Hey gang! Welcome back! Sorry we lost touch there for a bit… things got a little hectic here at the clubhouse for a while. You see, a fight broke out over the last of the Cool Ranch Doritos, and it eventually escalated to Warriors-esque proportions. During the melee, someone was thrown through one of the clubhouse walls, revealing a long-forgotten cavern. In it, was hidden a powerful relic… that tornado jewel thing from Castlevania II. Messing around with it, we accidentally unleashed a storm of darkness that swallowed the sun, things got out of control, and we were plunged into weeks of monster-filled darkness. Prince appeared out of a hole in the sky to fight Dracula at one point, but eventually someone played a Sacrifyx album backwards, and the process was reversed.
Our memories of the incident are already growing hazy… the grandfather clock (who drug that up here?) has started up again and the first, dim rays of light are starting to break through on the horizon. It would appear that our sleepover, finally, is coming to an end. So there’s only one thing we can do. No, not call our parents and tell them we’re not all dead, there’s plenty of time for that. No, that is NOT you on the back of the milk carton, that’s… some other kid. Pay attention! No, I speak of concluding our top 10 list of The Most Terrifying Toy Commercials of The ‘80s! Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our countdown as well.
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This time out, we have a pair of contenders from our last segment, here represented by alternate commercials even more demented than their last TV spot – greatest hits before spilling the new blood (or slime), if you will.
We dive right in with this slice of cheerful marketing from merry ol’ England…
Supernaturals – UK TV Spot
Now, while this doesn’t lead off with a terrifying, glowing lion’s head growling “Supernaturals!!!” at you without warning, it does start out with pitch blackness and what sounds like a funeral dirge. Suddenly, the disembodied heads of several children appear in the impenetrable gloom, and sing it to us instead… this is far from comforting. At this point we’ve already probably crapped our pants, but before we can even address that situation, we’re plunged face-first into the sight of ghosts riding monster trucks, fighting each other. There is no turning back. The world we knew only moments earlier has been ripped from us, and it may or may not be sweet redemption.
Regardless, here’s where they whip out the big guns… the Tomb of Doom. This thing is cooler than comprehension, and I have never had one. Probably for the best; I don’t think I could have handled it. I’m not going to waste time describing it, there is no describing it. Look at the damn thing! Just as the insanity is reaching fever pitch, our narrator is feeling it too, and has a full-scale panic attack by the end before the horrible revelation that “it’s a hologram…” as though that makes it any less blood-freezing. This toy’s main feature? To open up a doorway to the horrifying realm of ghosts. This is why the ‘80s were outlawed by the Geneva Convention. What?!
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Next up, we move from sheer terror to sheer sadism. Get on that lab smock, grab that beaker of acid, and dig in…
Mad Scientist Monster Lab
Arguably the big dog of the Mad Scientist line, the Monster Lab was nothing short of a master class in wanton, sociopathic slaughter so nihilistic it would have made Nietzsche proud. Michael Kenworthy, our MC of toybox turmoil, returns to gleefully show us this experiment in horror, wherein the only goal is to play God, a cruel and insane God, who builds misshapen monstrosities from scratch, only to punish them for their grotesquerie by submerging them in acid, and boiling the flesh off their “creepy little bones”. Pull their sizzling skeletons from the tank of ruined tissue, and start anew! Yay!
The powder used to scaled the skin off these helpless abominations is straight up called FLESH REMOVER. That’s about as serious as it gets. As the crazed Dr. Sy N. Tist commands the joyous Kenworthy to “bubble off their flab,” Kenworthy’s young friend looks on in sheer horror, wondering how he found himself in this living Hell, wondering how he can get home, and start his life over. You can’t, emotionally-scarred sidekick… you can’t.
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Meanwhile, in the blighted wastelands of Eternia, something vile was oozing to the surface…
Masters of the Universe Slime Pit
This commercial is off-the-charts insane, and off-the-charts epic. The production value for some of these commercials from back then were through the friggin’ roof. One second, you’re minding your own business on the couch, wondering when Mom was gonna be done with dinner, the next second you’re careening through a primordial terrain of darkness and bubbling, glowing green slime chasms, as reptilian monster hands reach up to grab you. The driving soundtrack tells you you’re not in #$!*in’ Kansas anymore, and you can feel your allowance disappear out from under you. Welcome to Hordak’s Fright Zone, the coolest, most nightmarish place in the galaxy, and you’re in the coolest part of it: the Slime Pit.
The Slime Pit, arch-fiend Hordak’s most insane contraption of torture and pure awesomeness, holder of the title of my greatest Christmas present ever. Where does one even begin? For the love of God, it’s a giant Romanesque column with a freaking dinosaur skull on top. A dinosaur skull that vomits putrid green slime all over whatever poor soul Hordak has captured, as a giant beast hand grips at them from the slime-filled basin below. Why, Hordak? Was a savage beating not enough?! Apparently not, as legends are told that whoever gets drown in the foul river of slime pouring from the prehistoric creature’s mouth becomes a “slime monster” themselves. Good God, Hordak… when is enough enough?!
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Alright, boils n’ ghouls… it’s been a long, long night (several weeks long, in fact) and we’re finally down to it. We’re going to use our final moments of darkness before we all pass out and the sun comes up overhead to run our #1 casket-full of horrific, ‘80s toy commercial gold. This one is more awesome a trashcan full of rubber vampire bats. This is it, kiddies – cuddle ’round the dying glow of the TV screen, look over your shoulder one last time, because this is what it’s all about…
Shrieks & Creaks
What you have right there junior maniacs is pure, distilled perfection. This recalls so much about that year, and that time in American pop culture, and where my tiny, horror-loving head was at, that it’s nothing short of a 30-second time machine to a glorious place. From the second this thing flickers onscreen, you know what’s up. It’s like a mini horror trailer, and a really good one. If this were a TV spot for a legit film, my ass would be in the theater seat… or at least huddled around the VCR when it came out on tape the following year. The music, the lighting, the house, the atmosphere is instantly so thick you could cut it with a butcher knife, and you can feel the fun, the excitement, the macabre adventure. And what the – the house we’re looking at is on 13, Elm Street?! You’re name-dropping Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger three seconds into thing?!
Holy Hell, it’s almost too much, they wrote this for you. Then, we get to the bedroom at the top of the stairs; an awesome bedroom, in an awesome house, in an awesome suburban neighborhood that all kinds of Monster Squad style adventures probably take place in, and we see three friends huddled around the floor, playing Shrieks & Creaks. You know you have to have it. It “turns any house into a haunted house”?! Who doesn’t want that?! And you’d better believe it, because that’s just what this thing did.
I loved this game so much, I’d play it alone just to experience the sheer awesome, but when actually played with friends, in the proper atmosphere, there was no better way to spend a spooky night. And what’s more, the game’s ‘host’, Sir Simon Shriek? Instant role model. As simple as it was, you could get lost in a game like this, everything about it just felt so completely, perfectly right.
And you know what? It still does. Because it was this game, and this commercial that inspired this whole sleepover here at the clubhouse. The type of perfect experience, captured forever in time, is a VHS recording of our lives that we can rewind again and again, undead throughout the ages, like the memories trapped within, and Sir Simon Shriek himself. Watching this commercial, I thought to myself, I never want this to end. And you know what? It never did.
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This sleepover’s not over. See those storm clouds over there? We won’t see the sun for a while yet. I’m lightin’ the lamp and bustin’ out Shrieks & Creaks, who’s with me?
