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.

Thrift Store Hallo-weekends: Universal Studios Monsters Magic Pictures Activity Book

This week, we’re looking at Universal Studios Monsters Magic Pictures, a coloring/activity book published by Golden Books/Western Publishing in 1992. I have no idea what the retail price of this was, but I got it for a dollar in a Goodwill store in Hocking Hills, Ohio.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Universal Studios Monsters brand is the Cadillac of Halloween-related products in my eyes. Anyone can sell a generic flat-topped Frankenstein’s Monster costume for Halloween… or a kinda/sorta Creature from the Black Lagoon decoration to hang on your door, but Universal has the market cornered on the look of these classic ghouls.

Thrift Store Finds Hallo-Weekends – Halloween III: The Season of the Witch movie novelization

This week, we return to my old beloved stomping grounds, the movie novelization. We’ll be looking at Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, written by Jack Martin, the pen name of horror writer/editor Dennis Etchison.

The book is based on a screenplay by Tommy Lee Wallace and was published by Jove Publications in 1982. Cover price was $2.95, I paid fifty cents.

I’ve written about a bunch of these film tie-in books in the past. I’ve even written about the Halloween franchise novelized before!

As a pre-teen, I was an avid reader of novelizations as a way to carry my love of a movie out of the theater and into my everyday life. I had few friends who would buy the novelization to read about a movie their parents were never going to let them see (usually R-rated action and horror flicks). It was sort of a literary methadone to the pure heroin of cinema.

I picked up this novelization of Halloween III at the thrift store because I’m a HUGE fan of the first Halloween movie. I’ve seen it dozens of times and it remains a masterful work. A quick glance at Wikipedia tells me I’ve also seen most of the other Michael Myers Halloween flicks (including Halloween H20 but excluding the Rob Zombie remakes) so I’m fairly up to speed with the series. I’ve seen them all… but I’ve never seen Halloween III.

If you’re at all a fan of the horror genre, you probably know why this is. Halloween III: Season of the Witch was something of a noble experiment. John Carpenter and the various producers decided to turn the franchise from a series focused on Michael Myers into a yearly Halloween-themed anthology. This third entry in the series told an entirely new story with no ties to the characters and situations that had made the previous two films such a success. Halloween III ended up being something of a disaster and the anthology idea was chucked out the window in favor of bringing Michael Myers back for another go-around not too soon after.

Halloween III has gained some cult traction in horror circles of late but like I said… it’s the one movie in the franchise I skipped. I decided to do an experiment of my own this Halloween season: I would read the novelization… then I would watch the movie for the first time. I wanted to see how my enjoyment of the movie would be either increased or tempered based on having read the tie-in book first.

First things first. How is the book? Click through to find out what I thought.

Thrift Store Finds Hallo-Weekends: Ghostbusters comic books!

It’s three for the price of one on this second week of October. We’ll be looking three different Ghostbusters comic books published in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.

These comics were purchased for me by my father last year in New Paltz, New York. Thanks Dad!

Thrift Store Hallo-weekends: Monster Force Dracula (Playmates Toys)

Monster Force was a short lived animated series from the 1990’s produced by Universal Animation Studios. The show pit technologically equipped monster hunters against The Creatures of the Night, a catch-all name for some of the more famous ghouls. Since this show was produced by Universal, they had access to the “official” library of Universal Monsters brand were able to make several visual and narrative references to those classic films.

I had never heard of the show before seeing this toy in a comic convention discount bin. I paid $3 dollars for this toy.

We’re looking at Dracula, the de facto leader of The Creatures of the Night. This action figure was made by Playmates Toys, purveyors of lines such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Trek, among many others.