Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Gruesome Gift Ideas - Affordable Toys



As promised here's a look at some creepy toys for Christmas that fall a bit more into a reasonable price range than my previous gift ideas!

First up are these rather odd collectable pets that are exactly the type of thing I would have wanted as a kid...well, they could do with being a wee bit even grosser, but I'd still want them!



The Ugglys can be picked up in packs of 8 for around a fiver, with various other packs available at different prices, some of which come with extra toys...like a dirty-dog washing van! There's also these weird farting and belching puppets in the vid below....


...which will cost you around a tenner! I thought these things had a sort of similar look to some toys I picked up in a charity shop a few weeks back, called the Trash Pack! There's a reason for that, as they're made by the same company....These toys come in little mini-bins and I also picked up a mini-toilet with 5 figures inside...here's what they look like...


These toys are apparently quite popular and have reached 7 different collectable series, with ones covered in sand, ones that change colour, ones that come in test-tubes, slime covered ones, etc...... and they range in price on ebay from 50p to £70 for some of the vehicles....which is quite annoying as I saw the Sewer Truck for a fiver in the same charity shop, and didn't get it, and that apparently sells for big bucks! 

Anyway, these are also nice for your little monsters to collect, and have spun off into another series called the Grossery Gang, which as you can probably guess, features more rancid food-type stuffs that you would find in a skip at the back of your local supermarket! But we've probably talked enough about these gross collectible thingies....I'll just mention that there are even cartoons based on the various toys that you can watch on Youtube, like this one below....




If you've got any young Frankensteins in the family, how about getting them this Eyeball Dissection Kit from John Adams...


You can get it from I Want One Of Those for £11.99, and similar prices at load of other online toy type places! It's part of a whole range of Gross Science products...




Hehe...Whilst looking for the videos for Gross Science, I also stumbled upon a video for another toy that John Adams distributes, Ideal's Silly Sausage...and thought...wow.......probably just as well that they disable comments on their videos......



...but then this level of dodgy is nothing new for Ideal, as we can see from this old ad for a dog that comes with a bone of his own! 


..but we're kinda going off on a weird non-spooky, non-gross toy tangent, so lets get back on track with a trio of Doctor Dreadful toys!!






Anyway, I'll leave you to find out the prices for those, as I'm still filled with lurgy and not up for typing much, as you can probably tell...and if I don't get this post up now, it'll be beyond the 13 days of Creepmas!

Hopefully next Creepmas I'll be on better form, but I've still had fun posting random Christmas creepery...and as always I'll probably continue with creepiness right up until Christmas itself, so check back in case I do more gift ideas, gruesome games and all the rest! We'll see how this lurgy goes.....

In the meantime, go check out the other bloggers and sites taking part in Creepmas and lose yourself in their spooky shenanigans! Laters, stuffers....

I'm a CREEP for The 13 Days of CREEPMAS




Sunday, 11 December 2016

Mother Mongoose's Nursery Crimes




Blargh! Still can't shift this bloody cold and lung infection....only a couple of days left of antibiotics, so hopefully it'll be gone by then! Anyhoo, I've been trying to find festive scary stories inbetween bouts of coughing, and I haven't been having much success....

But then I remembered that Harvey Comic's Witches Tales had some rather odd rhymes in it's issues, told by an old witch called Mother Mongoose! "Well, nursery rhymes are somewhat festive if you think about pantomimes and stuff like that, so yeah," I thought "...lets go with that!"...and off I went to the Digital Comic Museum for a rhyme hunt....

(as always, click to go big!)












Friday, 9 December 2016

Return Of The Gruesome Games - Zombo's Christmas Capers



The Unofficial Zombo's Christmas Capers (ZX Spectrum) : 

Remember that unofficial game my brother did last year, based on 2000AD's Zombo character? I covered it back in October...Well, he's only gone and made a Christmas-themed sequel....




Based on the sort of free games you used to get on Covertapes with the Spectrum magazines Your Sinclair, Crash and Sinclair User, The Unofficial Zombo's Christmas Capers is slightly easier than the original, but still full of all those nice little touches you'll have come to expect from the first one. Anyway, here's the plot and gameplay details....



THE PLOT

Centuries of overwork and stress have finally taken their toll - Santa™ has suffered a psychotic break and gone missing from his workshop in North Renfrewshire. The Government™ have tasked Zombo™ with tracking down Mr. Claus™ and retrieving the gifts for all the good little boys and girls™. Luckily, the naughty list is rather long these days, so he only needs to find a total of six presents.




GAMEPLAY

You must retrieve 6 presents and defeat the end of game baddy to win. Colour coded keys are scattered around, as are several other items, some of which are useful, others of which are not, but there's a Shootybang 2000™ somewhere which'll probably come in handy, (please bear in mind that the Shootybang 2000™ can only fire horizontally).

CONTROLS

Kempston Joystick
Sinclair Joystick
Keyboard 
Q - Up
A - Down
O - Left
P - Right
SPACE - Fire
H - St. Bernard's Watch (Pause)
3 - Instantaneous Death Button (Quit Game)

BADDIES

Killer Sprout - Bounces, requires 1 shot to kill.


