Wait, what's this? A new Creepy Freak that's not a repaint?!?!? Rejoice! Daisy here is a mutated Venus flytrap -- not unlike Audrey II of Little Shop of Horrors fame -- so while it's not a completely novel idea, the adaptation does work quite well for the Creepy Freaks line. Also, whereas most versions of Audrey II (and most flytrap creatures in general) lack eyes and proper limbs, Daisy has both a set of peepers and branches with leaves that respectively resemble arms and fingers. This effectively makes her look almost like some sort of plant-dinosaur hybrid, which is kind of a neat idea that I'd like to see explored in fiction (or, even better, claymation film). Daisy's not quite as creepy or freaky as she could be with the proper characterization, but she's definitely one of the cooler Creepy Freaks.

Also, given that Daisy was packaged differently in the box -- whereas most of the Creepy Freaks come in a sort of basket structure not unlike a squared cupcake holder, Daisy came in a front-facing plastic shroud fitted to her shape (think of upright sarcophagi lids and you're on the right track) -- I'm going to assume that she was one of the rarer figures. Also, given that it's sort of possible to tell whether a box has a figure like this in it by shaking it (her packing permits her to move far less and thereby make less noise), I can imagine kids sifting through the Creepy Freaks boxes and shaking them in attempts to discern which ones had the rarer figures with the oddball shapes. Konata would have, anyway!

And here's Mad Jack, whom we've seen before. We have not, however, seen him before with two attached arms! So while he's not a new figure per se, I'm about as glad to see him as I am to see Venus -- making this about the best booster set we've seen in quite a while. It really doesn't get much better than dino-flytraps and insane clowns, folks.

I told you these latter countdown entries would be brief, right? Here are Dolly and Litter Kitty, both of whom we've seen before -- and in multiple color schemes at that. So while this booster pack at least includes fairly good representations of the respective sculpts (I much prefer Dolly's colors to Ragatha's, and Litter Kitty's light coloring and black wash does well to highlight the detail of the figurine), this haul is still rather disappointing. Some new Creepy Freak blood would be nice!

See, doubles. And to make things worse, the combination of the Booger Man and Creepy contains two of my absolute least favorite Creepy Freaks in the entire line. I do want doubles of some characters -- toilet-heads are always welcome, and we still need a Mad Jack with both arms attached! -- but not these guys. I despise these guys.

Fluffy technically isn't a repaint, as he was the one who was recolored into Bingo, but we've pretty much seen him before -- aside from the swapping of the colors of the leash and the frog (which is now more easily identified thanks to the green), these might as well be the same figurine. Yet even though he's kind of superfluous and the giant dog thing is boring to begin with, Fluffy is saved by his special attack. See, in the Creepy Freaks cartoon, we learned that he can perform the "Tidal Wave" on his enemies... which essentially amounts to drowning them in a tsunami of urine. How's that for a finishing move? It's even referenced in his comic. I'm not sure how effective it is in the actual game, but it seems like it'd be like pulling off a fatality within the first three seconds of Round 1. Fluffy may not be especially creepy or freaky, but I sure don't want to face him.

Like Fluffy, Crawley here is the original version of Creepy. Creepy was probably my least favorite Creepy Freak, but Crawley's more dynamic green makes him a little better in my book. Only a little, though, as I still really dislike this sculpt -- primarily because of the face. A giant insect man could be cool enough, but the bug eyes and overlong nose just ruin the look of this figure for me. A more insect-like face -- or even a more human face recessed a bit such that it looked as if Creepy and Crawley were more or less normal guys in costumes -- would've made me a lot more tolerant of the sculpt.

Oh, and to answer any burning inquiries about those tools, he's holding a rolled-up newspaper and a flyswatter in addition to the insecticide.

That does it for the countdown to Halloween, then! Take care of yourselves, people, and try not to eat too much candy. We'll be seeing you...

More repaints -- starting with Maddy, a recolor of Serpentina. Yes, we've seen more than enough repaints by now, but I'm not too upset with this one. Where Serpentina had a schoolgirl look, the purple and almost indistinguishable dark reds of Maddy's outfit gives it a distinctly suit-like look -- which effectively makes Maddy look like a teacher and works quite well with the red eyes and the sneer. Her comic, however, still casts her in an adorable light. Either works for me, really -- Maddy's hot stuff regardless of her disposition.

Clearly I don't think Maddy's all that creepy or freaky -- far less so than Serpentina, though I'm hard pressed to explain precisely why that is -- but her yellow face and snake theme suggests to me that she is possibly the love child of Evil-Lyn and King Hiss. And considering that King Hiss was basically a pair of humanoid legs with a mass of writhing snakes for limbs and a torso, the image of them hooking up is definitely in keeping with the name of the line.

And in another pairing of these two molds, Maddy is accompanied by Litter Kitty, a third-generation repaint of Sox and Spitty Cat. He does improve upon Sox's most glaring flaw by having a white color scheme that effectively highlights the detail on the figurine, but the rotting cat thing has still been done to death. I'm also still miffed that they didn't think to repaint the litter box here either. Are all litter boxes blue or something? Google says no, though admittedly quite a few of them are. A black or a grey box here would've been ideal.

Litter Kitty might have been creepy or freaky if he weren't the third zombie cat I've seen in about as many weeks, to say nothing of the undead animals that have appeared in multiple films (Pet Sematary comes to mind). The idea is wholly underwhelming at this point.

First up we have John, another toilet-head. We've already seen this mold with Potty Mouth and Swirly, but I'm still rather fond of John because toilet-heads rule. He's also an excellent repaint. Where Swirly was pristine and Potty Mouth got a little nastier, John goes for hardcore grossness -- he's basically the nasty, grody, overflowing with sludge kind of toilet you're likely to find at an isolated gas station or a grungy truck stop. And considering that these are precisely the kinds of places that impromptu intercourse between unshowered johns and roadside prostitutes is likely to happen, John's name is arguably inappropriate -- though fitting! -- for a character in a children's collectible game.

I'm not sure I'd call him creepy or freaky, but there's no way in Hell I'd sit on that thing no matter how much wadded-up toilet paper was placed on the seat.

Chester, on the other hand, is definitely creepy and freaky -- for some right and some very, very wrong reasons. He appears to be some kind of robotic alien creature emerging chestburster-style from the guts of an otherwise normal teddy bear, which is just awesome. It might even be original, as I can't recall having seen any media where an alien burst out of a stuffed animal before. Suffice it to say that if I were a child and that really happened, it would definitely scare the crap out of me -- so a toy that suggests it as a possibility is definitely on the creepy side.

That said, his name is Chester. You've probably heard kids singing, "Chester, Chester, child molester" for no apparent reason before, but apparently the term really is prison slang for child molester (and I'm taking this from Wikipedia -- third term from the bottom in "Other uses"). Couple that with the creepy claws and the unsavory reputation that aliens have for anal probing and other kinds of icky touching and you have a figurine that is creepy and freaky for an entirely different reason that, again, is arguably inappropriate for use in a children's collectible game. It's possible that the creator of the figure took Chester's name from chestburster, but given his pairing with the similarly questionable John I really find it really hard to believe that this isn't intentional.

Can you believe that whoever came up with these things got paid?!

I like Serpentina. It would've been one thing to simply have some kind of Gorgon in the line, but that they made her a schoolgirl is a really cool twist: whereas the monsters of myth were fearsome creatures that turned those who gazed upon them to stone, the schoolgirl getup and pink bows gives Serpentina this early Britney Spears "Hit Me Baby One More Time" kinda cuteness. The idea is a bit neater than the figurine, however, as whoever sculpted it couldn't seem to decide whether he/she wanted cute or menacing. The general outfit is very sweet, but the pose, the sneer, and the snake hands sort of mitigates the effect. Whoever drew Serpentina's comic had the right idea.

That said, a cute serpentine schoolgirl who's hostile and fucking nuts could definitely qualify as freaky, if not creepy as well. Perhaps she's lost her mind because you're not with her?

Aaaand it's back to the repaints with Sox, a recolor of Spitty Cat. Sure, they made him a black cat, but otherwise this is a fairly uninspired repaint -- they didn't even bother to change the litter box, which probably would've gone better with the black if it'd been colored red instead of the original blue. The black also kind of hurts Sox, as the same slimming color that helps overweight women to hide their bulges and rolls of fat masks the impressive amount of detail on this little figurine. That he brings Socks the cat to mind is kind of cool, but otherwise this is an inferior repaint in every way.

With the excess of repaints and duplicates with only the occasional new figurine that we've gotten lately, it's nice to open a box to find two entirely new Creepy Freaks to add to the collection. The first of these is Rabid, a sort of deformed Easter bunny that throws his own poop as an attack (as demonstrated in his minor role in the Creepy Freaks Cartoon). Even though we've seen twisted anthropomorphic rabbits before -- including our own Easter Feaster Bunny (available on a thong in the SC store!) -- I still like the idea here. Rabid fits in well with the other characters, what with his colorful outfit and outstretched green and yellow rotten egg. He's not my favorite Creepy Freak by some distance, and he's less creepy and freaky than gross and kinda sad in a stuttering acne-covered high schooler with braces kinda way, but he still feels like he belongs.

Von Klink -- who also has a quick cameo appearance in the Creepy Freaks cartoon -- is (one of, since the Creepy Freaks Checklist references a "Von Klank" as well) your obligatory mad scientist type character(s). He's not really as interesting as he could be in the absence of some supporting fiction (the comic simply features him making a variant of the "this'll hurt YOU more than it hurts me" gag of which evil fictional doctors are so fond), but again he's a decent fit to the line.

That said, it's hard to say whether Von Klink is properly creepy or freaky without a little more information about his background. I mean, he does have that one metal arm and a weird ray gun that looks kind of like an ice cream cone, but there's no way to tell whether he's trying to recreate the experiments of Victor Frankenstein or save the environment by inventing a new car that runs on dandelions (w00t "Pushing Daisies" reference!). However, it's worth noting that his head shape and facial features look a bit more like a caricature of a psychiatrist than that of a traditional mad scientist... in which case Von Klink here would likely be both creepy and freaky. Psychiatrists are among the creepiest and freakiest people out there, man.

...I ended up with the exact same figures that I got yesterday. Forget getting identical figurines save the paint job -- this is the most amazing probability occurrence that we're likely to encounter during the remainder of the Creepy Freaks Countdown. And since I just talked about Potty Mouth and Skelehomie yesterday, I really don't have a whole lot more to say about them.

Still, if one has to end up with, these guys are pretty cool doubles to get. As far as I know, Creepy Freaks never reached the point of popularity where kids would trade the figures on the playground, but if it had I'm sure Skelehomie would have been in relatively high demand. Potty Mouth might've been a coveted character too, if only because he's a living urine-spewing toilet -- almost makes me wish I had some miniature Ghostbusters figurines to pose next to him. They didn't make Ghostbusters Heroclix figures, did they? Someone should make a collectible figurine game with a roster comprised of cartoon characters from the 80s and early 90s. THAT would rock -- I'm sure a whole bunch of people would want to get in on that action.

Or maybe it wouldn't, and all of the booster packs would eventually end up selling for 30 cents a pop in discount stores... which would still rock from my perspective.

Potty Mouth is a repaint of Swirly. Yes, I'm exceedingly sick of recolors by this point, but at least Potty Mouth is a cool one. While he's not on the level of some of the repaints that we've seen, the piss-yellow water and blackened rim and teeth take the grossness factor up a notch where Swirly looked as if he'd never been used. Besides, I really dig the toilet-head monsters for what they are -- I never had a Fearsome Flush toy as a kid, but these guys definitely fill that empty spot in my collection.

SKELEHOMIE!!!!! Even though he's not the best Creepy Freak in terms of his motif, Skelehomie was coveted by many (or at least I assume he was by people who actually played the game) for another reason -- like Pikachu of Pokémon, Skelehomie was shown to be the flagship monster in the Creepy Freaks cartoon. Aside from a couple of the evil characters, he was the only Creepy Freak to have a speaking role. And speak he did -- I think he got in more lines than any other character in the show, humans included. In fact, with respect to the comics that come packaged with the Creepy Freaks, he's the only monster who appears in comics that aren't his own. Skelehomie owns.

So yeah, I'm really glad to have him, as he's like the one character that one has to have even if the player doesn't find him to be all that valuable in the game. Is he creepy? No -- if his speech was any indication, he's probably the most down-to-earth and "normal" of all of the Creepy Freaks despite being a living skeleton. Is he freaky? No -- unless you'd be freaked out by an ultra kid-friendly version of Snoop Dogg who'd sooner break dance than smoke a joint or engage in any illegal thuggin' activity. But he's been actively promoted by the creators in animation and print, and that always goes a long way towards making characters cool. Just look at Psyduck!