stuff kids will need adult supervision to do.  I was able to handle everything myself, which is just one of the many reasons those in the know call me King Matt.

I won’t burden you with the play-by-play, but if you’re really curious to know how a Cocoa Krispies Haunted House is made, you can probably figure it out from the pictures above.  You’re essentially creating a giant Rice Krispies Treat and molding it with a house-shaped cake pan.  The whole process only takes a few minutes, and is totally painless.

The final step (unless you count “devouring” as a step) involves decorating your cereal house with the included bunch of candies and icings.  I’m a haunted house nut, but I didn’t want to go through so much trouble just to ice on a door and a few windows.  Clearly, my Cocoa Krispies Haunted House needed to become something more akin to a severed goblin head.

You’d look upset if your nose was an upside-down ghost marshmallow, too.

My goblin/haunted house is pretty, but I can’t claim that he/it tastes very good.  The super-processed gooey marshmallow gunk cannot compare to the materials used in traditional, homemade Rice Krispies Treats.  It just has a slightly unnatural taste, not to the point of being inedible, but at least to the point where I don’t have to worry about feeling guilty for eating an entire goblin/haunted house.  I took a bite for posterity’s sake, but that’s about it.

Still, I only mention the off-flavor because I find it incredibly difficult to review anything without bitching.  It’s a minor minus.  Overall, this is a fine little kit that made me feel like I was living the Halloween season and not just looking at it.

Ever get a really bad piece of candy while trick-or-treating?  Of course you have.  Everyone has.  But!  If you coldly wrote the shitty candy-giver off as a thoughtless asshole, please, read on, and see if I can’t change your mind.

For every person who offers up bad candy out of apathy towards the whole Halloween endeavor (meaning they just grabbed the first cheap bag of treats spotted after a two-second search at the local supermarket), there’s another who is just innocently clueless when it comes to modern candy trends.  I feel bad for these people.  Always have.  Especially since they always seem to be cute old ladies.

I recall being a pretty polite trick-or-treater.  There were definitely instances when I was rude to the gift-giver, but by and large, I treated my extended neighbors with respect and gratitude.  Still, I knew when someone gave me shit.  I’d always feel horrible for the people who did, because I knew what kind of day awaited them — a Halloween spent looking at painted-face frowns, if not outright verbal protest.  I’d come across treat-givers who were just so proud of their unspecified brand of retirement community caramel chews, and all I could ever do was smile and gulp and move on, hoping that the next trick-or-treater wouldn’t smirk or openly scowl at what was very decidedly not a fun-sized Snickers bar.

I’ve seen this stuff firsthand.  The friends that I used to go trick-or-treating with weren’t exactly masters of subtlety.  They wore their hearts on their sleeves.  They’d bitch and moan if someone gave them junky candy, not just during the aftermath, but even as they reached into some poor old woman’s bowl and stared her straight in the eye.  It always made me so uncomfortable and embarrassed, and only as an adult do I realize why: You can seriously make a person feel out of touch and used up if you react badly to the candy they give you.

I’m so afraid of ever having to feel like those people did, so I overcompensate.  When trick-or-treaters knock on my door, I give them friggin’ Ziploc bags full of pop brand candy.  I pretend that I’m being chivalrous, but the reality is, I just can’t stomach the idea that a kid will leave my doorstep thinking that I don’t know the difference between good candy and crap you throw at errant birds while wandering the neighborhood.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably too old to go trick-or-treating.  Buuuut, you may be in charge of or connected to someone who isn’t.  Teach them the right way to be.  When someone gives you free candy, you say “thank you” and smile. No matter what.  Even if it’s a dusty Mary Jane.  If you don’t, you are a horrible person who deserves to die.

Anyway, happy Monday!  Happiest day of the whole week.

I realize that the Bunjie Battle brand had to exist before this surprising Halloween spinoff sprung up, but even my geekitude has a limit: I never heard of the fucking things before spotting them at the end of Target’s “random spooky crap” aisle, which for whatever reason is situated directly next to the aisle where they sell all of the generic brand seltzer and fruit snacks.  I never understood that.  If you’re the type of person who is willing to spend ten bucks on a pair of Bunjie Battle Halloween dolls, you damn sure ain’t eating a Fruit Roll-Up that doesn’t come tie-dyed with Batman characters etched onto it.  I love Target, but in terms of demographical buying statistics, the stores are a geographical nightmare.

I didn’t know what the dolls were.  A quick perusal informed me that they were kind of like doggy chew toys, but with really stretchy arms.  I found two of the four available dolls (”The Zombie” and “The Vampire”), and decided to just go with those after a desperate, fifteen-minute search confirmed that my shitty local Target simply did not carry “The Eyeball.”  (Whose head is simply a giant eyeball, in case you were wondering why I yearned for him so.)

Not sure where else to put this, but it needs to be said: “The Vampire” has a codpiece.

