Bounce Ball Mania!!

"Spook your friends with assorted monster balls."

Madballs in miniature! I love monster faced bouncy balls. They're usually sturdier than Madballs and actually usable as a bouncy ball. This weeks post is about three sets of the little buggers. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about the first two groups because they were bought from wholesalers or with no packaging. The first set are super small, at an inch in diameter. Most of these are really cool and the few clunkers are so weird they're worth having.

OK, I put my three favs first, which may ruin the rest for you but whatever. I'm always a big fan of eye ball toys, a glorious tradition hailing back to Oculus Orbus, and this one is no exception. It's pretty gross. It's bloodshot for one thing and the lid is pretty heavy, so it's a mutant or stoned. If you add the weird bubbly mebrane engulphing the rest of him, I would have to vote for mutant. I guess stoned mutant would work too.

The next dude is great! It's surprising to me that there aren't more pumpkin themed Sadballs. It seems like an obvious design. This one is a skull/pumpkin hybrid with gnarly teeth and heavy red bags under his eyes. He's also grinning...soooo he may be stoned too.

Now this one is the best of the bunch! I love gorgons too! The original Madball design of Snake Bait is the pinacle of gorgon Madballology, but this little lady is no slacker. She looks like a little gramma with her babushka and puffy wrinkled face, but there's snakes under there! Well, that and her fangs and pointy tongue. She's even got a few snakes on the back of her head. Which is oddley the only detail ANY of these have on the reverse side. She doesn't look high but she also looks like she may be using magic to make whatever it is those other dudes are using.

This fourth guy is the grossest of the bunch! Like a bounce ball Freddy Krueger, with a cracked nose that has grub crawling out of it! I imagine he was injured in a magic meth fire the gorgon started. This is a level of gross that usually doesn't make it onto Madballs. It almost looks like real mutilation, not cartoon stitches.

His buddy is a shrunken head that looks like a mini version of Shrunk Punk (oh what could have been...sighhhh). The mouth stitched shut and the bone through the nose are pretty cool. I'm also a big fan of his different crazy eyes!

Big Blue (yeah I started naming them to help) is next on the list and is where things get kinda odd. He's not too odd himself (he's a crazy blue monster/demon with a weird tongue) but he's the gateway to the next two nerds. Design-wise anyway. We're in generic "monster" territory now, but with no referance material these guys came out wrong.
Ohhhh man. Mellow Yellow and TicTac Teeth. It looked like they were goin for a skull or something with Mellow, but WHAT THE HELL IS ON HIS FACE?! Is that a sentient beard?! Is it a bat that he tried to eat? Maybe a gray squid? I'm really at a loss here. There's nothing to indicate what that is on an otherwise "regular" skull design. Maybe the sculptor dropped him while he was working on him and didn't have time to fix him so he just painted the mess-up gray? Is it supposed to be barf? GAH!?

I guess Tic Tac Teeth is a goblin but I don't know why he's got a clown nose. If you're invited to a costume party and you're a goblin, do you even bother with a fake nose? Or do you lie and tell ladies you're really hot under your super kick-ass orc costume? His facial muscles don't make any sense either but that may be me asking too much.

In conclusion, get these dudes! They're cheap, they bounce and they look cool! While the paint jobs are actually quite good for something this small, every once in a while they're off. So be wary. You can buy em here!

I picked up the next six idiots at Toy Joy, one of the best toy stores in the world. Actually, I got four of them and my friend Alexis sent me the other two. They look more like mutants or aliens than monsters but I guess that's a fine line.

These "Super" bouncy balls, measuring at about 2" in diamter and bouncing like nobody's business! Their paint jobs and bright colors are really cool and add to the mutant angle. It looks like the rubber was just swirled and then they painted on top of that, so no two are exactly the same but the general colors are consistent.
We'll start with my favorites again. Monster Cat has a pretty cool color scheme going on and makes me think of a monster from some low budget 80's schlock staring Linnea Quigley.

Then there's this skull demon from hell! I feel like he's laughing at my suffering. Parts of his "brain" are exposed and some other cool detailed bits.

My absolute favorite is this C.H.U.D. looking thing. I really like the purple/black combo and his disgusting yellow eyes. His tiny pointy teeth look dangerous and he's got a rugous skin texture that seems reminiscent of muscle tissue.

OK, now these two are a bit strange. Corncob Teeth is the yellow dude that just kinda seems to be thinking about eating you. The furrowed brow, the half smile and the contemplative eyes...I also don't think he's got enough room in his mouth for you AND his teeth.

Camo Croc has a similar problem but at least his teeth aren't discolored and blunt. He's cooler than Corncob Teeth but still just kinda "meh".

Our last dude is a bit of a curve-ball because he's a representation of a Grim Reaper. All the other dudes are generic but stylistic monsters, and then this nerd comes along and is actually recognizable as a cultural icon. A lumpy and asymmetrical one at that!

Overall, COOL!
These last dudes aren't really a collectible set, they're just some gross bouncy eyes in about four different color combinations. My favorite feature is that the eye part glows in the dark! They're made by a British toy company called Tobar that makes a TON of different stuff but these seem to be their only foray into monster ball territory. These guys remind me of our stoned mutant eyeball from that first set but about the size and style of the second group.

These guys are awesome. Well sculpted, gross, glow in the dark and detailed. My only complaint is that the paint on the pupil chips really easily. I noticed that its actually bubbled on the top and bottom center of just about every one. You win some you lose some.

SO! Three time conclusion! Get all of these. They bounce and are super weird/disgusting. They will freak out your sister and piss off your dad! AND they're all cheap and readily available. GO!

UPDATE!!

I just found this ad for those little dudes while doing a time killing monster ball google search.