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happy-halloweeeeeeeeeen

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeen!

Happy Halloween everybody! Thanks for hanging out with us so much over the past two months!
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Every year, I turn my television into a Halloween Horror Movie Altar by surrounding it with some of my favorite lights and decorations, and it has certainly served me well this season. I feel like I've been watching a nonstop loop of horror movies and Halloween TV episodes for the past two months. Or has it been years? I tend to lose all track of time whenever my favorite season rolls around. But today is Halloween, and we're lucky enough to have it fall on a Friday this year, so I hope you'll all get out there and do as many Halloweeny activities as you possibly can tonight and throughout the weekend! Go trick-or-treating, put together a killer costume and go to a Halloween party, go see a horror movie marathon with your friends, turn your home into a haunted house, visit your nearest graveyard and high-five a zombie... whatever it is you wanna do, just enjoy it! Halloween is all about fun and you need to do something to celebrate it!

Halloween marks the culmination of two lengthy months of nonstop, obsessive work dedicated to my favorite holiday, so that combined with the all the fun activities going on is all the reason I need to celebrate it until my body demands that I allow it to rest. Then I eat more candy and force it to stay awake for another five hours. I dedicate an entire two months to Halloween every year. It's a huge undertaking that swallows my life from September 1st - October 31st, but it's always an absolute blast to work on and it's incredibly awesome that so many of you have made it part of your annual celebrations as well. Knowing you're enjoying all this spooky stuff I do is what keeps me going. As always, there have been a ton of updates to the site over the past two months, so here's a handy recap of some of the highlights you may have missed:

-We saw Boo Berry and company each receive retro and modern Monster Cereal box designs.

-We learned all about how many classic Pinball Machines can entertain and horrify us.

-We made more Halloween Club Packs than ever before, and they still completely sold out once again. (Thank you!!)

-We saw Protocomics tell us tales involving Werewolves and Theatre, both equally terrifying.

-We were baffled by how Night Trap was such a controversial video game for the Sega CD system.

-We listened to more tunes on the Jack-O-Juke - our Halloween music jukebox with over 200 spooky songs and counting!

-We saw Doc Mock do his best to get the Domino Rally Ghost Ride playset to actually work.

-We ate bowls of Candy Corn Pebbles cereal and discovered it tastes like maple syrup for some inexplicable reason.

-We learned just how awful Jaws IV: The Revenge truly is.

-We saw some new entries added into ever-growing list of the Greatest Horror Movie Moments.

-We devoured Krispy Kreme Ghostbusters Donuts and walked away with a slime bucket.

-We proved that wearing Slimer on your head is always fashionable.

-We took a trip back east and paid a visit to a Monster Mini Golf course in New York.

-We learned some valuable life lessons from Serial Mom.

-We visited Son of Monsterpalooza and saw an incredible gallery dedicated to the Bride of Frankenstein.

-We marveled over how Eerie Magazine produced some truly amazing covers during its run.

-We agreed that a Monster Cereal Mansion is the best home anyone could ever hope to live in.

-We saw the fantastic return of Tales From The Longbox, with an in-depth review of the original Nightmare on Elm Street comic books.

-We saw some bootleg Sungold Monster Toys, including a Freddy Krueger figure with a face tattoo.

-We were invited to another Los Angeles Halloween Convention and had a fantastic time.

-We were hypnotized by the Radko Halloween Candolier and its magical pumpkin bubbles.

-We discovered that Horror Movie Paperback Covers are often better than the movie posters.

-We conducted yet another massive and extremely thorough Halloween Candy Taste Test.

-We saw another collection of amazing and insane Foreign Horror Movie Posters.

-We laughed at just how wonderfully ridiculous Leprechaun In Space really is.

-We cringed at the Worst Halloween Costumes of the 2014 season.

-We were totally surprised when General Mills sent us an amazing Monster Makeover collection of their Monster Cereal boxes.

-We learned that the music video for "Torture" by The Jacksons is just as important to watch in October as Thriller.

-We saw how Universal Studios Party Monsters celebrate the season better than any of us.

-We were happy to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon get an art show dedicated all to him!

