Monster Face

You know, I'm really upset by doing this blog and seeing all the cool shit I missed out on as a little girl simply because I was unaware it existed, despite it being tailor made for me. I wanted to be a little miss Doctor Frankenstein and create a monster face! 

Launched by Hasbro in 1992, in the more gruesome style of Mr. Potato Head, it consisted of a skull like head with holes to which you could attach several accessories - including bugs, fangs, noses and blisters - to create an entirely new monster. It also, like far too many toys of this time period, came with green slime that could drip out of the face's nose and mouth.  Kids in the 90s were fucking obsessed with green slime, dude. I think we have Nickelodeon to blame for that, quite frankly. In fact, the toy came with 30 different accessories, and a base that could store all said accessories. Part of the appeal was the possibility of animating the monster by moving his eyes and jaw which was achieved by moving two small arm like sticks in the base. It also had a small air pump to inflate the attachable blisters in the center of the base.

All in all, a pretty neat toy. But toys like this come with one fatal flaw; there's only so many combinations one can make before you run out of ideas, and the toy then loses appeal. This is why Creepy Crawlers and Thingmaker continually released new packs you could make new toys with, because they knew that otherwise it was living on borrowed time. A toys lifespan is only as long as a childs imagination and interest in said toy. But it seems like Hasbro didn't release any addition accessories, which meant that as soon as you'd created every imaginable combination one could with the accessories provided, you were basically shit out of luck for anything new.

Apparently Goosebumps also had a version at one point or another, but it seems like it's a genre that hasn't entirely died out, considering that on Amazon you can buy an almost exact type of toy called Doctor Dreadful's Zombie Lab, in which you can work on a zombie skull with an exposed brain, plus other mad scientist things. A more interesting concept, I think, just because it gives you more bang for your buck, but still, the same sort of thing.

If you check out the box art (which is tremendous in its own right) it looks way cooler than anything you could ever come up with, I feel like. Lots of expectations set by this box art that are not going to be lived up to. Plus the toy proper looks...goofy? He's got this weird grin that makes him look more like he's happy he's in this freaky predicament, whereas the skull on this box art looks just a tad more sinister, even if he looks like he's wearing lipstick for some reason despite no longer having lips proper, but hey I'm not here to judge. Good for him for being that open with himself. I always like when variants on a popular toy are created, especially when the variants are so goddamn out there and strange - something this absolutely nails - but I just can't help but feel like, and I hate admitting this seeing as I love spooky shit, that this toy just doesn't live up to its potential. I just feel like something is missing from it. I feel like the monster face proper just falls flat design wise and could've been a tad more grotesque and that they could've released further accessories for more combination possibilities, but despite those feelings I also won't fault them for trying something weird and new. Lord knows far too many companies are afraid to do new stuff these days and instead stick to pre-existing successful IP, leading the market to be flooded with all the same boring crap and its respective knock offs.

So sure, I applaud them for doing something so wild and weird, but I wish they'd maybe put just a tad more thought and effort into it. I'm also, as I said, extremely sad that I didn't get stuff like this. Now granted in 92, I would've only been about 4 or 5, so maybe it was just a tad too advanced for a small girl, but even that I would've loved it. My favorite movie when I was that age was Beetlejuice for god sakes, if that tells you anything about me. I just generally loved and still love spooky shit. But I never owned a Creepy Crawlers machine, and I never owned a Monster Face, and that makes me sad, especially now since toys are so boring and almost nothing is new. Also I feel weird as a grown ass woman - even an autistic one - buying toys for myself.

Monster Face, despite its shortcomings, does deserve to be recognized, and even with those said shortcomings, it's still pretty damn cool just for being so different. Lord knows spooky toys deserve more of a market, and I'm all for that. But since I can't get a Monster Face, I suppose now I'll have to go dig up a skull and decorate it myself.

And if, when I die, someone wants to do the same to my skull, please, be my guest. 

Lord knows I won't be doing anything with it.