Pearce Family Halloween 2018

Visit the rest of the Pearce Family Holiday Drawings here, if that’s something you wanna do.

Thrift Store Halloweekends – Barney Gumble, The Simpsons Spooky Light-Ups (Burger King)

This week, we’re going to be looking at Barney Gumble from Burger King’s line of Simpsons Spooky Light-Ups from 2001. These toys were a premium given away with the purchase of a Burger King Kids Meal but I bought mine for $3 bucks at a garage sale.

The Simpsons and Halloween have been something of a package pair ever since the second season of the long-running animated sit-com. The Simpsons Halloween Specials (later renamed Treehouse of Horror) have, over the last 25 years, presented viewers with parodies and pastiches of classic and modern scary stories using the assorted citizens of Springfield. It’s something that gets forgotten in this day and age where adult-oriented cartoons are a dime a dozen… but the Simpsons take on Halloween was, in its’ beginnings, pretty damn subversive. These brutal “out of continuity” tales really messed with viewer’s expectations and I can remember some (Season 6’s Nightmare Cafeteria) genuinely putting some scares in me.

Thrift Store Halloweekends – Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD Handheld Game (Micro Games)

In our first Hallo-weekend post, we’ll be looking at the Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD handheld game, made by Micro Games in 1994. I paid a buck for this in our local thrift store.

It’s hard to believe in this era of smartphones and incredibly sophisticated consoles, but handheld video games were a big deal in the 1980’s! Before technology allowed video games the portability they began to enjoy in the mid Nineties, these simple toys utilized “liquid crystal displays” to give players a video game like experience. Designed something like a cartoon, the LCD screen featured a number of printed images that worked in tandem with one another to replicate movement based on user interface. In other words, it was as low-fi as a video game could get and still be considered a game.

Despite their limitations, handheld LCD games remained quite popular even after more sophisticated handheld consoles like Nintendo’s GameBoy and Sega’s Game Gear opened the market. LCD games were far cheaper than a GameBoy cartridge and like I said… most gamers were, if not contented by the limited game play, they were at least somewhat mollified. I also think one of the keys to the LCD handheld’s continued success after their day had come and gone was branding. Every TV show, movie, and video game worth a damn had a dedicated LCD game on the shelves. For some properties, this was a natural progression – as a kid, I owned a Tiger Electronics’ Batman game based on the ’89 movie I loved, as well as several others.

The game we’re going to be looking at today is an adaptation of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, an animated series based on the HBO original series Tales from the Crypt… which itself was an adaptation of the famous horror title published by EC Comics in the 1950’s.