The Worst Toy Ever?

Before you read any further, click the above graphic and read this amazing ad.
You're back? WOW! Wild eh? And yes, it is real. "Don't worry, this is New York. Nobody will help her." Great stuff.

What kid wouldn't want his own little torture chamber? There were eight "Monster Scenes" sets including one titled "The Pain Parlor." The most shocking and most important is of course, "The Victim"
What can you say about a company that sells to kids with a tag line like "Rated X... for Exitement?"
So how the hell did Aurora get away with this one? Well, they didn't; not for long...

"Massive protests against the kits came from religious publications and general newspapers, since they all thought that it promoted sex and sadism among children. All the negative publicity led to an immediate stop of production for these kits in May 1971, by the company which now had new owners: Nabisco Inc.
The kits remaining on the toy store shelves led to new protests in November, this time outside Nabisco's headquarters in New York. These protests held by groups as: Parents for Responsibility in the Toy Industry, and National Organization for Women, resulted in a recall of the Monster Scenes kits from store shelves in the U.S."

Thank you to our pals at Retrocrush.com for this. Be sure to check out all their great Halloween posts.

Worst Halloween Costumes from RetroCrush.com

Our buddy Robert at Retrocrush has up a great collection of awful costumes of the sort the less fortunate kids had to wear when I was growing up in the 70s.

I've picked my three favorites here, but there're plenty more worth checking out at RetroCrush.com

First up, The Leather Man from the Village People. I was so innocent when The Village People first appeared. It never once occurred to me that they were gay. What could possibly be gay about cops and sailors and cowboys and Indians and construction guys and... um... leather men?

I can't imagine any kid wanting to be Tattoo from Fantasy Island. Of course, I can't imagine Tattoo wearing a tux with his own picture on it either. How bad is a costume when it needs to announce in print what it is?

For the record my mom made us great costumes from scratch and would never send us out in one of these plastic jobbies. She seemed to view it as child abuse to let a kid be seen in one of these. If only we'd known they'd someday be collector's items.
My favorite costumes made for me by mom: Ghostbuster (not Sexy Ghostbuster, just Ghostbuster) Cowardly Lion (won some contests with that one) and my favorite- DEVO (my mom didn't realize that once I got to school I would use Vaseline to make my hair look plastic. Getting Vaseline out of long 70's hair = no fun.)

The Asteroids costume just begged for abuse, after all, what is the object of the video game? Shoot the asteroids. And in my neighborhood rubber band guns were ALMOST as popular as video games. Come to think of it, BB guns were fairly common as well.

These cheap plastic costumes seem to have disappeared in this country. I wonder if you can still find 'em anywhere? I'd love to be myself some Halloween, with a plastic mask of me and a plastic costume with my own face and name printed on it.

Happy Halloween everyone. And thanks RetroCrush for continuing to be such a great source of awfulness from the past.

Sexy Freddy

The Onion has a great graphic of The Top Halloween Costumes for women 18-34. Sexy French Maid, Sexy Cat, etc. Funny stuff and so spot on. When I saw the ad for a sexy Freddy costume I realized that real life is even more ridiculous than The Onion's parody. My god, it had to be a joke, right?

Nope. Further investigation revealed it to be true. As if anyone needed or wanted a sexed up Freddy. What's next, Sexy Garden Slug? This is NOT a case of two great tastes that taste great together.

I was messed up plenty by having to come to terms with Sexy Bugs Bunny when I was a kid. Yeah, that rabbit could be quite alluring in drag. What will happen to today's impressionable young minds when they have to confront a sexually appealing Freddy Krueger?

I immediately went about searching buycostumes.com to see what other ridiculousness I'd find there. (Yeah, I always have good "research" excuses when I'm looking at busty women in skimpy outfits online.)

I found sexy versions of children's fairy tails, sexy Indians (always modeled by Caucasian ladies) and sexy cop complimented by sexy corrupt cop. It's like the Onion gag was used as inspiration.

Now the only thing I want cruelly thrust into my already bizarre sexual ID less than Freddy Krueger is perhaps Bill Murray. But, there it is. The sexy Ghost Buster: NOOOOOO! Make it stop! And why is Nicole Richey modeling for a costume website? Has the pregnancy lowered her marketability that much?

Of course, the silver lining to this acid rain cloud is the fact that I can buy one of these little outfits for Brett and make him wear it.

Ah Halloween, you shall remain my favorite holiday after all.

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