-And last but not least, we decided that Nightmare Feddy is even better than Freddy Krueger, and we all want to be his friend.

You know there is no time I enjoy more than Halloween each year, and having so many of you making I-Mockery your online Halloween home truly makes it all the better. I really try to give you guys the best and widest variety of Halloween coverage you'll find anywhere online every season - from visiting haunts and reviewing movies, to taste testing candies and tracking down the most absurd novelties and more, I always try to make every season special and filled with surprises. Please stick around and continue to share the site with your friends, and I'll do my best to keep that tradition going strong for years to come.

I'll likely have some post-Halloween photos up here along with some other big site updates soon, so be sure to check back often. As always, I must thank Dr. Boogie and Protoclown for their fantastic contributions to our Halloween celebration. I also gotta give Re major credit for allowing me to make our home look like it was hit by a Halloween hurricane these past few months.

Of course, a huge thanks again to you for sticking with us during our annual "Two Months of Halloween" celebration. It's a lot of work to put all this content together, but it's a lot of fun too, and your continued feedback definitely helps keep my energy up throughout the season. If you haven't already, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and uh... tumble us on Tumblr. This is a completely independent web site, and we rely entirely on people like YOU to spread the word about it, so please do so if you can... it helps more than you could imagine!

Please drop a comment below (whether you're logged in or not) and lemme know what you thought of the Halloween season and what your favorite articles were. Also, let me know what your Halloween plans are and feel free to post photos of your costumes if you're dressing up or your decorations or any other Halloweeny things you like!

Thanks again everyone and have a keen Halloweeeeeen!

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Doc Mock’s Domino Rally Glow In The Dark Ghost Ride Review!

Doc Mock's Mini Mausoleum has returned for another spooktacular YouTube episode, and this time he reviews the scariest set of dominoes you'll ever lay your eyes on: The Domino Rally Glow In The Dark Ghost Ride!


[click here for high quality video]

Thanks for watching and be sure to drop a comment to lemme know what you think of these spooky Halloween dominoes! Also, if you missed the previous Doc Mock episodes, you can check them out here: Halloween Cuponk set and Baby Ghost Ducks.

Lastly, since this set looked so amazing when lit up with black lights (just like it did in the Domino Rally commercial), I decided to take some close-up photos of the individual components for you. You can click on any one of them to see a larger version. Hit the jump to see all the pics. Hope you enjoy 'em! (more...)

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The Ginger Runner’s Traumatic Night!

I don't usually post other people's videos on here, but my pal Ethan Newberry (who many of you know as "Licky" from our Doc Mock's Movie Mausoleum show) has been doing some really impressive runs in recent times, and he films all of them to share on YouTube. However, this past weekend he was training at night for a run when something extremely creepy happened to him. Rather than try to explain it, I'll let you watch the footage he just posted:


[click here for high quality video]

Has anything like this ever happened to you when you were out at night? Drop a comment a comment below and lemme know!

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the-monster-cereals-monster-mansion

The Monster Cereals Monster Mansion!

Over the years, I've noticed that companies aren't including extras like toys, stickers, and other novelties in boxes of cereal nearly as much as they used to. Sure, your mom may not have bought your favorite brand of cereal when you were a kid, but at least it came with an awesome toy surprise! Nowadays, you're lucky to get anything more than a crossword puzzle on the back of the box or a link to a promotional web site that tries to get you to buy some more crap. What happened to the good stuff? What happened to collecting UPC codes for special mail-away offers?

To illustrate just how much times have changed, I wanted to share with you what is the greatest cereal mail-away offer of all time. I'm speaking of the Monster Cereals Monster Mansion!

Monster Cereal Monster Mansion mail-away promotion

That's right, back in 1981, if you ate a few boxes of cereal and forked over a measly $13, you could get your very own mansion. I mean holy shit; does that not put things in perspective when compared with the cereal box extras of today? Sure, kids these days can have just about any video game they want and a world of information all in the palm of their hands, but you know what they can't have? A corrugated cardboard mansion covered in monsters as a reward for eating sugary cereal come Halloween each year. Future technology be damned; kids of the eighties clearly made out better.

