Redartz: Did you ever have any toys that creeped you out? And I don't mean Mattel's Creepy Crawlers. Maybe you didn't actually have any (fortunately), but still shudder a bit at the memory of the commercials. The bedroom my brother and I shared held a couple of minor terrors.
The first : we had a building/construction set called "Crazy Ikes". The name alone made me feel a bit uneasy.Then there were the toys themselves; weird yellow headed men with vacant round eyes alongside strange yellow pseudo-animals. Wouldn't doubt we built structures from Lincoln Logs designed to hold these bizarrities hidden inside, away from our sight.
Secondly, my brother had to have an affinity for magic and ventriloquism. So yes, he had a ventriloquist's dummy. Right there in our room. I still have nightmares.
What potentially perilous playthings lurked in your toybox, your closet, or in the eerie phospor glow of your tv set?
12 comments:
When I was little I had a golliwog and I suppose they do look a bit creepy. They aren't made anymore (as far as I know) because they were eventually regarded as racist - a "wog" was British slang for a black person.
I had to google Lincoln Logs as I'd never heard of them till today :)
Troll dolls. There was one in the toy chest my grandmother had for me. Naked, potbellied and sexless, the plastic gave off these uncannily noxious fumes which could only have emanated from Satan's own infernal damnation, the dark abyss of which radiated through those soulless ebon eyes to lacerate my childhood imagination.
I shudder in Lovecraftian horror to this very day.
Good one Selenarch, those Troll Dolls did have a creep factor of about 7.
Redartz, my sister had a ventriloquist dummy. It looked identical to the dummy from the movie Magic and she had it during the time they were running the commercials for it. Man I had to make sure that thing was buried in her closet before I would enter her room.
It wasn't a toy, but my uncle (only 15 years my senior) had a little "Get Well Soon" statuette in his bedroom at my grandma's house when I was very little, and it had a cartoon doctor with a ginourmous needle and an evil smile. I guess it was a gag gift from one of his buddies, but MAN, I was scared of that thing. I was certain it was going to come to life and get me (I may have recently seen Trilogy of Terror at too young an age). A couple times my siblings and I slept in that room and it had to be put away in another room before I agreed to close my eyes and try to sleep.
I was never creeped out by any toys, I always wanted a ventriloquist doll and never got one. But at age 8, I got the Alien toy, I'm still surprised they made a toy based on an R rated movie.
http://www.blumhouse.com/2015/10/26/the-1979-alien-toy-that-was-too-terrifying-for-kids-to-play-with/
Only thing I can think of is a rubber tarantula that I still have, but it never really creeped me out because it's obviously fake. If it was a real tarantula, it might be a different story.
I always found girls dolls, the big ones, to be a bit creepy...
I don't know why but, just like big girl dolls, Mad magazine gave me the same kind of creepy feeling... something about unusual portrayals of humans I guess.
Colin J- Lincoln Logs were a unique building set, designed so that everything you constructed had the look of a log cabin. As in Honest Abe Lincoln, the rail splitter...
Killraven- your sister's ventriloquist dummy would have been even more unsettling than my brother's. I always count my blessings that I'm too young to have seen "Howdy Doody", all those marionettes and such are troubling.
Osvaldo- yes, that doctor figurine sounds like the perfect item to keep little kids out of a room you don't want them in.
Charlie- maybe your unease with "Mad" stems from the usual cover appearance of Alfred E. Newman. He does, admittedly, have a bit of marionette/puppet/ventriloquist dummy aspect.
Red - what makes me also uneasy is that I have met a few people over the years who are dead ringers for Alfred E. Newman.
I am wondering if you had unease watching Thunderbirds? I kind of did but the action quickly overrode that. That was a cool show.
Charlie- yes, I did! Same with "Fireball XL-5". There's just something about puppetry that gives me the creeps. And that goes for the FF villain Puppet Master, as well (was it ever explained why he actually looked like a puppet?).
Redartz, I was going to mention the same thing on Andersons puppet shows.. I remember as a wee lad in the 60s having nightmares about their moving heads, creepy eyes and big bushy eyebrows.
Which all seems so odd since I count 'Space:1999' as my all-time most favorite show ever (well, Year 1 is...).
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