Grosser Than a Speeding Booger

"Freaky Fun For Everyone"

The revamp of the Madballs line in 2007 and the following rip offs (Squirt Devils, I Poppers etc) are what got me back into collecting these ugly monsters again. I kinda forgot how awesome those original dudes were. They were gross and monstrous but their simplicity is what made them amazing. Most of them aren't too complicated or detailed, they're just really well designed monster balls. It wasn't that big of a surprise because I had many of the ones that I've recently reacquired (and carried around until there was no paint left on them), but I never had the three Super Madballs. Sigh. Just the name evokes a feeling of awe and splendor. "Oh, you thought those little creeps were cool? Check these guys out...they're SUPER! Yeah you COULD gross out your little brother with this teeny tiny Slobulus, OR you could BE A MAN and SCARE HIM TO DEATH WITH FOUL SHOT!!!" Ok, maybe that's not exactly what it's like but whatever, you're no better than me.
As with Rude Ralph, I had NO IDEA how big these guys were or what they were made out of. I actually had more referance with Rude Ralph because I had at least seen him in stores when I was a kid. Again the scale shocked me. Check out Goal Eater with Skull Face there. These were actual ball size! Well, I guess Madballs were baseball size but these were like big ball size! ANDDDD I also had no idea that Super Madballs were INFLATABLE! They're made from the same material as a football or basketball. I thought from pics they were just larger foam balls (like Worm Skull) but it turns out they're pretty usable rubber balls. Well, usable until you get hit on the brow with one of Foul Shots hard rubber worms.

There are only three Super Madballs, probably because it takes a lot of Madballology and Scare Science to create one. AND they're harder to contain because they're big. If they formed some sort of monster ball union you'd be screwed.

The three that exist are all modeled after real sports balls. Goal Eater here is a soccer monster of some sort. He's my least favorite but he's actually been growing on me. I think it's mostly because he's a cool monster but not too gross. His design reminds me of My Pet Monster rather than a Madball. He's got a gnarly grin and some CRAZY eyes but there's not too much slime and only a few stitches. I guess he's way better than a plain ol' soccer ball.

Actually, even in the time it takes me to write this Goal Eater has endeared himself to me a bit more. I love his absurdly giant teeth and especially the broken one with the exposed nerves. That's pretty gnarly. And what the hell happened to the tooth above that?! it looks like he got hit in the face with an icepick! Being a Super Madball is rough business.

His caveman brow cupping his bulging bloodshot angry eyes are pretty neat too. I guess he may not be the grossest but he looks like he may be the meanest.

Also, all the Super Madballs have customized butt-stamps that say their names and brands. Just in case they get lost you can send them home to Orb.

Foul Shot here may not looks so good in pics..well, I was unimpressed when I saw him on the internet (oh I wish he had a Facebook page), but in real life this dude rules! It's as if someone killed a guy and tried to hide his corpse in a basketball, then that dude came back to life all messed up and wormy and then busted out of the basketball! I wish I could come up with some Crypt Keeper-esque puns.Both this dude's eyes are wrecked and basically unusable but the worm one is really really nausea inducing. It's a puckered empty socket filled with pink squishy looking worms! I think that alone wins this guy the Grossest award for Super Madballs, but the other eye is all bulgy, veiny and useless too!

His teeth are more sculpted in a more Ghastly comic book style than most other Madballs but I think it works. Oof and his nose! Or rather, lack there of. It's all bubbly in the middle for some reason?! What would that even be?! Zombie boogers? I bet that smells awful.

