Countdown to Halloween Day 22: Darling Pumpkinheads, Devil's Brew, Deathnote and Darth Vader Too

Hey! Welcome back! I'm finding the Halloween Goodwill finds to be getting a little sparse at this point, so hopefully I'll have more to write about in another couple of posts... otherwise I'm going to be getting very creative! But luckily, I have this armful of stuff right here still left to write about! 

Gaze at the riot of wonder and color that is this post's loot pile! Let's dig in.

I love pumpkin-headed ghosts. And when they're as cute as this guy is? There was no way this thing wasn't coming home. You don't see enough of these guys these days. There's something very victorian-greeting-card about the design of a jack o' lantern with a trailing ghost-sheet-body beneath. 

I almost didn't pick this pumpkin-headed flashlight thing but I just love that vintage, blow-mold looking face. It's so lumpy! I had a reeeeally hard time getting a non-shiny picture of this thing too. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to keep the head on the black handle or if I will remove it and stick it on top of another jack o' lantern to make them look like piled up pumpkins. We will see.

Found these two in a baggy for a dollar. I probably overpaid but I wanted the Frankenstein's Monster more than anything. There are no markings to tell me when these were made, (there is a 50 cent price tag from Brooks drug on the side of each tube) but the UPC stickers on the tubes don't look old at all so I have a feeling these are fairly recent... but it doesn't matter. They have that cheap, fun feel to them that Halloween should have.

They make great finger puppets too! I love Frankie's sideways little grin here.

This bad boy also has no markings whatsoever. He looks like he's meant to evoke a little bit of Casper the Friendly Ghost but the resemblance is does not seem to be official. There does seem to be a piece missing off the top of the ghost's tail, but I can't seem to find this thing online so I can't begin to tell you what could have been there.

I have no idea if this thing will be worth reading or not, but finding a "Mars Attacks!" novel titled "Martian Deathtrap" was pretty exciting. I don't think I've ever read anything by Nathan Archer before, so I'm going in pretty blind. May toss this in next year's Halloween Read Pile... or I may just pass on it entirely and send it along to someone else.

I'm not a Manga person, like AT ALL. But I when I saw the first two volumes of DeathNote for a couple of bucks apiece, I thought I'd give it a shot. And what better time of year to find a manga about a guy using a magic notebook to kill people, and having to deal with death spirits? I have no idea if this is the gateway book that will lead to my addiction with manga, or if it will just enforce all of the reasons why I've never really gotten into them.

There was also this fun looking activity book "The Halloween Grab Bag" which is your typical "Book of Tricks and Treats" with recipes, crafts, costume ideas, games to try, puzzles to solve, etc. Here's an example of why I picked this one up though:

Look at this s**t! Don't you want to try atomic fireball flavored apple juice with ginger ale mixed in? I know I do! Heck, swap out the apple juice for hard apple cider and you got me going! Devil's Brew indeed!

There was also this little four pack of sort-of-papercraft masks you fold and assemble to wear. I'm giving these to my kids, but I'm not sure when exactly.

I really wanted to get a close up look at the example on the bag to show you how not cool these things are probably going to be. But I bet my boys will love them either way. 

Finally I found a nice Halloween themed anthology. It says "Tales of suspense" but I'm not sure exactly what that means. I doubt many of these will be supernatural in nature... but a guy can hope. It includes Peter Straub's "Pork Pie Hat" which really is an incredible Halloween story, but still not one that has any real ghosts or ghouls in it. So I'm guessing crime stories. This one is definitely on next year's Halloween Read Pile for sure, but I'm goig to keep my expectations managed properly.

Well that's it for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Gremlinish Goodwill Goodies soon enough! Until then, Happy Haunting!

Remember, I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 2: Body Wars, Spider Wars, Mars Attacks, and More!

So this post is going to sort of serve as a dumping place for a BUNCH of Halloween stuff I've found in previous weeks but wanted to share in October. This was, for the most part, not all bought at the same time, although much of this is probably all from no more than about three different trips to Goodwill total. There's a good mix of toys, spooky books, games, and other junk, so it'll probably be a nice assortment with a little bit of something for everyone. Let's check it out!

I found this "Mars Attacks!" claw-machine refugee for a dollar about a month or so back. He looks great with my stuffed Walking Dead "Well Zombie" sitting around gnashing their teeth at one another.

These guys were a couple of awesome finds in a grab-bag with some other toys (there's Batman, a Gorilla, and a horse I think? Just out of frame here... but these two guys were the Halloween-iest) the fella on the left is a Kaiju by the name of Gigan. I have had a lot of really great luck either finding or being given a bunch of these Trendmaster figures featuring Godzilla monsters. These are exactly the scale I want these in, and since watching even a single Godzilla/Kaiju film is still an item on my bucket list, this level of commitment it perfect for me. I am in LOVE with the character designs, and have a bit of a crush on Mothra if I'm being honest.

Next to Gigan we have Shan Yu, the villain from Disney's Mulan. I'm not really a Mulan fan per se, but I am a fan of this huge, gray, imposing, zombie-looking warlord with a giant buzzard on his shoulder. Shan Yu's eyes in the movie are actually a thousand times more disturbing than they are right here on this toy... but I think if they had accurately reflected the depths of soulessness in Chan Yu's creepy peepers, kids would have been crying into their Happy Meals and defecating uncontrollably (and not just from the McDonald's food). He is currently menacing my Scooby Doo action figures, because honestly he looks like someone from a Scooby Doo episode, right?