The mansion itself was four feet tall and featured all the monster cereal mascots of the time - Boo Berry, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and yes, even Fruit Brute just before he was replaced by Fruity Yummy Mummy. Also included were a a few "batty bats", "silly spiders", a "springy snake", and the requisite "Monster Membership Cards" that any proper clubhouse needs. It even had a few balconies that could easily hold your favorite Monster Cereal toys or just about any other action figures.

While I missed out on the offer when I was a kid, I've long since dreamed of owning this Monster Mansion. As you can imagine, not a lot of these cardboard monstrosities survived over the decades, so they've become quite the collector's item that often fetch prices of $500 or more. Well, late last year I was lucky enough to stumble on a seller on eBay who apparently scanned the original pieces of the cardboard mansion and decided to make miniature hand-painted reproductions of it. This person only made a handful of them, but he truly went through the painstaking process of including every little detail to make these replica monster mansions nearly perfect. As one of the few people who was fortunate to score one of these repros, I thought you'd all enjoy a rare look at the beautiful Monster Mansion:

The Monster Cereal Mansion
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Here we have the front of the Monster Mansion in all its splendor. The front doors swing open and you can place small toys up in the balcony. What's nice is additional cut-out figures were included that you could tack onto various slits around the mansion.

The Monster Cereal Mansion
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Here's a look at the rooftop from the side where we see Boo Berry peering out of an opening way up in the attic. I'm guessing that's where he keeps his cereal stash, or whatever it is that's been giving him those heavy eyelids all these years.

The Monster Cereal Mansion
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Another feature of the mansion was the "Monster Face Wheel". See how Boo Berry is in the window on the left there? You can spin a wheel inside the castle to select which monster face you want to have peeking out of the window. There were two of these wheels included for each side of the mansion. It's also become evident that our favorite cereal monsters are capable of cloning themselves. Each side of the castle has the main three monsters looking out of a window along with an additional cut-out figure; this side has a Chocula one, the other side has Franken Berry.

The Monster Cereal Mansion
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I was glad to see there was a Fruit Brute cut-out, and it makes it look like he's either jumping off of the roof or jumping up to the balcony. I also like the other Fruit Brute pictured above the balcony who appears to have chewed his way out of the castle. No wonder they canceled his cereal back in the day... he was literally eating the other monsters out of house and home.

The Monster Cereal Mansion
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And lastly, here's a shot of the other Monster Face Wheel, this time with Fruit Brute admiring the dead tree creeping its way up the outer mansion walls. The artwork may be simple, but man do I love it.

Alrighty, that about does it. I hope you've enjoyed this detailed look at what I consider to be the greatest cereal mail-away promo ever offered to kids. Please drop a comment below and let me know what you think about it. Also, what are some of your other favorite monster cereal toys & mail-away offers from over the years? And to General Mills, if you're reading this, please bring back this Monster Mansion offer (or at least some mail-away offers like it). You've given us the retro monster cereal boxes, now it's time to complete the circle by giving us the retro cereal offers. Make it happen, Big G!

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I-Mockery’s 2014 Halloween Club Packs Have Finally Arrived! Order Now!

"It's not you, Ferdy. I'm just not used to be chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots." If there's one thing Chopping Mall taught us, it's that shopping can be deadly. Fortunately for you, I-Mockery's Halloween Club Packs have returned for the 2014 season, and they're so full of spooky goodness that even the most dedicated Killbots will steer clear of anybody who purchases one. I've been assembling these packs for months now, scouring the globe for the best Halloween goodies deemed worthy for inclusion in these limited packs, and man oh man... did I ever find some great stuff! Behold!

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!
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Are you drooling yet? Tell me that's not a beautiful sight! This is just a mere sampling of what you can expect to find in one of our Halloween club packs, but I know you wanna learn a bit more about some of the bigger items you'll be getting in this year's box. So let's begin with my personal favorite item:

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!

