Creepmas Day 10: Creepmas Kids' Books!

So this year I'm celebrating Creepmas! 

From the 13 Days of Creepmas website: 

"A reaction to the continuing incursion of Christmas into Autumn and Halloween, CREEPMAS is a good-natured chance for Halloween lovers to exact revenge by bringing some spooky good cheer into the holidays or, more appropriately, the Hallowdays..." Read more about the inspirations behind this 13 day celebration HERE. 

So you thought Creepmas was only for adults... huh? Well, as yesterday's post proves, there's a definite market for chocolate-in-your-peanut-butter marketing for the frightful and the festive for kiddies this time of year! With that in mind, today's post is all for the youngest fans of Creepmas! I'm highlighting 7 books that fall under the category (IMO) of "Creepmas books for kids".

Norman Bridwell is most famous for his Clifford, the Big Red Dog series. He created many other books during his career as a childrens' book author/illustrator. Including a series of about 5 books about a witch. The Witch Next Door, The Witch Grows Up, The Witch on Vacation, the Witch Goes to School, and this one: The Witch's Christmas. The witch is a friendly practitioner of the dark arts, and lives next door to some children who appreciate her talents. She also seems to simultaneously serve the Dark Lord while celebrating the birth of the Savior.

We get a look at the black snow that falls on the witch's property. And the animate snowman who attacks all who threaten his mistress. 

Her Christmas traditions are similar but appropriately Creepmas-y. The tree is decked out in skulls and bats and spiders and the like. Her caroling group is a horror show that terrorizes the neighborhood.  All-in-all this is a cute book that my kids do enjoy. The witch has an adventure where she saves both Santa Claus and a pair of astronauts from a frosty death in the vacuum of space. Check it out! 

Next up, from the author of Bunnicula, we have The Fright Before Christmas which also stars Harold, Chester, and Howie, from the Bunnicula books (Bunnicula himself makes a cameo but is, disappointingly, NOT the focus of the tale). 

The animals are worried about such horrors as fat men with sacks sliding down chimneys and ghosts of Christmas (like the ones in a Christmas Carol) showing up to do who-knows-what to their family. So Harold and Chester set out to stop this holiday horror-show from happening.

Hijinks ensue and absolutely no one is  slaughtered by a vampiric leporid. So there's a nice build-up but not much payoff. And a totally wasted of a blood-drinking bunny.

Next up we have A Pirate's Twelve Days of Christmas. Now, you may or may not know from this blog, but we at the Goodwill Geek's house have made pirates a pretty standard part of our Halloween celebrations. So mixing them up in our Christmas celebration SCREAMS Creepmas!

Most of the 12 gifts are pretty tame, including a Parrot in a Palm tree, a pair of cutlasses, 9 Mermaids singin', and some monkeys. But the 3 black cats and the 6 Jolly Rogers? Pure Halloween gold dear readers. And when you get Halloween gifts for Christmas you get CREEPMAS!!!

Finish it all off with a shot of a sleepy Pirate being watched over by a winking Jolly Roger and a Piratical Santa... and you've got a Creepmas classic on your hands.

So I've already discussed the Ghosts of Christmas as a different part of my 13 Days of Creepmas, I am aware. But now I'm going to focus for a moment on the book version they put out of the tale.

Marley shows up, as do the other 3 spirits, and for the most part, the only disappointment of the whole thing is the fact that we lose the door-knocker scene that kicks things off.

We still get all of the classic scenes starring the spirits and Scrooge before redemption finally sinks in. This is a great adaptation of the classic TV special and it makes for a nice shivery Creepmas kids' tale for the Christmas season!

Next up we have this pair of books by horror novelist Dean Koontz. He wrote two books detailing the harrowing Hallowdays adventures of Charlotte and Emily. The girls have to contend with not one but two strange, sinister doppelgangers of Old Saint Nick.

 In the first book, Santa's Twin we meet Bob, the off-kilter, mischief-and-mayhem making evil twin of Santa Claus. Deep down Bob is mainly misunderstood and out to get attention, but for the first 75% of the book we get no sense of this whatsoever as Bob wreck's people's homes, swaps out good gifts for horrific ones like the one pictured above, and threatens to eat the families of the reindeer to gain their complicity in assisting him in his crimes.

