Mutant Freaks!!! No,
I'm not insulting all of you, I'm simply describing the name of
these peculiar monster face modeling kits that I picked up. I
actually bought 'em last year around Halloween but just now found
them in one of my boxes o' crap and decided it was time to showcase
both sets. I was shopping at Target one day and found them in one of
those areas of the store that people wouldn't usually visit unless
they were lost. You know, one of those back corners past the toy
aisles when you've walked beyond all of the merchandise that's
actually interesting? Well, these guys had the holy red price tags
on them, and if you shop at Target with any regularity, you know
that these tags mean the items are on closeout and probably a hell
of a deal. And they were. I bought two monster faces and both of the
extra parts packs for a whopping total of roughly five bux. Who
could pass that up? Not I. Okay, enough talk about when and where I
found them, let's get on with showing you just what in the hell
Mutant Freaks really are:
Fish Face!
Bearded Beast!
The idea behind these
things is fairly simple. They provide you with two facial plates for
each monster creature, a bunch of body parts, some blood, snot and
then a big hunk o' clay. Your job is simply to take all this crap
and mold it onto the face of your creature in whatever way you see
fit. Now clearly, they had some people with artistic talent working
on the models that appear on the box so I wasn't counting on my
monster to come out that good. My plan was simply to rely on all the
extra parts I had.
But before we get into
that, I have to show a close-up of that kid on the boxes, because we
all love to see those overly-excited children who model toys in
advertisements. You know, the kids that just make faces that they
would never make in real life no matter how cool the toy was. I find
their expressions to be hilarious without fail, and the kid on the
Mutant Freaks boxes was no exception.
Flawless. For the Fish
Face, the kid appears to be amazed by the fact that he was able to
pull it off. "Can you believe I did this? It's so rad!" For
the Bearded Beast, he's clearly impressed with just how weird 'n
wacky it turned out. "Get a load o' this funky fella! Am I right
or what!?" They clearly chose the right kid to go with for the
promotion of these things. I'm pretty sure it was his expressions
that sold me on the toys. Well, that and the fact that it was only
five bucks for the whole shebang.
Ok, so as I said
before, due to my lack of sculpting talent, I figured I could at
least rely on using the parts that came with my monster creature.
But I also got both of the extra parts packs which provide you with
all sorts of "gruesome" goodies to stick on your creations. Stuff
like spiders, snakes, horns, additional blood 'n snot and more. So
yeah, even without any sculpting skills on my part, I was fairly
certain that whatever I created would look pretty damned cool simply
because of all the crap I would end up sticking onto it.
So there they are, our
empty canvases just waiting to become priceless works of art. Well,
they're not exactly empty per se, but they definitely need a lot o'
work. It's nice how they provide you with the two layers of facial
plates so you can leave some brains 'n flesh exposed if you so
desire.
I have to say though,
the most impressive thing about these toys is that they literally provide
you with no instructions whatsoever. They just give you all the
parts, a hunk of clay and some sculpting tools and assume you can
figure out the rest. I hate reading instructions for pretty much
anything and always like to figure out stuff as I go along. Sure,
that kind of behavior has cost me thousands of dollars and the lives
of some close friends in the past; but in this case I've only got 5 bux to lose.
Since Re volunteered
to handle the sculpting for one of the two monster creatures, I let
her have first dibs on whichever one she wanted to work with. She
chose Fish Face. DAMNIT! I WANTED THAT ONE! After some
intense yelling, our argument ended with a vicious cockpunch and Re
had won the battle for Fish Face. Oh but the joke's on you, Re! I
didn't really want Fish Face. Sure, he looks cooler, and
generally speaking, aquatic monsters have far more interesting
features than beasts covered in hair. Well, except for maybe Bionic Bigfoot.
But anyway, I really wanted Bearded Beast because he didn't come
with clay. He came with a big block of tasty fudge!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE!
Ok it wasn't really
fudge. It was clay. But I have to tell myself it was fudge so
I can feel better about the fact that I lost the battle for Fish
Face because I was cockpunched.
While I was busy using
the sculpting tool to dig the fudge brown clay out from between my
teeth, Re began molding her Fish Face creature. The clay was pretty
easy to work with but it did leave some residue, so we found that
the cardboard boxes that the Mutant Freaks came in made for some
pretty good work spaces.
This is a shot from
the early stages of our development. As you can see, Re actually
knew what she was doing, already having given fish face a nice set
of eyes and eyelids, whereas I went straight for the "hairy beast
with a bad dental plan and an eye patch" look. One of us clearly had
much work to do.
As time passed on by,
the taste of brown modeling clay faded from my mouth and we had
completed our Mutant Freaks! Behold the fruits of our labor!
Re's piece, which she
titled "Milk Was A Bad Choice," made Fish Face look like a
doofus. I don't even use the word doofus very often, but by god,
that's what she did. For chrissakes, she even gave him a bowtie when
those things were intended to be used as blood droplets! Clearly an
impressive dedication to making Fish Face look completely stupefied.
A++ (way to go!)
My piece is called, "The
Hairy Cyclops Elephant Cries Snot," for obvious reasons. I'm
just proud of the fact that the end result looked as far from a
bearded beast or a Wolfman creature as it could possibly get.
D- (please see me after class)
It really was fun for
both of us messing with these Mutant Freaks and I now wish I had
opened them before. There are some other ones such as a Dragon and a
Frankenstein look-a-like that I'll have to hunt down so that we can
bastardize them in the future too. In the meantime, while our Mutant
Freaks have clearly lived up to their names, they can find peace in
the fact that they'll always have each other.
FRIENDS 4EVER <3
Oh yeah, I almost
forgot to mention that I did come up with one alternate design for
my Bearded Beast...