Yep. I've actually acquired a boatload of vintage Halloween Horror tape cassettes from back in 1987, still sealed in their original packaging, and everybody who places an order will be receiving one! The packaging on these are beautiful, complete with a classic haunted house, a creepy old tree, a pumpkin, tombstones, and a bat flying in the moonlight among other things. You also have some crazy font action going on here, what with the "o" in "Halloween" being a jack-o-lantern, and "Horror" written in a boney font which always causes people to stare since it's so much harder to read. And seriously, with a tagline like "60 minutes of terror in Dolby Stereo", how can you possibly go wrong? Good stuff.

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!
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Another other big item in this years Halloween pack is a horror figure from the NECA Scalers toy line! In every club pack, I'll be including one of these brand new figures that are both terrifying and adorable. Terrorable? As you can see here, you might get Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, or even Gizmo from Gremlins. I also have some Xenomorphs from Aliens, some Predator figures, and even some Gollum toys! Regardless of which monster you receive, I'm sure you'll love 'em! Plus, if you take them out of the package, they will clutch onto your cords and cables with all of their might! Just imagine listening to our Jack-O-Juke on your favorite set of headphones as Gizmo or Freddy dangle from them. That's the kind Halloween experience everyone needs.

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!

Everybody seemed to love the packs of trading cards and stickers I included in the club packs last year, so I've assembled another batch of classics for 2014! Each box will contain a variety of trading card packs such as the unsung Grossville High cards (circa 1986), Beetlejuice cards from the animated series (circa 1990), Toxic High School cards (circa 1991), Dinosaurs Attack cards (circa 1988), and more. Just don't eat the included gum, cuz it's even more stale than it was when these trading cards were originally released!

I'm also including a packet of Ghoul-Aid in every club pack this year, because Halloween simply wouldn't be complete without a delicious Scary Blackberry beverage. And this stuff really is delicious and worth tasting if you haven't before, though I have a feeling half of you will save them for all eternity, which is completely understandable. I don't care what the expiration dates say, I'm convinced Kool-Aid mix (er, Ghoul-Aid) has the same shelf life as your average Twinkie, so hold onto 'em as long as you like.

Count Pop stickers! Become one of Count Pop's Halloween Chums!

Since a lot of people missed out last year and asked me to reprint them, I'm including a Count Pop vinyl sticker in every Halloween Club Pack once again. Stick it on your car, your laptop, your face, or wherever the world will be able to clearly see that you're one of the Popster's favorite Halloween chums! You'll also find one of the classic I-Mockery shiny stickers in each pack as well. It'll make you happy and it also works as a makeshift portable funhouse mirror.

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!

As always, I'm including a variety of random Halloween trinkets, toys, stickers, and treats in every pack too. You'll find everything from orange & black Halloween fortune cookies with actual spooky fortunes inside them, bloodshot eyeball candies, and sticky spectres to springy monster toys (pictured above), skeleton figures, ghost poofs, and SpongeBob SquarePants Candy Corn Krabby Patties (seriously, that's a thing that exists!), Halloween Mad Libs, and more. There will be other little surprises included with every order to ensure this box o' goodies keeps you entertained all month long.

The Return of I-Mockery's Halloween Club Pack! More spooky goodies than ever before!
[click here to see the full-sized photo!]

To top it all off, five lucky club pack purchasers will receive one of these vintage double-sided Monster cereal trick-or-treat bags from the early 80s featuring Boo Berry, Franken Berry, and Count Chocula! They're from my personal collection, made of thick plastic, and often go for $30-$50 on the rare occasion that they pop up on auction sites. You can frame them to hang on your wall or go out trick-or-treating with them this Halloween. Hell, you can even fill the bags with monster cereal and milk for a unique breakfast experience if you want... not that I'd recommend doing such a thing. (you should totally do that)

As you can see, there's a whole lot o' fun in every box. I've spent even more time this year running around putting together all the supplies for these Halloween packs, so I'm really excited to hear what you think of 'em when they arrive at your doorstep. Please note that while I've made more than twice as many club packs as I did in 2013, they're still limited in quantity. Once they sell out, I won't be reproducing them again, so be sure to place your order early to ensure you get one and aren't left standing alone in a pumpkin patch like a disappointed Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. Nobody wants to be a disappointed Linus.