In the sequel, Robot Santa Bob has begun assisting Santa in his yearly duties, and builds a robotic Santa to help deliver gifts. Things go awry and the (more than a little creepy) robot starts creating Christmas Chaos of its own. Instead of eating cookies, he eats the plate (and some of the furniture) they sit on. Instead of leaving gifts from his sack, he fills the sack with gifts from the houses he visits. And he's got a trained gorilla helping him out that kidnaps the girls' dog. But as with last year, the girls persevere and prevail and set things to right.

Saving the best for last, we have quite possibly the book that DEFINES the concept of Creepmas in its own Merrilyy-Terrifying way. The Nightmare Before Christmas written and illustrated by Tim Burton! This is the book that the stop-motion animated Disney movie directed by Henry Selick was based on.

The entire book is a fun blend of both Halloween and Christmas imagery. If you're at all familiar with the film, then the themes of the book will be no surprise to you. Although there are no romantic story threads or villainous Boogie-Men trying to eat Santa. Those subplots are missed but traded out for a sense of focus that a book for children needs.

The imagery is festive and spooky and beautiful for it.

All the elements are there: the red and green and black and white and orange. The snow and the pumpkins. The Creepy and the Christmas. The Creepmas!!!

That's it for tonight! So tuck your kiddies into bed and crack the spine on one of these delightful, frightful feasts for the imagination!

Happy 13 days of Creepmas! I'll be back tomorrow with another entry in the countdown, which may or may not involve a Goodwill Goody! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Creepmas Day 9: Jack Skellington!

So this year I'm celebrating Creepmas! 

From the 13 Days of Creepmas website: 

"A reaction to the continuing incursion of Christmas into Autumn and Halloween, CREEPMAS is a good-natured chance for Halloween lovers to exact revenge by bringing some spooky good cheer into the holidays or, more appropriately, the Hallowdays..." Read more about the inspirations behind this 13 day celebration HERE. 

I don't know about you guys, but when I think of Christmas being taken over by creepy forces, I can always start off by thinking of one movie in particular: "The Nightmare Before Christmas" starring everyone's favorite bony Pumpkin King himself, JAck Skellingtion!

Ever since I saw the film in theater back in 1993 I was in love with its hauntingly beautiful imagery. I didn't care all that much about the fact that Halloween was trying to take over Christmas. Honestly that was the least interesting aspect of the film for me. The sequences involving the denizens of Halloweentown, Sally the stitched-together girl, and Jack himself are the parts that grabbed my attention the most. In my mind Jack is pure Halloween, although arguably he is really a pure mascot of the concept of Creepmas itself.

But because I loved the visuals and Halloween characters so much, I have ever since collected Jack Skellington stuff whenever it seemed cool. I don't buy socks and notebooks and lunchboxes with the character on them, but I do buy toys and miniatures. So let me show you what I've accumulated over the years:

I don't remember what company produced this plastic figurine of Jack, but I received it for Christmas a couple of years ago and it is one of my absolute most treasured possessions. It captures everything I love about the character. His lanky grace, his impossibly tall and thin figure, and his expression of bemused, affable curiosity. This picture isn't the best, as the flash bleached out his face a bit... but I assure you the likeness is perfect.

This on the other hand, is less faithful. I picked this up at Walgreens on Halloween clearance, and regretted it almost immediately. The figure has less of a chibi appearance, which is what I think they were going for... and more of a lopsided hydrocephalitic mutant look... which was not the intended effect, I'm assuming (or at least just hoping). There is GLITTER all over him... and he cracked at the waist shortly after I got him home. He appears to have some sort of internal structure holding him together or else he'd be in the trash already. 

These are two mini-figures that went to a Halloweentown Christmas village set that my wife was collecting for me at one time. The other figures I had from the set have all been broken over the years, including the Mayor, Sally, and the basic Jack Skellington figure. Sandy Claws Jack and Dr. Finklestein are all that remain of those days. -Sniff-.

My wife got me this Jelly Belly tin last year as a stocking stuffer. She knows how much I love both properties, so a coffin shaped tin full of Jelly Belly beans and topped with Jack's grinning visage is PERFECT.

I have a couple of plush Jack Skellingtons as well. The upside down one on the left is currently missing his bat-bow-tie, and the one on the right is looking pretty darned dingy. I'm not a huge fan of beanie-baby-style toys either way (contrary to what both my Sesame Street and advertising mascot collections might suggest about me) so it depends on my mood as to whether I usually have these guys out on display or not. 

My wife got me this Christmas tree ornament a NUMBER of years ago. I'm shocked its still in one piece to be honest. It depicts Sandy Claws Jack joyfully (and unintentionally) terrifying a young child unlucky enough to have stayed up to see if Santa Claus is real or not. 

Next we have another recent addition to my collection in this Funko Jack Skellington ReAction figure. Love these ReAction guys!

Speaking of Funko, here is my Funko POP! Jack Skellington. They have a variation of him out these days where he's done up like a Mexican Day of the Dead Sugar Skull... and I have to say I have no interest in that whatsoever. Nothing better than the classic guy himself right here.

I cannot recall who would have bought this for me. Someone in my family, like my Aunt or my grandmother I'm assuming. I don't think m wife bought me this Jack Skellington nite-lite. But its still pretty nifty. We were using it in the bathroom until the kids decided it was just too terrifying. This also nixed the idea of me sticking it in their room. Unless they're bad.

And last but not least is this Jack Skellington wall clock, which again I don't think my wife bought me... but I can't remember I've had it so long. I'm sure there are probably other items in my collection that I'm forgetting to include here... but that's it for now kiddos.

So that's it for tonight! A bunch of Jack!

Happy 13 days of Creepmas! I'll be back tomorrow with another entry in the countdown, which may or may not involve a Goodwill Goody! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 25: A Package from "CRPechonick" of Geek Show Ink!

So a... WHILE back... I won an instagram (...or was it Twitter? I don't remember now.) contest. And it was actually being done by an online buddy of mine "CRPechonick" (or Charles... or Chuck) who runs the Geek Show Ink blog and site, and whom I'm received goodies from before. He's an incredibly talented artist, and the prize he was giving away in his contest was a sketch card of any character you chose. I... being a Halloween fanatic, knew EXACTLY who I wanted featured on my sketch card. 

In typical fashion, Chuck sent me a whole box of goodies instead of just my prize... because that is just his way. He's generous to a fault. So let's take a look at what he sent me shall we? I'll show you the sketch card at the end (eagle-eyed readers may THINK they see the sketch card... but you would NOT be entirely correct...) and THAT will be what makes this post a part of my Halloween countdown!

To at least start us off on a Halloween-y note, I'll show off a couple of the movies he sent me! First up, the Gamera Trilogy, which begins with "Guardian of the Universe" from 1995. I had confessed to Chuck at some point that I was interested in kaiju films and had not yet really... seen... any. So he offered to send me some because that's how he rolls. Godzilla's revenge from 1969 makes this the perfect 1-2 punch of famous giant scaly guys.

MIGHTY BEANZ! I actually ended up giving these to my two sons to play with because they love both Star Wars and Mighty Beanz.

One of my FAVORITE things about this package? All the frikkin' BATTLE BEASTS!!! I had the beaver guy in the front when I was a kid, and he was actually one of my favorites!!! So glad to have another one in my collection! The others are all completely BAD-ASS as well. These are some truly cool Battle Beasts. I mean the frog? The tarsier? And ANY Battle beast with wings was automatically coveted by all when I was a kid. I like his leg hoses. Makes me think of Apocalypse.

Love Batman: The Brave and the Bold so receiving two of those toys really made my day... and the Brainiac is from some version of the Legion of Superheroes, I know, but I confess I'm not sure which version. Just FYI: The bat-s**t crazy concept that the Batmobile could transform into a mecha really pleased me. THAT is what you see crouching there in the middle. THE BATMOBILE.

Next up Marvel! In a way, Agent Coulson is directly responsible for me winning this prize from Chuck and getting me all this cool loot. My absolute favorite pieces in this little lot are the Sentinel and Iceman. But I'm a marvel guy, so I love it all.

Star Wars stuff! Two bobbleheads (technically R2-D2 is a bobble-body but you get the point) and an Angry Birds Star wars X-Wing pilot!