Last and most certainly not least, is Touchdown Terror. Hand's down he's the coolest of the three, being a combo monster, football AND missle! I wish I had this when I was a kid. He's so cool! He's got the angry and gross bases covered and covered well. His menacing maw and burly brow make him look like he'll attack the hell out of you if you even attempt to catch him.
Both his eyes are pretty intense but the one in the detail is nastiest. It's like Madball pink eye, or maybe he got punched and his eye got infected. One of the other tiny details that really disturbs me is the screws holding his shark teeth together. I hate the idea of a Madball dentist! He'd probably only have a saw, one of those old timey hand cranked drills and a GIANT needle that wasn't filled with anything. The last detail up there is the thing that really really grosses me out. The bumps on a regular football kind taper off and become warts or zits on his lip! Ugh, add a skin condition to the list of awful sicknesses afflicting Touchdown Terror.

In conclusion, these dudes are totally cool. Larger, more usable and more detailed than their baseball sized siblings, Super Madballs also hold up better over time. The paint on the one's I have is still intact and the only thing really wrong with them is that they don't hold air very well. They show up fairly often on Ebay and are totally worth the price they go for. Do it! And check out this commercial!

All Encompasing Rip-off Artists

"You Can Miss, Fumble and Strike Out!"

Weird Balls....where to start? For some reason the 80's saw an explosion of weird and/or gross-out products aimed at young boys. They ran the gamut of toys; there were trading cards (Garbage Pail Kids/Dinosaurs Attack), balls (Madballs), little rubber figures (M.U.S.C.L.E.s), larger action figures (Masters Of the Universe) as well as many many others. The Mel Appel Company (also known as TMAC) bootlegged them all in what was possibly the biggest toy coup of the 80's. Well, not really but it sounded cool didn't it?

They had a host of characters that they translated into about 6 different forms of toy. Weird Ball Wrestlers were their answer to M.U.S.C.L.E.s while the Collectums seem to be He-Man knock offs. The Weird Ball Trading Cards were a more gritty version of GPK. You can read about it more comprehensively at Toypedia.
What I'm mostly concerned about are the Madballs fakes. There were about six Weird Balls, the size and shape of Madballs and packaged in a similar style. Now, that's nothing new. Plenty of schmoes copied those things but Mel Appel went one step further. Like, when American Greetings made knee pads for skating and biking, TMAC made a bicycle seat covers. So, it's no surprise that when American Greetings produced Super Madballs (football and basketball sized monsters), there was a Weird Ball answer.

I'll hand it to the Weird Ball design team, while most d-bags were content to minutely change existing Madball designs, they went ahead and put a lot of effort into constructing their own original barf brigade. Even including some football shaped dudes scaled down to regular Madball size. However, when it came to their "Super Weird Ball" they kinda dropped the ball (get it?). On his own he's pretty cool, but if you've seen the smaller version of Worm Skull (I've heard the larger version called "Punt Grunt" but his packaging says "Worm Skull"), you know that this guy is just a scaled up version. Nothing new. It's also just more foam. The Super Madballs were actually inflatable balls.
I'm not gonna complain though, because I'm sure their versions were cheaper. As with Rude Ralph, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into with this nerd. I actually thought I was bidding on the regular sized Worm Skull when a much bigger box came in the mail (see above for brother to brother comparison). He was still "packaged" but that packaging consisted of nothing more than some shrink wrap and a sticker.
I do admit I like this nerd's design. He's a pretty neatly design skull that looks like he may have been the son of a skeletal pig that mated with a football. Ew, pigskins. I really like his cavernous eye sockets and beady little Amityville eyes. And obviously, those worms are cool. Worms are always cool. Except when they're in your egg cream.
His backside leaves something to be desired. A few bone-like pockmarks and one crack with one worm and a tiny bit of slime....snoooorreeeeee. It's a bummer to me that with a larger canvas, so many of the super-sized balls don't add more disgusting bits and details.
In conclusion, this dude is cool but I think he's much better smaller. There aren't enough details to make him worthwhile as a giant. However, he is a cool testament to the rip-off mastery of TMAC.

The Holy Grail Of Sadballs!

He's Totally Gross!