The dolls betray their cheapo carnival prize materials with clever details and interesting color palettes, but if that smells like bullshit to you, note that you can stretch their arms to unfathomable distances, rubber band style.  The dolls also make strange, alien chirping sounds when you punch them in the chest.  These are huge plusses.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about whether the items I review are worth their retail cost or not, so with the aid of arbitrarily assigned values and a bootleg bullet list, let’s see how these add up:

* Halloween-themed: 2.00
* Chirps Like An Alien Bird: 1.00
* Stretchy Arms: 2.00
* Includes Codpiece: 1.50

So “The Zombie” is right where he needs to be, while “The Vampire” is actually worth more than he cost.  Put aside your petty financial deconstructions: These stupid Halloween stretchy dolls are value-friendly.

Now…what the hell are they for?

Ah ha!  These aren’t just toys…they’re GAMES!  I’m pretty sure that the game aspect was retroactively forged to give such odd toys a sense of purpose, but I don’t care.  I don’t care what the reason was, because this “game” instructs me to turn my stretchy-armed Halloween dolls…into slingshots.

Yes, you’re supposed to yank back and shoot your Bunjie Battle doll at a target, and conveniently, each doll’s package doubles as a target.  The rules of the game are printed on the packages as well, and they’re….wow, they’re completely insane. Ten points if you hit the target.  An additional ten points if the doll chirps when it hits the target.  Fifteen points if the doll lands face up on the floor…ten if he doesn’t.  What?

And just to make sure that every game ends in a horrible debate over who really won, they tell you to add thirty points if the doll “did something really cool.”  That’s verbatim, folks.

I gave the Bunjie Battle game a whirl, and had the distinct sense that what I was doing was the stupidest thing anyone was doing at that very moment across the entire planet.  Skip the lame game and enjoy these things for what they are: Weird Halloween dolls with stretchy arms that chirp like Green Bamboo Mystery Peanuts.  I think that’s good enough.

This has nothing to do with Halloween, but I had to mention it since the DVD is finally out.  If you’re at all into Avatar: The Last Airbender, please check out the Book 3 DVD box set.  I wrote/produced/directed the 20-minute “Women of Avatar” special feature on the bonus disc, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.  Avatar is/was such a great show, and I feel so lucky to have been able to work on so many of its corresponding TV spots.  Getting to do a special feature really took the cake, and this was an absolute blast for us to put together.

Thanks to all who stuck around for last night’s horror movie marathon.  I totally conked out during Trilogy of Terror 2, but I guess that was to be expected after mixing a poorly made martini with half a bottle of red wine.  Expect more of the same on all Saturday nights from now through Halloween, so if you find yourself lifeless on any upcoming weekends, come on over!

AND NOW, it’s time to name the BIG WINNERS in the “Draw Jason Voorhees Dancing” Art Contest!

Choosing the winners was TOUGH.  Really tough.  I’m a little hesitant to even name the champs, because over 75 entries came in and almost all of them were the fruits of serious labor.  Please don’t feel bad if you weren’t christened a grand champion for this one.  There could only be so many winners.  I’ll show off more of the entries later this week, but for now, let’s focus on those that were exquisite enough to be rewarded with free Ghoul-Aid.

After seeing the wealth of tremendous entries, I decided to increase the prize opportunities: We now have two grand prize winners and eleven runners-up.  If I had more Ghoul-Aid, there’d be even more.

Without further ado, your two grand prize winners are….

GRAND PRIZE WINNER #1:

“It’s The Great Pumpkin, Jason Voorhees” — Created by Darth Poop

Click the image to see a much larger version.  As soon as I saw this, I knew it had to win.  From Jason’s perfect emulation of the retarded Peanuts Gang dance to the kids laying in bloody heaps on the floor, this is a truly inspired masterpiece that I’d really love to have poster-sized.  Darth even nailed the exact stupid Halloween decorations from the cartoon!  Congrats, Mr. Poop: You’ve won five packets of Ghoul-Aid!

Our second grand prize winner really went outside of the box, doing away with the print medium entirely…

Congratulations to BUCKLY, who choreographed this amazing video featuring Jason dancing to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” along with a special mystery guest.  BUCKLY created this with his wife, and while I’d normally consider myself as a rather joyless and jaded slug, I openly admit to cackling like a moron at this.  Great work — you’ve secured five packets of old Kool-Aid!

And now for the eleven runners-up…or is that runner-ups?  In no particular order, here are the best of the rest! [more]

Welcome to the first Saturday Night Thread of the 2008 Halloween season!  EXCITING.  While normal SNTs usually exist without any set theme, Halloween is a special time of year…so if you plan to converse, think deadly!

One of my favorite things about the spooky season is the increased amount of horror movies on television, and though we’re still a few weeks away from that effect really sinking in, there are a few choice films airing this evening.  Pick your poison!

Note that all of the times listed are EST, so adjust accordingly depending on where you live.  Much as I love TCM III, I think I’m going to go with The Craft leading into Trilogy of Terror 2, assuming I don’t pass out before one or both movies airs.  (It’s looking to be a martini night.)

