And here we are again, folks, another awesome DinoDrac funpack (ooh rhyme wine :9), another box of totally neato tchotchkes (guys it took me forever to find out if I'm even in the ballpark of spelling that word right @_@) with a spooky touch. I've covered a few Fun Packs before, so check the sit for previous ones. My plan was to do a review of them all, then suddenly 2015 ran by and its been a year and I got over 12 to do.
So let's pretend I did and move on 8D.
This year's was full of Halloween related stuff, as was last month's (cuz, as you guys heard from out previous podcast, we filthy americans start Halloween roughly in september.
This box has a few surprises, but they're all neat little prizes that you'd expect from a DD FP. So let's take a look see.
I love it when Matt packs an edible. Sometimes it candy, some boxes had Kool-Aid, this one had Cheetos.
I FRICKIN LOVE CHEETOS. Its like they pack crack cocaine in these suckers, you can't just eat like a handful. I can kill a whole big bag in one sitting, especially if they're the puffs. I prefer puffs, but I'll never say no to powder staining my finger tips orange for an afternoon.
Cody likes them too, but I'm not the type to share. Cody can eat puffed liver treats. Cheetos are mine. >x
This here's a Wacky Ghoulie. You may note it looks like a Madball. You are so right, my friend, cuz according to the DD packaging, they WERE. Essentially a knock off ripoff, these suckers look like the Discount Bin versions of those Madballs you've come to love. Except they're not that cheaply made. Cheaply made to me is having the paint rub off on your fingers, smelling like a cancerous knock-off Sharpie (Skerples), and then the plastic disintegrating within six seconds, probably fusing with your skin cells and further making you more cancerous, except there is no recourse for compensation like asbestos workers. Only the cheap scent of chinese factory grade plastic and dusty painted fingers.
Wow. That was an exercise of my Bachelor's degree right there.
This vending machine toy has a little nub on the back that tells me it might be a suction cup. But vending machine suction cups very rarely work for more than 3 milliseconds, so I prefer it staying in its pretty packaging than to try.
Cards! LOTS OF CARDS. I was most excited for the Ghostbusters one, cuz I like the movies and I can't resist a package that proclaims "Smash movie!" in the corner. I'm a total sucker for "SEE!! MARVEL!! DARE TO WATCH!" campaigns which says to me I have the entertainment instincts of a movie-goer in the 1950s. Go figure.
I've yet to open them because I think that'd be a whole 'nother article there, but suffice it to say I'm rather interested in the Dinosaurs Attack, which is a sort of call back to the beloved Mars Attack series, but this was with dinos and in the 1980s. As a puss who found the Mars Attack cards disquieting in a horrortastic way, I'm looking forward to the dino ones. Lord knows I love me dinosaurs eating people. Its why I
love Jurassic Park.
Here's a small bag full of little things, which i always enjoy. There's usually candy. Matt, if you're readying this, thank you. I can't tell you how many times there has been NO CANDY in the house and then I remember checking my funpack stash and finding a piece of bubblegum or a hard candy. It has saved me from going homicidal. Cus I just go Godzilla when I can't have my fixes. >9
So if anything, DD Fps have prevented genocide on many occasions. Thank you, DinoDrac. The world is in a safe place because of you.
A glow in the dark spider (which promptly disappeared cuz I didn't close the bag and it fell into my crafting/art tray of junk), some candy, a cute eraser topper buddy, a small box of halloween stickers, and a card from WCW, with Doom on it. I dunno nothing about wrestling really (and what I know comes from whatever old X-E articles I remember reading), but something tells me that I should know who Doom is. It appeared to be a duo. Tag-team wrestling seems fun.
2 posters this time!! That made me happy, next to the awesome sticker. I'm thinking of somehow turing the posters into a little book, but I have yet to figure out a way. Soon, tho, soon. The Freddy poster here actually relates to the next thing here.
Which is this Freddy Krueger off-brand fig, with double claws and a face only a horror fan could love. Apparently its spanish. I'm not sure how proud I should be about that statement.
Speaking of faces:
JESUS CHRIST.
Seriously. That looks like nightmare fuel. I know that's the point, but even that's taking it a few steps more than I was expecting. Creepy toys are creepy, but knock-off toys are more so, and triply if they're horror icons. This is one fig that's staying in that black bag.
Ughhhshhshshggghhh. >_> *shiver*
In this tube is a vomit bag for the movie Mark of the Devil. From my paltry wiki skills I've parsed out that this is a quintessential euro-horror (german in this case) done in the 70s with a satantic twist. 1970s horror is kinda a benchmark in horror. These movies were often pretty brutal, especially the foreign ones. Those big booms of italian horror, british horror, etc were really a shining moment in those grungy, super dark, evil-wins-at-the-end kinda feeling you just don't get anymore in films. The difference between raw and slick I guess. I dunno.
So I'm gathering that this movie's kinda gimmick were the barf bags with the ticket, which while silly nowadays, was probably an apt depiction of the depravity you were about to witness. I mean, apparently its a rather graphic movie, so it may not be high in my list of things to see, but I wouldn't mind giving it a spin with friends and a bottle of chilled sake cuz I'm a puss that needs alcohol to feel brave.
I kinda wonder what it must have been like to watch a movie like that. As was stated in our podcast, I don't do body horror or things like that (unless its Junji Ito, and I'm a total slut for Ito's work). Shit like that scares me to high heaven, and its a rather wide range of stuff that falls into that category. I still have yet to sit down with Devil's Rain, because of the moneyshot scene of devil worshippers melting into puddles of goo. People melting is something of a rather scary thing to me. I couldn't tell you why, but I distinctly remember as a child I saw a sports drink ad of football players melting onto the sidewalk because of the heat, and for some reason that kept me up on bad nights.
Like I said. I'm a puss.
BTW, as of writing, I've gotten about maybe halfway through Fatal Frame 5 and I haven't really flinched too much. Watching Fuyuhi go was pretty unpleasant. So were the dolls.
I have died once but that was cuz Ouse came out of a corner while I got lost. >/ Damn her.
As always is the cute newsletter that comes with it. I never really sit down with the FP previews because I like getting surprised by waiting until its in my hot lil hands. What's in it this time? What kinda edible is inside? What's the art project? Any tips on how to spend the month?
I think Matt really encapsulated the real feeling of October for me in the closing lines. October is a heavy month for me, personally, professionally, etc. I've often felt there was so much going on that I don't have time to feel festive for my favorite holiday. But as he put it so eloquently: "You don't need a lot of time or money to enjoy Halloween…you just gotta grab hold of it". That really means a lot to me, silly as it sounds. So grab it I will. Mio sake in one hand, gamepad camera in the other, surrounded by holographic horrortraits of Medusa Lisa and Little Dead Blue and American Gothic Horror.
My art offering this month, as a "non-horror" character turned into a monster is Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon as a futakuchi-onna, or double/two-mouth woman. I went with a looser pen style in the style of yokai karuta cards, with minimal, slightly offset color.
I felt that because she's always eating, using a monster or yokai that evoked Usagi's gluttony would be more humorous. My other idea was to make a yokai version of some Animal Crossing characters, but seeing as how some of them already are yokai (kitsune, tanukis, and kappas), it felt like a too easy route.
The kanji/kana read as two-mouth usagi, in case you wanted to know. Now we know how she packs all that food away. XD
Hopefully you guys are grabbing onto some Halloween as we speak lunies! Just a week away from the big day!
--Dio (10/24/15)