Friday the Squirteenth

"Scary 18 Ft. Squirt!"

Most of the ugly faces that grace monster balls are the creation of toy designers who are, no doubt, inspired by creatures in popular culture. It's rare that an existing creep finds its way into the monster ball pantheon, but that's not to say that it doesn't happen. Monster Balls were Madball sized rubber ball representations of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolfman, but those are almost monster archetypes like a zombie, ghoul or a demon. Entertech, purveyors of fine water-based entertainment, stepped up to the plate in the late 80's to give us what we all wanted for so long; likenesses of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in ball form! What? Was I the ONLY one asking for that?

I'll admit, their addition as children's toys is a bit weird. I mean, as a nerdy kid that was obsessed with horror movies way too young, I was excited that dudes from my generation were being immortalized and somewhat, legitimized as pop culture icons, however, unlike the Wolfman, or Dracula these dudes were BRUTAL murderers and both almost exclusively KILLED CHILDREN (well teens)! Even their appearances are way more nightmare-inducing than Karloff as Imhotep! Well, it must have been easy to disassociate the toys with the actual murderous movies because these weren't the only toys. Jason had a Nintendo video game and Freddy had a board game! Still? Children's ball toys?!

I was hesitant to include these guys in my collection, or on this blog, because they're not traditional Madball type balls. However, the new Euro Madballs are exactly the same make and model so the decision was made for me by the priests of Madballology.

Both Freddy and Jason come packaged with a nameless victim whose only crime was being manufactured in a world where Jason needed to be packaged separately from Freddy. They're about 1.5" in diameter and really are good and holding and squirting water.

Before I start, I want to thank the designers of Spitballs for including a tiny square part on the bottom of these that allows them to stand up straight without outside help. It's really hard to keep most of these jerks upright in order to take photos but these guys were easy. First world problems. Cry for me.

Jason's up first and I'm so pumped on him. Hold up. They somehow managed to make a mentally challenged rotting zombie cute! Look at his round little head! Awwww does mister man wanna murder me with a weed whacker? Yesh you do! This is obviously Jason via part VII: The New Blood as you can tell with his axe wound (upper right) and boat propeller wound (lower right) and the packaging (the small photo on the right is from VII). This is by far my favorite Jason incarnation, cus he's the gnarliest. He looks like a creepy jacked up zombie that's been killed 6 times. I guess that doesn't have anything to do with this toy but whatever. His victim buddy is kinda lackluster. His cartoony face is pretty neat but I'm not exactly sure what Jason did to him to make him a "victim". His eyes are squinty and pink to imply he got stabbed in them? Or maybe Jason just gave him pink eye when he was at that sleepover?

I may be biased in my saying that I like the Jason one's more because I like the Friday the 13th movies better but this Freddy ball actually is disturbing and weird. First off, they didn't try to make his face fit the ball shape, rather they make his face grow out of the ball! That fleshy color and those burns that look like veins make him look like someone with a peculiar testicular growth dressed his junk up with a hat! Look below! Awful!

I guess that IS a pretty good likeness of Robert Englund in the make up but still. I do like the tiny tiny teeth and the angry snarl but he still looks like a nad. His victim is WAY cooler than Jason's though. There's no misinterpreting what happened here, that dude got sleepy and then slashed! It's also cool that he looks like a Ken Doll head. We all know that Barbie lives on Elm Street and her parents burned Freddy alive.

So let's get back to the packaging and its boasting. "Scary 18ft squirt" huh? While this does sound like something accidentally viewed on Redtube, I tested it out and it's true! They really do shoot about 18 feet! You may say, "yeah but that's not scary". Well it is if you're my cat. They don't shoot that far for long but it is pretty cool. My absolute favorite parts of the packaging are the illustrations on the back of each. A) like you couldn't figure it out B) how cute! C) someone got paid for that, D) alliteration, E) rhyming!
In conclusion, these are really cool. I remember these from when I was a kid and tracking them down was worth it. They don't go for very much on the internet if you can find them and they come up fairly often. They're surprisingly well detailed and entertainingly stylized (that Freddy one is soooo weird). If you're into 80's monster movies OR Madballs these are for you!