King Kong Played Ping Pong...

"Once More...No Comment"

Hey boils and ghouls! I know I said I was gonna post about Bizarre Balls next but I think I'll save that for my first post of the new year. Especially since I already had the photos of these turds ready to go.

These are a type of fake Madball I've never seen before. They're about the size of a table tennis ball, hollow and poorly painted. I don't think they're a set, since they have no manufacturer stamped on them and the colors of the plastic vary. There are three distinct sculpts, one of which we're already familiar with. Let's look.
First up is a melty Slobulus-style ball in two colors . She's got a bunch of gross stuff, like missing teeth, bandages, a wandering eye and stitches. It's too bad the paint jobs on these are sooooo bad, because no paint at all would probably be less distracting from the cool design. That eye really bothers me. In a cool way. It's disturbing to think of how it got that high and crooked.
Next up is my personal favorite. He's an angry looking dude that's biting a snake that wraps around his head and goes under his eye and out again!! Ewwwww! The under-the-eye thing may be the grossest thing I've come across in the monster head wrangling business. His paint job is the best out of all of them (he's still go an unexplained patch of black on his nose) and it makes me wonder if the hard plastic they're made out of just doesn't hold paint very well. In honor of my friend Josh (who's obsessed with G.I. Joes), I'll name this guys Snake-Eye (or Veyeper Pilot, or Serpentorn)!
Next up is a small red version of the Sadball, Blood Bulge. You should recognize him! You guys have met before...thousands of times! Ok, maybe once before on this blog...
As you can see there is no difference between the two other than size. The gross mouth muck is still there and the odd triangle nose complete with his three hair mustache! The paint really didn't hold to this dude but the sculpt is good despite being unoriginal.

In conclusion, these are neat little monster heads and cool designs. They're also pretty durable (excluding the paint). I'd recommend them but I've hardly ever come across any. The one's I've gotten were from a trades on Little Rubber Guys and with Justin from Weirdo Toys.

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UPDATE!

So, I won a few more of these guys as parts of lots in a recent Ebay bonanza (December and January have been good months for Madball hunting!).
This first guy is probably my favorite out of all of these ping pong guys. A ton of detail but not muddy like Slobulus and well sculpted. He's a bumpy skull with a pig nose and a disgusting centipede crawling on his face. The teeth are very reminiscent of Skull Face but other than that he's a pretty new spin on the skull ball idea. Not to mention that he's got a bat on his butt! Maybe he's some sort of gross skull head taxi that takes night creatures to their seedy destinations.

Next we have the standard Argh rip off. He's well scuplted for how small he is but nothing new. Yawn. However, both these guys have stamps on their rears! A "PG" in a circle and...gasp...names! Turns out our vermin infested friend is named Trog (this name delights me), while our Argh wannabe is named Boo. Boo-oring is more like it. You're friend is way cooler than you, Boo.

All searches for "PG Toys" are fruitless. Unless, family friendly toys are your idea of a good time. Anyway, I'm into these guys despite Boo's lack of motivation to be innovative. Trog rules the day!

Merry Christmas To Mike, and To Mike a Good Night!

Hey dudes, this is just a preview of some stuff I recently found myself while shopping for other people. It all arrived 2 days before christmas! Those Bizarre Balls were an excellent score, and will probably be my next post. The water squirting Oculus was a sweet gift from a person who follows this blog in Australia! And that little suction cup Swine Sucker was an ebay purchase. Sorry to keep this short, but I'm gonna go watch Gremlins for the 4th time this season, hope your holidays are gross and yucky!!

Small Round and Out Of Control!

"Still...No Comment"

Ok buds, this week we have another mystery set I scored on eBay...and they're tiny! As much as I love the full sized rip offs, the tiny bouncy balls are probably my favorite because everything is cooler in miniature.

The seller had a bunch of these and said that anyone who purchased them would get a random six, so I'm not sure if this is a full set or not. When they arrived I was surprised at how detailed they are for being 1" in diameter.
Here's our lineup, and it's a pretty handsome group, if you ask me. First off, there's the fake Dust Brain, but with bulging eyes and a really pristine grin. I like his Christmas colors! He's followed buy a mutated gorilla of some sort with a gnarly overbite. The twisted flesh around his eye and the jagged irregular teeth really get me. The next two friends look a little familiar.
They're almost exact replicas of these tiny Japanese dudes I wrote about a while ago! The only difference is the color, size and lack of pencil hole at the bottom. Buck Tooth Terrance and Yellin' Meemie make me wonder if this entire set is just a redux of those pencil toppers.
Bringing up the rear, are these amazingly monstrous twins. This guy looks dangerous, like a Critter. I really like his bug eyes, which seem to be a signature of this set, and his fangy mouth. I'm not really sure what the symbol is on his head but it does look like something that would be on a M.U.S.C.L.E. figure, furthering my Japanese theory.