HOLY CRAP! This is it dudes, the absolute Crème de la Crème of fake Madballs. IT'S RUDE RALPH TIME! Made by Axlon around 1986, Ralph is a deluxe version of a Madball with the size and detail to make him extra disgusting. He makes noises, he's got hair, multiple colors of paint that are applied well and that horrible eye. Ralph IS gross like his tagline suggests, but in a different way than his predecessors. While most of those were monsters or surgically altered (stitches, cracks, etc), this nerd is basically a straight up ugly dude. Sickly colored skin, buck teeth, warts, pock marks, crooked nose, this dude is gnarly. For some reason I imagine him as British. Maybe it's the teeth. Does that make me racist? It may also be the British Horrid Henry books by Justine Fontes, that have a character with the same name.

I never had one of these when I as growing up, and this one came to me very recently as a present. The first thing that I noticed was how big this goblin is. I knew he was big, but I really didn't know how big because none of the photos I've seen of him have anything for comparison. So, check out Ralph and Aargh for scale. It's pretty insane. Awwww, they look like they may be related. Yeah, think about how awesome that family reunion would be. Just a bunch of scary heads rolling around making small talk about work and their yards. Would you need a chair if you were just a head?
While Madballs were made of soft foam and many of their imitators were soft inflatable rubber, Ralph is made of hard cast plastic. One thing you can notice from these profile pics that's extra creepy, is his gingery doll-like hair. I don't know if this was an intentional side effect or if Axlon was just going for detail and got disturbing instead. But it bothers me. Especially with the green hue of his skin. It's troll doll hair and that in of itself is deplorable, but this is such a massive quantity! Ugh.
You can also see all the wrinkles that make a cool pattern on the one side of his head. These left and right views also highlight just how comically crooked his nose is. You can't even see the honker from one side and when you do see it from the other, you notice that wart looks like a Boston Baked Bean! Maybe he's a troll or something. If it wasn't for his name I'd thing this was a lady and even a Baba Yaga head. The warty nose and wrinkley face are super witch-like as well as those awful chompers. From those profiles you can also see his suspiciously simplified ears. It's oddly dark in there, no? Well, look above to see how far those earholes go. This was another decieving part about his size. The package I got in the mail was large but light. I had no idea this was what was lurking inside.
The fine details are what make Ralph so nasty. A close up of his crooked teeth show how textured they are and that they're crammed into deep-red, squishy gums. And his tongue....ewww......cratered and rotten. I would hate to imagine what his breath smells like. If you look at the sides of his mouth you can see what appear to be freckles, but on closer inspection reveal themselves to be pock marks. Could he have been an acne riddled teen? Do Madballs go through puberty?! Maybe they're beautiful at first and then they go into a cocoon where they turn into the garbage monsters we know and love. Unless they had added stitches and slime there's no way they could have made this more revolting.
Now, we're at the pinacle of Ralph's grossness. All the other stuff was cool and super-sized but really, the eye is what you bought this dude for. You can PULL IT OUT! OK ok ok. So look at it first. It's huge, bloodshot and creepy. Now add the pulling it out part! If that's not enough for you, he makes four different noises when you yank on it. Since mine's a bit old, all the noises sound the same. Kinda like a general "arrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhh" sound. I think, theyre supposed to be a fart, a barf, a scream and a yell? I'm surprised it even works at all after 24 years but I can distinguish 3 different sounds! Don't overlook that while that one eye is awful, the other eye isn't there at all! I hope he can super-see out of that bulgy one.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the package with my troll head (which is a shame cus it's sooo rad) but you can check it out here.

In conclusion, if you can track one of these idiots down, buy it! I know they go for around $50 to $75 but, trust me, it's worth it. IT'S HUGE first of all. It's got those teeth, that matted hair, and that EYEBALL! Because it's made out of that hard rigid platic, it's not very functional but that's the only downside to Ralph. He's the Cadillac of Sadballs.

ps-If you're diligent, you can find one for cheap on Ebay. I've seen auctions close at $5 with one bid.