Yellow Snowman - Moves erratically, requires 1 shot to kill.

Nutcracker Soldier - Moves vertically, unkillable.

Scrooge-Elf - Moves horizontally, unkillable.

Killer Xmas Tree - Follows player, requires multiple shots to kill.



The Zip file includes the instructions and mock inlay shown above, tzx, tap, z80 and sna files, PLUS a version you can run straight away without setting anything up! Just extract the files, click on "Zombo's Xmas Capers.bat", (or "Capers.exe" in the 'PC' folder), and you'll be up and running. You can even use your favourite control pad by selecting 'Kempston' from the options. However, please note that this version does away with the loader, (but if you want to see what that looks like, click here).

For more info, the link to download the game and even details of a new improved version of the original game, click here to be teleported over to my brother's blog....




Thursday, 8 December 2016

More TV Horrors for Cold, Dark, Winter Nights!



Blargh...still filled with lurgy! Have some more '70s TV horror shows for now, and I'll try to get a bit more festive for the weekend! 

Spooky doorways, cursed churches and phantom planes.....that's what's in this trilogy of terrors! 
Dim the lights, grab a cocoa and go watch....that's what I'm going to do! Blergh......*coff*...









Wednesday, 7 December 2016

More Gruesome Gift Ideas! Evil Dead, Krampus, Bat Gremlin, Eggs!


Okay, so for today's Gruesome Gift ideas, you'll need a fair bit of cash lying around...but these toys and collectibles were too cool not to post about after I discovered them!


 First up is some Ash Vs Evil Dead toys from NECA!








The pack above will cost you about £46 on Ebay, and the figures below you should be able to pick up for around £26 each.....





Now comes the really expensive stuff! But just look at these collectible Krampus figures from WETA!





The Cherub above will cost you £180.66 from their website, and the Dark Elf below is slightly more expensive at £196.44! There's supposedly also a model of Krampus himself in the works, so keep an eye out for that too...





WETA do have something for those of us with less cash too though, as you can pick up this awesome replica below of the Krampus Bell from the movie for just £9.46!




Back to NECA again for the last two items.....first, this rather groovy Bat Gremlin figure from Gremlins 2 which can be yours for around £50 on Ebay......






...and to end with, here's NECA's life-sized, light-up Alien egg complete with Facehugger from the Alien franchise! This will sting your wallet for $499 (couldn't find any UK prices), so you'd need to be a big, big fan...but it would look awesome in the corner of any room! 






Okay, I'll promise to try and look at more reasonably priced stuff in the next gift ideas post, and stop tempting you with ridiculously priced but ridiculously cool stuffs! It should be up soon-ish, but I've still got this bloody lung infection with added lurgy, so can't say when exactly...keep an eye out though! ;-)






Tuesday, 6 December 2016

The Strange Tale of Wandering Willie!





What would Creepmas be without a few spooky supernatural tales? Well, tonight's trip to the Digital Comic Museum uncovered this classic tale by Sir Walter Scott, retold here in comic form and with slightly less Scots language so aw you folk that ur'nae Scottish cun unnerstan' it!!

It appeared in Youthful Magazine's Chilling Tales Vol.1, No.17 from October 1953 and was uploaded to the museum by Geo! Enjoy....










Monday, 5 December 2016

Bleurgh! (Again!)


So it's been a while since the old blog "curse" has popped up and I've fallen ill, but that time has come again folks! Managed to pick up another lung infection and to rush off down to the docs for some antibiotics when I found myself having difficulty breathing.....

Been a rattle in my chest the last few days, but it wasn't really progressing in to much until yesterday, when it became full on dreaded lurgy and the coughs and sneezes appeared, and that's when I started struggling with the actual important task of taking in and exhaling air....


So yeah, I'm now rattling around in a different way from all the antibiotics and paracetamol I've filled myself with to combat this and try to regain some normality and good health before Christmas! It seems to have hit a brief lull in severity for the moment so hopefully I'll be able to post something to go up on the blog again tomorrow, but I'm letting you guys know the situation in case the Creepmas posts are a bit lacking....and hopefully I'll start properly recovering soon!


Saturday, 3 December 2016

Gruesome Gift Ideas




Here's a few ideas for what to get those freaky friends who are obsessed with spooksome stuff for Christmas! 


This Alien Bookmark above can be found on Etsy for just 1.87! 




This Santa Zombie t-shirt is my brother's design over at Redbubble and can be yours for 17.52...




...and while you're over at Redbubble you can check out my own Krampus Saint designs, which I created from one of the Creepmas drawings I did last year! ;)



This Hand Sheet is another Etsy find...perfect for freaking out visiting relatives at Christmas! Yours for 21.38..



Or how about trying to contact your very own Christmas spirits with this Ouija board, also on Esty, for 23.02! I wouldn't be messing with it myself, mind you...*shudders*....



So there you go, a few items and some shameless self-plugging! I'll be posting some toy based gifts later in the month, so keep an eye out for those....