by: -RoG-

If you've been around this site in previous years, you know I'm a huge fan of hunting down generic Halloween toys and novelty items from other countries. I'm talking about the kind of items that nobody else wants. The kind of items that seasonal store managers begrudgingly put out on the sales floor at extremely cheap prices in hopes that somebody with awful taste will bite. In the past, I've found some pretty incredible pieces like Secret Ghostdom and Death's Head Terror, but today I'd like to share with you an item that Dextire (one of our longtime I-Mockery community members) was nice enough to send me. What is it? Well, it's made in China for starters, which is always a good sign when it comes to finding hilariously bad novelties. Beyond that, this thing is a total mystery, so let's find out about it together, shall we?

As you can see, this toy looks amazing before you even take it out of the box. How anybody could leave a Halloween store without taking this thing home will forever remain a mystery to me. I mean LOOK AT IT! There's a skeleton in a window box who is wearing an amazing moomoo, gauze is wrapped around its head, and it doesn't even have a name. Oh wait; yes it does have a name - HALLOWEEN! This is Halloween in a box, people. It says it right there in plain sight, so how the hell can you argue with it? You can't. It's a well-known fact that if something is in print, it has to be true. So in this case, you are getting the greatest holiday season of all in a box. That's awesome. That's fucking awesome.

And speaking of the box...

The artwork on it is amazing. It's like somebody ate a bunch of low-res JPEGs from a Halloween clip-art site and barfed them all over the sides of the box. I went ahead and numbered various spots on the side of the box so I could talk about them in more detail here.

1) Blood Splatters - The blood splatters are so blurry that it's honestly hard to tell if it's supposed to be blood, ectoplasmic residue, or zombie snot. Either way, taking a whopping two seconds of my time to do a Google search for "blood splatter" gave me far better results that this company could've selected for an honorary position on their Halloween masterpiece box.

2) Jack-O-Lantern - I'm sure they took the time to hand-carve this wonderful looking pumpkin, before hiring a photographer to capture it in all of its illuminated glory. Yeah... they stole it.

3) Random 3D Object - Looks like somebody was brushing up on their Maya skills! It's like I always say: if you're learning a new program that you have no prior experience with, the best thing you can do is put the results of your first project on an item that will be sold in stores.

4) Bat Thing - Clearly the centerpiece of the side art, I can only describe it as "Bat Thing". It looks like an artist's interpretation of one of those classic fuzz-ball novelties with googly eyes and feet that would stick to any surface. Well, it looks like one of those if it were given the skeletal remnants of bat wings, then squashed under someone's feet, and finally given a hastily-applied glow filter in Photoshop. Perfecto!

5) Bat Thing Jr. - Yep. Something actually mated with the flying abomination that is Bat Thing to create Bat Thing Jr. I imagine a flying army of these things will soon be taking over the planet, and you have nobody to blame but yourselves... or China.

6) Flying Stars - Not that anything on the packaging makes sense, but for some reason there are a few blue stars placed randomly on the box as well. Maybe somebody found some shurikens and decided to try killing Bat Thing with 'em? That would at least explain its expression.

7) Cobweb or Broken Window - Kinda hard to tell if this is a cobweb that was ravaged by Bat Thing, or a photo of of a broken car window that a rogue baseball went flying through. Since I see no spiders present, I'm leaning towards it being a broken window.

8) Moon Witch - You can't see it completely, since the talented art director behind this packaging project wrapped a 1/4th sliver of her around the front of the box, but it's some clip-art of a witch flying in front of a full moon. There's another one up near #1 on this list, only it's more cut in half. Again, we should all feel extremely lucky, for we're gazing upon the work of a master-level artist.

9) Skull Mask - It's hard to see, but if you look closely, you can see there's a person hiding behind the large eye hole openings of this skull mask. This was either lifted directly from a costume web site, or its our only look at the creator of this spectacular toy.

Wow... that's a LOT of things to take into consideration before we even open the box. I mean, what's going to happen when we do open it!? Will partially rendered 3D objects be unleashed into our world as part of some TRONoween nightmare? Will Bat Thing and Bat Thing Jr. break all of the windows in my home as a demonstration of their power and/or total lack of bodily control? It's almost too horrifying to think about, but I promised you we'd get to the bottom of this, so let us proceed with caution and try to see what this potential trojan horse really is.

Oh... my... god. It's NONE of the aforementioned things! It's a skeleton on a rocking chair! Strike that. It's a legless skeleton on a rocking chair! I would give it a name, but as you know, it already has one: Halloween. Halloween isn't just a holiday. It's a legless skeleton on a rocking chair. I-Mockery isn't a site that merely exists to entertain you... we're here to educate you as well. Don't ever forget that.

Before we look at what ol' legless Halloween is capable of doing, I have to talk more about the moomoo its wearing. I mean, just feast your eyes upon that wonderful fabric pattern. Shiny golden skeletons, bones, and stars all flying through space. I would head out to a Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft store in a heartbeat if I thought there was even a remote possibility that they carried a pattern this incredible. If I had a thousand yards of this material, I would learn to sew. I would cover my entire body in it. I would make a complete bed set out of it. I would drape my entire home in it. That's how good it is.

I also love how the bottom of the moomoo is segmented; it's just like a photocopied sign for a lost dog or advertising a car for sale - complete with the little paper strips at the bottom containing the seller's phone number that you can tear off. But I dare not tear off one of these strips, for Halloween the legless skeleton may be more powerful than we ever imagined.

Holy crap! I think Halloween may actually be the legless corpse-ghost of Tony Stark! Halloween has an Arc Reactor! Folks, this could be a MAJOR spoiler about The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Unless I'm completely mistaken, I think the Incredible Hulk may have ripped off Iron Man's legs, forced him to wear a moomoo, and stuck him in a rocking chair. If that ends up being the case in the next film, all I ask is that you remember where you heard it first. I broke the news about retro Monster Cereal boxes coming back this season, but spoilers about the Hulk disabling Tony Stark in such a humbling manner in the next Avengers film might even be a bigger scoop.

I also love how Halloween's hands are curled up as if it were holding a glass of brandy. Come on! Somebody get this man a drink! He has no legs and he's wearing a golden skeleton moomoo... the least you can do is get him a glass of brandy and put him near a fireplace so he can spend some time contemplating where he went wrong in life.

As you might expect, Halloween isn't just content to sit and do nothing at all. There's an ON / OFF switch underneath the chair just begging to be tested out.

Once you flip the switch, Halloween's eyes begin to flicker and, despite having no legs, it rocks the hell out of that chair while making the classic "weeeeeeeee-oooooooooo" sounds that almost all generic spooky novelties make. It rocks back and forth with serious conviction. It rocks with such ferocity, I'm surprised it doesn't flip the chair over and land on its face. Honestly, I was amazed the batteries even worked in this thing, because roughly 99% of the off-brand novelties I've tried in stores likes this seem to have dead ones. But seriously, I can't just show you a photo of this thing in action, you need to see it rocking for yourselves, so here's a video clip:

[click here for high quality video]

Iron Man, rocking chair enthusiast, headbanger, amputee, fashionable skeleton ghost, holiday... "Halloween" appears to be many things all wrapped up into one being, but I don't think you or I would have it any other way. Huge thanks again to Dextire for sending me this treasure. I'm sure he'll make best friends with Secret Ghostdom and Death's Head Terror, while showing them how to rock a chair like their mommas just don't care.

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