Me Gusta "Balls"

"El Sonido Del Terror"

From what I can tell Madballs really took off in Argentina. Whenever I do an Ebay search for Madball items, without fail an Argentinian deck of Madball cards, or an Argentinian Madball activity book comes up. I don't really know why. If anyone out there has a South American studies background and can provide some insight into the psyche of the country in the late 80's, and why gross ball toys were so popular, this would be a very valuable use of your time.

Anyway, the Argentinian company Miluplast also made their very own knock off versions! I've been eyeballing these guys for a while now, but I only recently managed to get a full set into my slime stained hands and ohhhh man, I think they're my favorite imitations to date!

These are all the same hollow inflatable plastic that Sadballs are made out of, and they they seem a bit goofier. Like, more cartoonish but still retaining the requisite grossness of actual Madballs. They're all packaged in a similar style as well but these are part of a series. The cards all say "El Sonido Del Terror" which translates to "The Sound Of Terror". I'm not really sure what that has to do with Madball fakes? I mean, I guess they would make pretty terrifying sounds. Farts and whatnot.
However, I'm inclined to think it was some sort of mistake. All of the packages have smaller stickers over the "Sonida" part which say "La Pelota Del Terror". That translates to "The Ball Of Terror" or "Terror Balls". Look at that logo! Those little skulls for the "o"s are really classy. Each of the balls also comes equipped with one of those stickers on its rear, covering it's shame, over the air hole that was used to initially inflate them. Ew. The stickers have the logo and each balls individual name (unlike Sadballs). Pretty cool! It makes me think the designers were pretty into making them. We'll talk about the packaging more in a bit.

Just a note, although I've been to Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Spain I speak very little to no Spanish. So my translations are not to be trusted. Most of them are gleaned from various internet searches and Babelfish. Forgive me.
First up is Tuerto Loco (One-eyed Crazy Person) and if that Babelfish translation is accurate then hat's off Miluplast! This dude seems like a Bash Brain copy but with his eye actually hanging out (a la Slobulus), a skull nose and his tongue waggin in the wind. You can see the similarities of the mouth shape, stitches and skull exposure in this pic. I'm pretty sure a forensic specialist has typed that sentence before.
Fantasma (Ghost) is a wacky Dust Brain. There's barely any difference, except he does have some sweet buck teeth and a bulging eye! You can also see that the paint job is way better on Dust Brain, but this guy still has a stupid charm and there was some effort to distinguish him from his American counterpart.Dientudo (Toothy) is my favorite and probably the most bizarre. He's some sort of skull with a cartoon nose, dog ears and two horns wayyyy at the top of his head. He reminds me of Charlie Brown's skull. Or maybe if Snoopy and Charlie Brown were genetically spliced and then in some horrible acid related accident that melted the flesh of most of their face. And gave them horns.
Check out the similarities to Skull Face here. Those tombstone-teeth are really similar, but actually the resemblance ends there. I mean, I know Miluplast was just aping all the Madballs characters but a lot of these are pretty original. Weird, but original. Pesadilla (Nightmare) is a sweet name! He looks pretty nightmarish to me! He also looks pretty original. Granted there are some similarities to Slobulus and Aargh but I think he's got his own thing goin on here. Like he got punched in the eye (so hard that it popped the other one out a bit) and is really really angry about it.
Broncudo (Angry) is probably the most unique of the whole gang. He looks simultaniously frightened, shocked and mad. Maybe because worms are busting out of the sides of his head?! He's full of stitches too but they may be baseball laces or Madball-type wound stiches. Either way I dig him. I dub thee second favorite!
Lengua Larga (Long Language, my best guess Big Mouth or Long Tongue) is our last guy and ohhh man is he a rip off. The other guys were very strongly "inspired" by other Madballs, but this dude is straight imitation. Aside from the material used to make him and the missing tooth this guy is EXACTLY Screamin Meemie. But, I do think the missing tooth is a great touch! Shape of the nose, mouth, tongue, teeth and the placement of the stitches are all identical. His eyes are a bit different making him look a little less sinister than Screamin Meemie.
I also wanted to showcase some of the fine grosserific details of the Terror Balls. As you can see, most of Tuerto Loco's Skull is exposed and then a portion of that is cracked revealing his brain (which kinda looks like meal worms). Dientudo's odd brow ridge peaks in some sweet curvy horns while Pesadilla's skin is split (very vaginally...ew) to show the bone beneath. Gross and cool details! More often than not only a monster ball's face is used to display horrid details, it's good to see someone making use of all that surface area.
I couldn't talk about these nerds without mentioning the sweet cards they come on. I already mentioned how cool that logo is but look at those illustrations! They look like bizarre 70's stlye cartoons run amock in grossout land! The toys themselves seem pretty faithful to the illustrations making me think that that's where the cartoony element of Terror Balls comes from.

In conclusion, BUY THESE! They're super fun, detailed, not extra hard to find and they've held up well over the years. There's still a few available on Ebay or you could contact me because I accidentally bought doubles!

You can check out more of them on this sweet Argentinian Madball page.