Anyway, I wish I could tell you where I got these and forward you the link to the eBay store, but it was so long ago that my history has erased it. Since they're nameless and have no manufacturing info, this post is especially useless. Oh well, sighhhhh. If you can find 'em, get 'em, cus they're neat.

Something Weird This Way Comes

"Dissatisfaction Guaranteed"

Hey boils and ghouls! It's been a very long time since I updated this disgusting blob of a blog. A lot's been goin' on since August. I had a show at Benna's Cafe (20 drawings of monsters inspired by D&D Monster Manuals), I went to Romania with Jeanne to hunt for Dracula, and had a bunch of last minute freelance work. Anyway, I'm back now with a second cool post about Weird Balls!

We've already discussed (or disgust) Mel Appel's unsurpassed dedication to knock offs in a post about the giant sized Weird Balls. A quick recap, TMAC (The Mel Appel Company) not only copied Madballs and Super Madballs, they also had a Garbage Pail Kids-esque trading card series, a M.U.S.C.L.E. style little rubber guys line and even a WWF inspired action figure set. I think it goes without saying though, that their attempt at fake Madballs was by far their most inspired moment. Not only did they manage to create their own stable of vile characters but they even delved into football shape before TCFC (Those Characters From Cleveland) got around to it.
Aside from the toys themselves, the packaging for Weird Balls was also top notch. A drippy logo, putrid slime colors and similar blisther packaging helped this gross group seem legit. While Madballs went for clean drawings (clean line work but still gross stuff), the Weird Ball drawings are looser and grimey, reminiscent of Mad Magazine (and Tales From the Crypt) artist Jack Davis. TMAC also realized the value of the art itself, allowing kids to "own" the art in trading card form. This is a big plus for me, since i love the drawing and design part of these dudes so much.
There was no stone left unturned...Madballs packages said "Freaky Fun For Everyone"? Well, Weird Ball packaging has about 5 crude slogans and boorish phrases (not including the ones on the trading cards!). Their marketing technique is to highlight their production flaws, knowing kids love stuff that's cruddy and half assed! "That's right you won't be satisfied with our stupid unoriginal toy...what're you gonna do about it?" Any connoisseur of awfulness, such as Ren and Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead, will let you know, the worse the better.
Let's check out the first group of dudes here, the traditional round guys. First up is Shrink Head, a guy that I first thought was a half-ruined android, but it turns out he's a dessicated zombie-type thing. His skin is all wrinkley and shriveled and his skull is showing through in parts. His upper lip skin does kinda look like a Burt Renolds' mustache but his red bulging eyes make up for any lack of creepiness his faux facial hair may have caused. The second guy here is Sewer Face. He appears to be a Muppets-type purple monster with a slimey, pus-caked nose. He's maybe the least defined out of all the Weird Ball, because he looks like a ball of clay that someone rolled up in their hands and then painted yellow eyes on. He's cool but lacks details. Snot Nose is the third roundy and probably my favorite of all. He's a giant ball of boogers with a bulgy eye and buck teeth. Where his other eye should be is a gaping socket filled with maggots! Great!
Here's where Weird Balls get really innovative (as far as monster shaped balls go!). The football shaped dudes. Wart Hog is the hideous Frankenstein on the the left. His stitched shut mouth, plentiful warts and bulging blood shot eye are super gross. His friend Spit Ball Louie has the counterpart bulging eye with a really nasty heavy lid and some sort of mustard slime oozing out of his goofball mouth. This is also where things get weird. I have no idea where this guy came from. He's obviously a Weird Ball (he's stamped with the Mel Appel logo on his hinder) but the packaging has his name listed only as Spit Ball and he's round. I would've thought that there was just a packaging error but I've seen pics of the round Spit Ball. I also don't know about a second series, but perhaps he's from that. If you have any insights into this mystery let us know!
Lastly, is my favorite of the oblong nerds, Worm Skull. He's one of the better sculpted and executed of all the Weird Balls and a pretty cool stylization of a skull. When I reviewed the giant version of him a few posts back I mentioned how I thought he would look better scaled down and you can see in that comparison photo how he looks much better tiny.

Sooooo.....Weird Balls are probably my favorite of the Madballs rip off family. They took the Madball formula and ran with it. They were definitely copying but they were creative enough to make their own characters, sculpt them well and up the insolence. If you can get your hands on some of these guys, go for it! They're pretty hard to come by, but I think there's one up on eBay right now. Again, sorry for the delay, expect the next post soon!