If you’re looking for a Halloween activity a bit more spirited than watching scary movies on cable television, maybe this X-E Art Contest will help you out?

Your Mission: Create a work of art featuring Jason Voorhees dancing.  That is your only rule.  You can draw it, build it in Photoshop, make it out of macaroni pieces — whatever you like.  It just has to feature Jason Voorhees DANCING.

(UPDATE: The deadline has passed!  Thanks!) You have until Sunday at 12 noon EST to complete your piece.  When finished, e-mail your opus to me, and I’ll highlight the very best entries in tomorrow’s post.  Actually, if only ten of you enter, I’ll highlight all of them, no matter how horrible the entries are.  We’ll see how this goes.

Need more incentive?  I will objectively choose a grand prize winner, and that person will receive five packages of ancient Ghoul-Aid, the spookiest Kool-Aid flavor ever!  I must add a disclaimer that the Ghoul-Aid is being offered for collectible purposes only, but I’m fairly certain that it’s still safe to drink.

Five runners-up will receive single packs of Ghoul-Aid, so even those of you who aren’t modern day Da Vincis have more than a fair shot at getting free Kool-Aid.

Remember, all entries must be received by noon EST Sunday!

If you’re not interested in watching the proposed horror movies or drawing Jason Voorhees dancing, you’re still welcome to partake in the usual SNT festivities.  Enjoy!

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.

Even when it isn’t Halloween time, I often consult a specific pile of horror movies from my DVD collection to serve as background noise for a night spent paying more attention to something else.  It may seem odd to treat movies like Halloween 4 and Friday the 13th: Part 2 in the same way others treat fish tanks, lava lamps and those shitty indoor rock fountains that never look or work like the box says, but in lieu of leading a spirited protest against corrupt oil corporations, or chewing rocks, I’ve gotta find my rebel points somewhere.

Frequently, I’ll throw one of these movies on to drown out the silence whenever I feel like reading.  The problem is that I’ll find myself rereading paragraphs several dozen times, because my mind will continually intertwine the written words with whatever expletives the onscreen characters shout as Jason skullfucks them.  I’m fairly certain that the phrase, “HE’S FUCKING KILLING ME HELP HE’S FUCKING KILLING ME” cannot be counted among the quotations from any known dinosaur encyclopedia.

But Halloween is a magical time of year — and one full of suitable replacements.

How awesome is this?  A spin on those sixty-minute “recordings of someone’s fireplace” DVDs they sell during Christmastime, this low-cost, low-rent Haunted Evening DVD adds an eerie ambiance to any room with a TV/DVD setup somewhere inside it.  Featuring five different sequences, each “chapter” presents a motion video of a fairly stationary Halloween environment, ranging from a graveyard to a dungeon.  Stuffed with inobtrusively low-fi Halloween sound effects, this DVD is an absolutely perfect way to set a spooky mood without paying a lot of attention.

I don’t want to infer that the “mood films” on this DVD are a big production, because they’re not.  Example: One chapter features a shot of a plastic witch’s cauldron on someone’s coffee table for fifteen minutes.  I’m working under the assumption that everything on this disc was the result of some guy pouring over his grandmother’s house one afternoon, with nothing but a bedsheet, a video camera and two red light bulbs to help him secure a spot in the next Cannes Film Festival.  I don’t know who this guy is, but I’ve named him Coco.  Coco the Nomad.

I don’t know why the photo above came out so dark, but it’s a shot of Haunted Evening playing on my television.  I’m not sure if the excitement of this really translates in picture form, but trust me, it was palpable.  This particular chapter (titled “Jack-O’-Lanterns”) rotated a few images of carved pumpkins, which sat perfectly still as various lighting and fog effects swarmed in the background.

It’s a simple concept done simply, but it works really well.  While the ghost-shaped pinata currently hanging in the corner of our TV room just makes the place look cheap and gaudy, this Haunted Evening DVD actually succeeds in making me feel like I’m sharing living space with the spirits of long dead monsters and murderers.  It’s the kind of stuff you can’t put a price on.  Even if you could, it’d be far higher than the 9.99 Target charged me.

I suspect that the creators of Haunted Evening would’ve had a hard time trademarking such a vague concept, so there are probably ten trillion versions of this “scary background” DVD lurking in any stores bold enough to part with such treasures.

I just love this stupid DVD.  It makes me joyful, and that’s not easy to do when there isn’t free string cheese involved.  When I eat string cheese, I like to pretend that I’m an orangutan sucking ants off a stick.  I secretly pray for someone to ask me which brand of string cheese I’m eating, so I can respond with a hearty “Polly-Oooh Oooh AH AH” before shitting into my hand and throwing it at them.  Was that a run-on sentence?  Let’s ask the Halloween Magic 8-Ball.

Fuck you 8-Ball.

Anyway, sorry about the crude orangutan bit.  I guess I just have a little “work speak” left inside me from that old gig writing catalog descriptions for JCPenney.