Please keep in mind, you're not only getting a club pack filled with loads of hand-picked Halloween fun, you're also helping support all the time and work put into I-Mockery. Halloween season is easily the most important time of the year for me, but it's also the most expensive time as well. In addition to the cost of running I-Mockery, I rack up some hefty traveling expenses and purchases for all the articles and reviews I post on this site, so you purchasing my club packs and other merch really helps offset those costs. Also, if you have any friends who might like the Halloween Club Pack, please let 'em know about it!

The Halloween Club Packs are $31 a pop (after all, Halloween is on October 31st) for anybody in the continental United States, and yes, that price does include shipping. Only one purchase per person please, as I wanna spread the wealth and make sure lots of people have a chance to order one. If you're ready to order, click the button below:

Sorry! The Halloween Club Packs have completely sold out! Better luck next time!

For international customers outside of the United States, due to the widely varying shipping costs and all the time it takes to fill out customs forms among other things (time that would be better spent writing new Halloween articles for the site), the club packs are not available for you to purchase on this page. That said, you know I don't like to leave anyone out, so if you *really* want a pack / can't live without one, and you live outside of the United States., drop me an email about it and I'll try to set one aside for you and we'll work out the shipping costs later. I can't make any promises, as I may get more requests than I can handle, but I'll do my best to get a club pack into your hands just like I did with a bunch of you last year.

Alrighty, that about does it. I hope you have as much fun with these club packs as I had putting them together, because I really wanted to give you what I see as "Halloween in a box" once again. I'm also happy to make them available to more than twice as many people this year and seriously can't wait to hear what you think of 'em! Thanks in advance to all of you who help support I-Mockery and all the work I do every Halloween season by ordering one. Have at it, Halloweenies!

UPDATE (10/14) Holy crap! I can't believe that despite making more than double the amount of Halloween packs, they sold out once again this year! Thanks SOOOO much to all of you who purchased one... this helps out the site more than you know. I hope you all enjoy your packs and that they made your 2014 Halloween season extra fun. Thanks again and be sure to stick around for more Halloween posts throughout October!

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halloween-club-pack-release-info

Halloween Club Pack Release Info!

I-Mockery's 2014 Halloween Club Packs - Available Sunday, October, 5th at 10am PST (1pm EST)!

Since everybody's been messaging me about our Halloween Club Packs, I thought I'd make a quick post to to help out those of you hoping to snag one this season.

First off, YES, there will be a new Halloween Club Pack released this year. In 2013, the packs sold out in less than 24 hours, which was awesome and a huge surprise to me. Unfortunately, a lot of people weren't able to get one, so this year I'm making more than twice the amount of packs to ensure that everyone has a good chance of getting one before they sell out. I'm also announcing the official release date and time in advance, so if you want one, hopefully you won't have a problem as long as you're online at the time.

This Sunday, October, 5th at 10am PST (1pm EST) is when I-Mockery's 2014 Halloween Club Packs will be available for all to purchase. Just come to the I-Mockery.com homepage at that time and you'll see all the details about the packs along with details on how to order them.

IMPORTANT: To our international readers outside of the United States, I'm sorry, but due to the widely varying shipping costs and all the time it takes to fill out customs forms among other things (time that would be better spent writing new Halloween articles for the site), the club packs will not be available to you. That said, you know I don't like to leave anyone out, so if you *really* want a pack / can't live without one, and you live outside of the U.S., drop me an email about it and I'll try to set one aside for you and we'll work out the shipping costs later. I can't make any promises, as I may get more requests than I can handle, but I'll do my best to get a club pack into your hands.

Alrighty, that's all for now. Thanks again to all of you who pick up a pack this year! Running this site costs a boatload o' cash, especially during the Halloween season, so not only are you getting a box full of awesome goodies, but you're also really helping me keep this ghost ship running smoothly. I really can't wait for you to see what goodies I've pieced together for this year's pack, as it's taken me months to do so, and I'm super excited about it! Good luck on Sunday, everyone!

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