"Creatures" is a collection of poetry compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Stella Ormai. I have vague memories of this book from when I was a kid, which was why I picked it up, honestly. But it was disappointing. I was expecting more monsters and less gnomes, fairies, and sprites. This book desperately wanted to appear to be a Halloween book (I mean look at that cover!) but unfortunately there are only about 4 or 5 poems in the whole book that fit the bill.

Some Scooby Doo Chapter books! The first one is the novelization of the second movie, which I felt was wholly superior to the first live action movie, although neither of them was truly what I considered to be "good" Scooby Doo. The monsters in Scooby Doo 2 were the really fun part. I've been compiling a collection of chapter books to share with my boys and, as is the case with "The Case of the Glowing Alien," Scooby Doo pretty much always comes home from Goodwill as my kiddos genuinely adore ol' Scoobs.

I brought these two books home together. I plan on giving Bruce Coville's "Book of Monsters" a bit more attention in this very countdown, so let's ignore it today. Instead, I want to talk about "The Haunting of Derek Stone: The Red House" by Tony Abbott. I found a book that collected the first two Derek Stone books together in one volume sometime last year and FELL IN LOVE WITH THEM. This is a great example of me picking up some random book by some random author at Goodwill and discovering a new series of books that I just fall in love with. Derek is facing the threat of an undead ghost army overtaking the land of the living, and even though this is a YA series, it makes your flesh CRAWL. I'm shocked at some of the stuff Abbott gets away with in these books! Great read, highly recommended.

This isn't a horror collection. It's a collection of sci-fi stories about... sci-fi story writers I guess? But the cover is absolutely horrifying. So I'm including it here. Behold and be afraid.

Here's a fun one! Spider Wars by Milton Bradley circa 1988. This is a nice looking game with fun pieces and a really fun looking web-style playing surface/thing. Check out those spiders on the cover, and the awesome spider-figures in the game! This thing screams Halloween in black and neon orange and green. This one came complete with the whole shebang, except for one vital thing:

I really desperately need to get my hands on a copy of the directions! There are some very basic mechanics of the game that don't make sense when we're trying to play. I have in fact play tested this with my 6 year old son and we did have fun, but I feel like there are some rules we are not observing that we probably should have to make this game a little less one-sided?

Twisted Sister, and Dee Snyder specifically, gnawing on his raw meat, scared the CRAP out of me as a kid. This cassette has "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" included, which are great songs.

This is a collection of vampire lore compiled by Daniel Cohen called "Real Vampires," which I have to contest the title of a bit... but check out that cover art!!! Anyone know who this is? I can't find reference to the cover art in the book anywhere. Anyone recognize this work? I want to see more!

No Halloween season would be complete without a couple of cheap Ghost Story collections! We can see Mr. Daniel Cohen hard at work again with "The World's Most Famous Ghosts" and a Watermill Classic collection: "Midnight Fright: A Collection of Ghost Stories" I probably won't be reading either of these before next Halloween, but I've added them to the potential Halloween Read Pile materials.

This was a fun find! From "Those Characters From Cleveland" (The creators of Madballs, My Pet Monster, Popples, Strawberry Shortcake, and many more) an on-again-off-again subsidiary of American Greetings, comes Body Wars!

These were Mighty-Max/Polly Pocket style fold-out mini-playsets, featuring germs and anti-bodies fighting each other for control of various internal organs that folded out into battle stations! Unfortunately this stomach I found didn't come with any of its characters or accessories, but I still found it be be gross and endearing. Had Body Wars come along when I was a bit younger (These came out in '94 when I was about 16 and in highschool so no dice...) I would have been OBSESSED with them. This is exactly the kind of thing I loved as a kid.

I never say no to horror movie novelizations. It kind of irks me looking at this picture that I have the books out of order. Ugh. Who does that? Me I guess. But anyway. I love the original Jaws film, and because my friend Miss M loves the whole franchise with a level of passion bordering on public indecency, I have learned to appreciate the other films as well. This will not be the last time you see a Jaws novelization during this countdown. We're going to need a bigger blog.

And that folks, is where I leave you on this, m second post of the countdown to Halloween! I'm doing this as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year. As always, I will be back with some more Garroting Goodwill Goodies sooner than you'd like... so until then Happy Haunting!!! 

Payday Friday 10-28 Part 2

All right back to the Payday Friday adventures!!! This is part two of a post I started back here. It was a mega payday Friday filled with two days and three stores. It was a wild bacchanalistic orgy of Goodwill shopping. Well, there's a sentence I bet you never thought you'd read... 

As I mentioned last time, there was some last-minute Halloween shopping happening that day as well. Here's a little green Halloween Troll doll I found in a grab-bag with some other great stuff (shown after the jump). I don't usually care about Troll dolls one way or another... but this guy's okay. I think he's meant to be a Frankenstein's monster Troll... but he's also throwing off some major zombie vibes. He's the exact kind of balance between cute and Halloween-y that I tend to enjoy. The grab-bag he came out of cost me .99 cents, so any additional Troll reservations I may have had disappeared when I saw the additional contents of the bag.

See More After the Jump!