Yoshi in his Kart and the G.I. Joe Combat Heroes Duke notwithstanding, this batch of stuff seems pretty Halloween-y right? We have a Gogo's Crazy Bones minifig that looks like a cobra, a little pitchfork-wielding voodoo doll guy, and a SLUGS Zombies Sawblade Sampson figure (obviously an homage to Ash of Evil Dead). That beautiful ZBot in the center? The one who looks like a Jack-o'-Lantern carbed by H.R. Geiger? His name is "Jawbreaker" and he's from the Burger King set of 5 (of which I now only need 2 more to complete the set!!!)

AND NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... The moment you've all been waiting for! The sketch card that Chuck Pechonick sent me!!! Take a gander:

When I made my request of Chuck, I asked if he could do two characters on the same card. I wanted a nice picture of Sam from Trick R' Treat and Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas interacting in some way. And this was his solution: To heck with it, he'd just do two cards!!! Look at this thing! I love the idea that Sam is visiting Halloweentown and Jack is welcoming him in! I've decided I want to start collecting art from anyone who's interested in doing a similar piece (Sam and Jack together) because before I started requesting this idea (I have approached a couple of other artists as well) I found a disturbing LACK of art featuring these two characters together online. Doesn't it just seem like sort of a no-brainer? Anyway, if I get enough of these collected by next Halloween, I'm going to feature them all October long. I'd love to see these two balancing on a log Calvin & Hobbes-style, or sitting in a diner Norman Rockwell-style. Sam sitting on Jack's shoulders to watch a parade... or menacing terrified children on Christmas Eve! 

So there you have it folks! An incredibly generous package from an incredibly generous guy! Thanks to Charles Pechonick and be sure to check him out on Instagram  and Twitter and check out his site over at Geekshowink.com to see his blog, his art, and other cool stuff!

I'll be back soon with more Graverobbing Goodwill Goodies, so until then, Happy Haunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 12: A Look at Halloween in the Geek-Cave

I love Halloween. Year round. I am always on the prowl at Goodwill, even in March, for great Halloween merchandise. Horror movies. Ghost story collections. If it goes bump in the night I love it.

So... it would stand to reason that there would be a bit of an influence on my environment due to this. So I would like to take you on a brief tour of the most Halloween-y aspects of the cave I call home. 

First off, here is the main shelf that I consider my "Halloween" shelf. This is the whole thing, but the next three pictures kind of break it down into smaller, digestible bite-sized chunks.

Here is the left end of the shelf. It's the end closest to my desk, so I make sure to keep the heavier hitters like Jack Skellington, Sam from Trick R' Treat, and the Headless Horseman right where I can see them. You may also notice the legless zombie from Walking Dead, a pair of Etrigan the Demon figures, and a trio of Freddy Kruegers. Yes. That is Daryl Dixon standing on his head. Because he's top-heavy.

Here's the center of the shelf. Many miscellaneous characters and items here, including a bunch of wind-up Halloween guys, a couple of Anubis toys, and various Halloween items like plastic jack-o-lanterns, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, etc.

And finally, on the far right side we have a barbershop quartet of Jason Voorheeses, some more jack-o'-lanterns, and a host of ghouls and goblins like Pennywise the Clown and the Xenomorph. You will of course notice 1. there is a heavy Funko POP! presence here... and 2. it is INCREDIBLY crowded.

Right next to the right end of the official Halloween shelf is this little shelf. It is topped by my monster Mez-its, my set of Killer Panda Monsters, and my Monster in My Pocket figures. These guys are all beautiful to behold, and therefore get this shelf to kind of keep them out of the crowded mess that is the Halloween shelf proper. It's still not exaclty how I'd like to see all of these toys being displayed... but again, I'm runnin gout of room. Right below those monsters is my collection of skeleton pirates (plus three living pirates that had nowhere else to go). I have waxed poetic SEVERAL times on my blog about pirates, ghost pirates, skeleton pirates, and how they tie into Halloween so perfectly. So... I won't do it again now.

Right next to THAT blue shelf is an area mostly dedicated to Scooby-Doo, but also includes Monsters Inc., Aaah! Real Monsters, Stretchy Screamers, the Walking Dead Funko POP! and... Archie (I justify this because of the Afterlife With Archie series, which I am a rabid fan of). This is not the only Scooby-Doo area within the cave however...

