Embedded Files
Its the big Halloween Dinosaur Dracula Funpack and I'm super jazzed about all the pieces in it. I've been subbed for quite a few years (I missed the first couple months of the pack but been subbed since 2014) and this is one of my favorites of the October boxes so far. I'm excited about so many pieces. So let's take a closer look at the contents!
The first thing are the cool treats. POPCORN BALLS. My grandmother makes them for Christmas every year and since I have to watch my diet these days, its gonna be hard to not to indulge later, but I'm allowed to cheat a bit, right? I've never had one commercially sold, so I'm excited to try it.
Also when it comes to sweets, I'm most drawn to sour candies so the Skittles were also a delightful sweet included. I also want to point out the reaper shouting SHRIEKERS! just cracks me the hell up. Its so Skeletor-esque. XD Also the flavors are so Halloween-y; shocking lime, ghoulish green apple, rattled raspberry, citrus scream, and spine tingling tangerine. Dang, I need a citrus scream drink or smoothie. Takes me back to the 90s of EXTREEM flavor tastes XD.
Ok, this squishmallow toy of Bella the Spider is the top shelf of top shelf little plushies, and I CANNOT HANDLE THE CUTE. They were a 2023 UK exclusive Happy Meal toy so I can't imagine the import posts for this perfect gal back then. And now I have it for the paltry price of helping my favorite internet dude keep his site going. So really, its the 0 Cost Idea going on.
Also the fact her lil red belly is slightly off center makes her perfect. I feel like she's unique and all mine. And being a squishmallow, its so smooshy and velvety soft.
.Do you know how hard it is to not collect every squishmallow you see in the store? Its level FromSoft NG+99 impossible. She's pals with my Dunkin Donuts spider keychain on my xbox :3
Also, she's a magician? She's perfection.
This madballs patch is so cool. I got the skull face and I COULD put it on a jacket but for right now, it must be enshrined in my stickerbook until I can commit (its got a sticky back to keep it in place while you iron it on). I got skull face, which is objectively the best Mad Ball because skeletons are cool. According to the newsletter, they were vending machine prizes in the 80s, and man, I miss those vending machine sticker dispensers. I don't know if any still exist near me that aren't just candy.
This Trash Pack gacha comes in a mini trashcan and is a squishy rubber dude. I've gotten a few over the years but this one is prolly my favorite. For some reason he looks like a 80s-ified, GPK beamed Rotom fan, which probably also contributes to my favor. I didn't grow up as a kid who liked gross out toys, but I do appreciate them. Kids like gross things sometimes, and its kinda cute. XD The eyeballs in the moving fan just screams Tsukumogami but make it hilarious.
The pack of Star Monsters are also some of my favorite pack-ins from the funpacks. They're a collectable game where you toss them and earn points for how they land (I think, I've never seen anyone play them?). The little green guy is sooooooo cute. Like prototype pokemon adorable. This lil blobby shape with just a mouth and eyes. Exempliary monster design. The blue one is like a square on a single leg, like a monster camera XD. And his lil roundy nose makes him look so friendly.
They always come with stickers, so they really max out the collectable monster genre. Has a function (a game), have cute but also monstery designs to attract kids, and have the ability to become pocket pets for the kids who loves to make their toys into colorful pets. I know I'm not the only one who made little toys into pets to carry around when I was a kid. I adopted everything from flocked bunnies from easter baskets, to a Simba toy from a Lion King happy meal, to even a fuzzy snake shaped bookmark I named after an alien pet from My Teacher is an Alien (shout out to Poot, whom I lost prolly in a move years ago).
The pack of Astro Monsters are an interesting find. They were a 90's collectable from Italy (maybe), and contained 4 cards and a little plastic monster figure. The moment I looked at my fig, I knew that alien anywhere. That's a lil Godola figure from Ultraman! I think it was first in Ultraseven where it kidnapped Dan Moroboshi and tried to frame him for planting a bomb. After it got bitched out in a fight, it tried to fly away and Seven blew it up with a beam to the ass, which is pretty much the second best way to die from Seven (the first of course is to be sliced in half by the eye slugger XD).
To be fair, my favorite Godola version is the Kaiju Girl version but that's just me XD
By that measure then, I think they're italian knockoff collectables from Tsuburaya and Toho kaiju franchises, with some of these monster resembling kaiju . They have really fun illustrations; a lil off model, but with some cool angles. Like check out that sun headed guy fighting the maybe giant enemy crab (hittheweakpointformassivedamage). Look at that big sky horizon line. It's enough to make John Ford proud. Top notch cards, top notch knockoff Ultra monsters. Amazing find.
The mini poster makes me giggle cuz it's so cute and goofy and perfect for the Halloween season. It's a great decoration, unless it's a costume, and then its creepy AND great. The Scarios label sticker is also great since I have never had them. They were a Halloween version of Spaghetti-os with ghosts and other fun Halloween shapes. It's been a while since I last had spaghetti=os so I might have to get a can soon just to relieve the childhood of cheap canned spaghetti.
The newsletter gives a lot of great insight to the items and the drawing challenge is to make a Halloween mad ball. I'm thinking something pumpkin-y is always the way to go, but maybe one that looks like Jack from Animal Crossing is also part of that order. The essay this month talks about the halcyon days of Halloween celebrated in elementary school, in the big BeforeTimes. The fact you were "in school" but not "IN school", doing sometimes short activities that weren't learning, the Halloween parades, the treats like pizza or cupcakes, it was all coming back to me so fondly. I remember the big costume parades, where I remember some of my fave costumes like Princess Peach/Toadstool, or a member of a Star Fleet med bay. We didn't have pizza but we did have homemade cupcakes and "bobbing" for donuts (they hung supermarket bought donuts on strings and we had to eat them off the strings XD). I'm not sure how they do Halloween in schools these days but I hope kids do have the opportunity to enjoy Halloween with their classmates at some point in their lives.
Halloween is right around the corner and I'm really glad I'm going more laidback cuz its been a buuuuuusssssy month (drawtober, my big 12 hour Fatal Frame stream, etc). So until then, enjoy the last bits of the spooky season before we ease into the next set of holidays!
---Dio (10/28/24)
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse