Okay, it’s been ages, but I’ve finally posted the second part of the Quick Change Dinobots review. As noted previously in the blog (and in the article itself), it’s a bit different from what I’d originally planned to do — whereas before I’d simply planned to review the remaining QC Dinos and end the piece with two parts, my subsequent acquisition of actual Transformers Dinobots moved me to expand the piece to include comparisons. So yeah, now it’ll likely be four parts, which means that it may well continue into 2009. 😉

That was not a typo.

Speaking of other things that will continue into the following years, the Creepy Freaks Halloween Countdown is still going even though Halloween has come and gone. It’ll be a bit more sporadic, of course — I’ve only added one more count in the past week — but eventually there will be over 40 installments. Most of the remaining figurines are doubles, but there will be a few new faces for you to look forward to seeing.

Anyway, all for now! More stuff is, uh, on the way. 🙂

Hey all — hope you had a happy Halloween! I’ve moved the countdown link on the content pages down a bit in keeping with its “completion,” but in truth we’ve still got more Creepy Freaks to go (especially since I just bought two more booster packs the other day in a vain attempt to bring myself closer to completing the entire set). Unfortunately, these will all likely be quick, as we’ve passed the point of even repaints — we’re now pretty deep into doubles territory. Woo.

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. 🙁

Again, happy Halloween! This unofficially marks the end of the countdown — but since we’ve still got six more boxes to go and I may end up buying more boxes from Five Below at some point, there will be at least six more installments. Who knows when they’ll go up, but I plan to leave the link to the countdown on the content pages (and the counts are double-posted in the blog) so you can check back periodically. 🙂

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… 😈

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Sorry about the miss yesterday — again, we’ll double up for the today. That means you get DOUBLE the normal amount of Creepy Freaks on Halloween! It’s sorta fitting, really. 🙂

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.

Bit late on this one, but it’s still sliding in before midnight EST! Two more to go until Halloween, but I’ll likely keep the count going into November — though perhaps not as a daily thing — until all of the boxes are gone. 🙂

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?!

Consider us doubled up!

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.

Sorry about the miss yesterday — again, we’ll double up at some point in the remaining days to compensate.

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.

Sorry about the late post — given the nature of today’s count, I kinda forgot that I hadn’t already posted it. You see…

…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!

Repaint City gains another resident with Finhead, a repaint of Fish Face and Worm Breath. I don’t know if it’s coming through in my posts, but this is seriously starting to get on my nerves. WHY ALL THE GODDAMNED REPAINTS?!?! Pokémon started out with 151 monsters and currently has 493 of the buggers and as far as I know not a single one of them is a straight up recolor of another, yet Creepy Freaks only has 56 and at least 20 of them are repaints. Is it that damned difficult to come up with new blood for the line? I could come up with new Creepy Freaks in my sleep — and given the wacky and horrific nature of my dreams, I mean that literally.

Anyway, the orangey recolor works well enough, and Finhead and his kin are fish monster things so I guess the constant repainting makes sense. I’m still sick of repaints.

Jar-Head is NOT a repaint, which already makes him today’s winner. In fact, even though he’s not terribly original — brain in a jar, woo — and his name is pretty lame (at least “Brainy” would’ve been kinda cute), he’s probably one of my absolute favorites in the Creepy Freaks line.

Interestingly enough (or not), the reason has nothing whatsoever to do with Creepy Freaks: it’s because Playmates has utterly failed to release a decent Baxter Stockman figure in the 2K3 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line. The mutant fly toy from the old series was bloody fantastic, but the next-gen plastic Baxters have kinda sucked. Jar-Head, however, is a near perfect rendition of Baxter as he appeared after the Shredder reduced him to a brain in a jar. He’s got both of his eyes — and if I get an extra Jar-Head, I’ll likely try to pop off his top and remove one of the eyeballs to perfect the representation — but even with the additional ocular orb he’s way more show-accurate than any Stockman figure Playmates has handed us this millennium. So even if I never actually get the chance to play the Creepy Freaks game, Jar-Head will always be welcome in my TMNT rogues gallery.

Also, animated brains in jars are kind of creepy and freaky — or at least they would be if they didn’t represent a significant step towards human immortality. Not that immortality can’t be creepy and freaky, but I’d sooner call it very, very cool than either of those things. Even the thought of it makes me want to sing “Princes of the Universe” to no one in particular.

And here’s Bo Oger, who we saw previously in the Creepy Freaks animation episode and whose figure was repainted into the Booger Man. I already said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this guy in my comments on ol’ Boogie — the idea of a nose-picking cyclops is pretty lame, even though here they at least got a pun out of it. Unfortunately, it’s not even a good pun, as ogres and cyclopes are not necessarily the same thing. They even had to misspell “ogre” to get it to work. 🙁

Also, is it me, or is the Bo Oger to Booger Man repaint one of the weakest recolors ever?

Remember when I mentioned that, years ago, I actually opened some of these booster packs before closing them up and completely forgetting about their contents? Mad Jack is the exception. Not only did I remember Mad Jack, but I actually removed him from his package and kept him elsewhere during these past couple of years. You see, he came with his arm broken — and is an awesome clown — so I kept him in a prominent place with full intent to glue his arm back on someday. When I finally did acquire the glue, however, I was hopelessly unable to get the arm to stay on. Even when I acquired better glue recently and attempted once again to fix Mad Jack, the hardened glue from my previous attempt made the connection irregular and impossible to manage. Poor Jack.

You might also have noticed that he’s missing his game instructions — those come fairly loose right out of the box, and after getting it wet while flushing water trying to unstick my own fingers (that glue wouldn’t keep a plastic arm on, but it was hell on the old skin) I just took it off. So Mad Jack’s not only handicapped — he’s a gamepiece without the necessary papers to play. I repeat: poor Jack.

That said, Mad Jack is an awesome figurine — which goes without saying, what with him being a clown and all! — even if he is the (p)repainted version of King Jack. At this point, he’s pretty much the only Creepy Freak that I hope is repeated among these boxes.

Woo, another repaint — though, technically speaking, Zip Zit was the repaint and Pus Bus Gus is the original. Again, he’s a naked guy riding atop some kind of vehicle — which here, given its yellow color, more resembles the school bus I think it’s supposed to be — but this time the dark green helps to make him look more like a warty monster from than a naked albino sewer mutant covered in pulsating pustules. That may not sound like much of a distinction, but I find PBG much easier to stomach than Zip Zit. Whereas PBG even seems like he might be a cool guy, I just can’t get past Zip Zit’s grossness.

And speaking of gross, here’s our first actual repeat figure: Drippy the Pusman. We’ve seen him before — as well as repaints Crusty the Snotman and Frosty the Snotman — so I’ve really exhausted my comments on this guy. But to throw in a little variety for the benefit of my esteemed readers, I photographed him at an angle this time. 😛

Less than ten more days ’till Halloween!!!

You know, I’m beginning to see why Creepy Freaks failed to succeed. When a line is up against giants Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh, it’s got to have more than cool figurines going for it — and if that is going to be its major trump card, it at least needs cool figurines that aren’t all repaints of each other. But here, again, is another repaint, as Fish Face is simply Worm Breath with a different color scheme. What else can I say about a fish monster thing with water wings? I can’t even comment on how Fish Face’s colors are better than Worm Breath’s, ’cause they’re really not — not that it’s an inferior scheme either. I like them both just fine, and they’re both fitting because fish come in all sorts of colors. That just makes Fish Face even more superfluous, though.

Now here’s a new one — Vampappy! Personally I’d have called him Grampire (and luckily they didn’t think of that, otherwise he’d have been the repainted version), but he’s still a welcome addition to the line. I mean, you’ve gotta have a vampire in the mix, but turning this horror classic into an elderly wheelchair-bound vampire who attacks with false fangs is a fun kid-friendly twist that makes Vampappy one of the better Creepy Freaks. I was about to lament that Vampappy isn’t terribly creepy or freaky, but an old dead serial killer who keeps telling the same boring murder stories and soaking his false teeth in the blood of virgins would probably get more than a little unsettling after a while.

Hey all — just got through upgrading the site to WordPress 2.3. A handful of our most valued plugins broke in the process — prompting me to seek out replacements and fixes and whatnot — but I think (and hope!) we’re okay and functional for now. If you encounter any snags while browsing the site, though, do let me know.

Anyway, on with the Creepy Freaks Countdown!

If Ragatha looks familiar, it’s because she’s a repaint of Dolly. There really isn’t much more to say about her that hasn’t already been said — she’s a living doll that rips other (non-living?) dolls in half. Yes, living dolls are an overused concept in the horror category, but they’re creepy enough for me to forgive the inclusion of one in the Creepy Freaks line.

I write one, however, because somehow two seems like one too much, especially when that second one looks exactly like the first one with a different outfit and new punked-out hairdo. And for once, we’ve got a repaint with colors that don’t outdo the original — Dolly’s blue babydoll dress was much more fitting, but this outfit coupled with the decidedly non-doll-like face makes Ragatha look more like a psychotic ballet instructor than a living doll. If you ask me, a pastel pink dress and blonde hair would’ve made for a more appropriate color scheme.

And here’s Precious, a third-generation repaint after Tulips and Kissyface. (Interestingly enough, Kissyface came packaged with Dolly, who was repainted into Ragatha above. It seems that living dolls and goblin girls make great traveling companions.) Of the three gals with the oversized lips, Kissyface probably has my favorite color scheme for reasons discussed previously, but there’s no doubt that Precious is the one that I’d least want to kiss in spite of her blue hair. Somehow her orange and red colors remind me of vomit, and the orange warts on her lips help to make them that much more disgusting.

Incidentally, Precious is the only goblin sister whose attack doesn’t potentially involve her kissing her opponents. Instead of “crush” or “kissy-kissy,” the respective attacks of Tulips and Kissyface, Precious attacks with “cutesy names” — which basically entails her catcalling her enemies with names like “sweetie-pie” and “honey-poo.” I can see how that could get annoying, but it’d hardly freak me out when the alternatives include being submerged in pus and urinated on by giant dogs. Orange warts notwithstanding, Precious’s attack would have me making out with her out of sheer relief.

Doubling up is fun, yessir.

The Booger Man is flipping gross, but also not very interesting. Really — a snot-nosed cyclops with booger-crusted fingers? It could work if there were some kind of pun with the name to make the character slightly more appropriate — it’s worth noting that the Booger Man is a (ridiculously lazy) repaint of Bo Oger, who appears in the Creepy Freaks cartoon — but without that he just seems uninspired and boring. When you think of the bogeyman, do you think of cyclopes? I don’t.

On the other hand, it’s tough to blame the Creepy Freaks creators for the lame name. Can you think of a snot-related pun on the names Arges, Brontes, Steropes, Polyphemus, or Telemus? Telemucus is pretty bad too, and hardly anyone would get the reference. I really like “The One-Eyed Prospector”, but nobody would get that either. 😛

Drippy the Pusman is yet another Frosty repaint — and easily the grossest of them all. I mean, you can get snot from a fairly routine nose-blowing, but in order to get pus — let alone enough pus to create a six-foot monster out of the stuff — you’d need to be covered from head to toe in icky quivering boils and humongous zits and dripping infected lesions and whatnot. Basically, you’d have to be Job and scrape yourself with a broken piece of pottery to generate that much pus. Yuck.

That said, I do like the colors — the dominant white and the blue top hat not only significantly distinguish Drippy from the snotmen, but also make Drippy fairly reminiscent of both Frosty the Snowman and Bad Mr. Frosty from ClayFighter. As such, it’s quite possible to actually mistake him for one of these less disgusting characters (or simply a generic snowman) at a distance, which could make for a lot of Kodak moments if one ended up showing the figurine to unsuspecting folks with weak stomachs.

I do have a question, though. Considering that Drippy’s comic shows him offering a drip from his nose to a werewolf child hanging from a branch, are we to believe that the pus from which he is composed is solid enough for a line of it to support the weight of an individual? That doesn’t sound very drippy! So perhaps Drippy is covered in dripping pus, but inside has all of the internal organs necessary to produce thick, elastic snot from his nose. He must also have a heart, as we see him literally sticking his nose out in order to save a child in danger! The biology of pusmen must be complex indeed.

Jeez, did I miss another day? Sorry about that — guess we’ll have to pull double duty again at some point. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe some other day. Time will tell. Again, apologies to anyone who spent yesterday waiting in vain!

SO, more repaints. Piper here is a repaint of Hamlin, the result of a role-switching experiment in which the part of the Pied Piper was instead played by a rat. As with most of the repaints we’ve seen thus far, this one is superior to the original, but here for a more interesting reason than usual: whereas Hamlin was your common black rat, Piper is an albino rat.

Considering that albino rats are frequently used in laboratory research, this suggests some intriguing possibilities for his origins. Perhaps Piper is a product of a scientific experiment intended to locate and manipulate a gene responsible for musical inclination but that also caused him to suffer several unexpected side effects… among them an altered physical structure and a taste for the flesh of human children. Or perhaps not. In any case, giant albino rats with beady red eyes look pretty darned creepy and freaky, so Piper lives up to the name of the line.

Ugh. We’ve wondered whether the repaints in this line constitute new characters or evolved incarnations of older ones before, but the ramifications of either origin are enough to make one gag in the case of Crusty the Snotman. He could be Frosty the Snotman after sitting out for a while, drying out a bit, and thus losing his formerly slimy (frosty?) texture — ugh — or he could be the brother of Frosty from a society of reproducing snot monsters — ugh again.

I’m not sure that it matters a whole lot, though. This is probably the least inspired repaint yet — Frosty is a deeper forest green, but otherwise the characters look almost identical — and honestly a snotman is pretty fucking gross regardless of his texture. Still, even though he’s theoretically crustier than Frosty, his disgusting impact has been softened a bit by our familiarity with that very similar Creepy Freak — which makes for a certain irony here.

Double duty complete — we’re back on track. 8)

Meet Dolly, the inevitable living doll in the realm of the Creepy Freaks. I think she’s a doll, anyway — she looks like a doll on the sticker art, she’s dressed like a doll, and you can make out molded joints on the arms and knees of the figurine. The head itself, however, is more evocative of a psychotic forty-something woman who’s been smoking since she was thirteen. Granted, a woman that old who wears blue tutus and furiously rips dollies in half would certainly qualify for the creepy freaky award — but then again, despite the overuse of the concept, so would a living doll. Poke around this page for a bit and tell me your skin doesn’t crawl.

Aaand it’s back to the repaints with Kissyface, a recolor of Tulips from the second starter set. Whereas the purple and green on Tulips gave her a sort of plant-like appearance not unlike that of some actual purple tulips, Kissyface’s prominent green and red make her look more like a goblin child. Not only do I like these colors better, but they also cause me to come away with a completely different take on the mold.

Tulips looked shy and earnest, which prompted me to feel sorry for her and write about how cruel the Creepy Freaks world must be to exploit her unfortunate ugliness. Kissyface, on the other hand, has a decidedly vamped up and mischievous look that suggests that she revels in her ability to dominate and traumatize her fellow monsters. Maybe it’s the red dress and redder lips(tick). She’d almost be sexy if she weren’t so damned hideous, but the combination of her ghoulish looks and her aggressive attitude is precisely what makes Kissyface such a creepy and freaky character… particularly when she’s got you in her sights.

Missed a day here — apologies for those of you who waited for today’s installment with bated breath yesterday! To make up for it, at some point (hopefully today, but no promises there) we’ll do double duty.

Though we haven’t seen the figure on which he is based yet, Bingo is actually another repaint — this time of Fluffy, the tsunami-pissing dog that makes a brief but memorable appearance in the Creepy Freaks cartoon. Given my incredible lack of things to say about Bingo, it appears that I have difficulty talking about the repaints even when we haven’t yet covered the original versions — but here that simply could be because Bingo is a wolfman-esque dog. I like dogs, but they don’t strike me as being terribly creepy or freaky (Chinese cresteds notwithstanding) or even interesting outside of their personalities and tricks, both of which Bingo lacks because he’s a gamepiece figurine with very little in the way of a supporting story.

Anyway, Bingo is really a nicely-sculpted figure with a lot of detail, but the darkness of the paint job means that most of these are barely visible — I can barely make out his green leash, and I didn’t even notice that animal (or squeaky toy?) he’s crushing until I spotted it on the lighter-colored Fluffy figurine. All of these details give him the potential to be a neat second-tier kinda guy, but even a giant dog (which of course fails to impress given that the Creepy Freaks figures are not to scale with each other) doesn’t really have a chance as far as uniqueness goes when he’s pitted against toilet-head monsters and spooky milk cartons. Sorry, Bingo.

Creepy is also a repaint — again of a character who appeared in the cartoon but has not yet shown up in the countdown. But whereas Bingo is just sort of there, I really hate Creepy. Insect men are fairly standard characters for these sort of monster lineups, but whoever designed Creepy mistook lameness for novelty. Look, it’s a walking cockroach with bug spray! Oh ho ho ho ho how clever! Except it’s really not. I’m not exactly sure what the other instruments are, but I’m not interested enough in him to reexamine the figure and find out. (Maybe that’ll happen if and when we unearth the other version of this mold.)

I even dislike Creepy’s name. I understand that it’s meant to mesh with that of his brother or pre-evolution form — who goes by the name of Crawley — but given the uncertain nature of the collecting process and the apparent simplicity of the game, Creepy Freaks characters really should be able to stand alone. Unfortunately, Creepy requires his twin in order to have any redeeming features whatsoever about him.