Because over on my desk, I have a dedicated space for my Mystery Mates figurines! These guys are just great. I just wish they had released more monster figures before seemingly giving up. You can see I also have some Joker and Penguin figures in there, as an homage to the episodes where the gang meets up with them... and again the Monsters Inc. guys... just because. Real monsters and all that. 

On the curtain rod above that very shelf is my McDonald's trick or treat pail collection, featuring a couple of vintage McBoo pails and the three Scooby Doo pails from 2012. You can also see a couple of Scooby-Doo books poking out there as well.

One of my most recent additions to the cave is this PEZ dispensor set that my 5 year old son picked out for me for my birthday. When I received this, I didn't even know this pack existed yet! He saw it at Wal-Mart and told my wife she HAD to buy it for me. And just look at this thing. It is truly beautiful.

This little area sits directly behind me when I sit at my desk. The steam-punk-looking skull-thing is one of those light-up reusable jack-o'-lantern type things you buy at Wal-mart made of a sort of hard plastic-y foam that has been painted over. It is beautiful. The light boxes above it were bought by my wife from an online crafter with a now-defunct shop called "Morbid Decor" they are prized possessions. I had planned on adding a third light to the set with an image from Night of the Living Dead on it... but then the shop closed and it was no longer available to buy. Sigh. I  literally set the Ugly Doll figures on top because I had no where else to put them. It occurs to me now that I could have found something a bit more appropriately macabre to go there.

Here is the inside of the door to the cave. Some old-timey circus posters (reprints) some calendar pages from a Tales from the Crypt calendar, a "Fryin' Ryan" GPK poster, and a couple of postacards feature horror greats, Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King. Usually there's a big vintage cardboard cutout of a teal-colored skull hanging here as well, but during the month of October he's doing his duty greeting company at the front door. 

Here's a look at the shelving unit right next to the door, where I keep DVDs and more toys. What's of interest here is the set of posters, post-cards, and other images I've collected together here. Everything from old movie posters (more calendar repros) to the X-Files and Scooby-Doo... to other things I'll let you discover on your own.

Here's my set of Monster 500 cars from Toys R' Us. Before anyone bugs me about why I didn't buy the 3-packs because they're cheaper... I like the way they look better individually packed. I don't open toy cars. This is how I display them. And I like the look to be consistent. I love this series because it combines everything cool about monsters with everything I consider to be cool about the old Rat-Fink style car artistry of yesteryear. They have a sort of Wacky Racers vibe to them as well.

About a foot below my Monster 500 cars are these bad boys. I realized as I was taking the picture that I also have this weird four-pack of post-it notes shaped like Hawaiian shirts, but with Halloween designs on them, hanging right next to the awesome ReAction figures. So I kept that in the shot too. I knew when they announced the release of the ReAction lines that Sam and Jack would be my first two purchases.

I also have a little table full of dragons, dinosaurs, and kaiju. This is stretching the Halloween theme a bit, I know, but I feel only a little. Dragons and Kaiju (and even dinosaurs to an extent) can all be categorized as monsters easily.

 And to wrap things up, we'll end at my desk, in the tiny little alcove where my very favorite Halloween toys hang out. Here we have yet MORE versions of Jack Skellington and Sam from Trick r' Treat, alongside a LEGO custom I made of the Headless horseman. Two of my all-time favorite Halloween PEZ dispensors in the back, and some tiny Halloween tchotchkes in a Crazy Bones orange and black cyclopean ghoul, a tiny metal Jack-o'-Lantern ring, and a portly vending machine devil. But by far the star of THIS show is Garfield in disguise there, from his Halloween special. He was an eBay find, and I believe he was produced and sold in Germany back in the 80's, making it very hard to find here in the states these days. But Garfield just IS Halloween to me. So he's a very prized possession of mine indeed.

So that's it! There's actually SO much more to the cave than this very specialized and fine tuned Haloween-themed tour, but we'll get to all of that some other day. I'll be back soon with some Grizzly Goodwill Goodies sooner rather than later. Until then, Happy Haunting!