Waterlogged Weirdos!

"Squirts In Multiple Directions"

So this week's dudes aren't great but they're pretty fun. I feel like after that Zombie Zoo post a few weeks back, you deserve cool stuff for the next few weeks to make up for it. These idiots are all water squirting hollow rubber balls. We've got two sets, Monster Spitballs and plain old ordinary Spitballs. One large, one small but only one deadly.

Monster Spitballs are up first and they definitely win the best packaging award. Entertech here, went for a classic monster motif, with a Frankenstein and a Dracula ball. Apparently Entertech were making all sorts of water based toys in the 80s like motorized water pistols and stuff! Thankfully, they moved into the monster ball market with these.


Look how cool that cover is! Dracula and Frankenstein frolicking together! OH MY GOD THEY'RE HAVING SUCH A GOOD TIME! They're smiling! I like to think that they were on some sort of monster retreat at an ancient Transylvanian castle to build creature character, complete with trust exercises. "Entertech: Making Better Monsters".

OH GOD THE BACK IS JUST AS GOOD! Look at that graphic. Like you couldn't figure out how these worked on your own, but it's really cute. Anyway, onto the balls!


The Frankenstein is pretty cool but a little more cartoony than the Drac. It reminds me a little of that weird 60's cartoon stylized Frank Monster Ball from before. I like the purple bags under his eyes and his weird wrinkley mouth! The best part however, it the fact that the water squirts from the giant half stitched wound in his head!

The Dracula is pretty cool too but in a different way. It actually kinda looks like Bela Lugosi! It's really well sculpted and designed, especially for something this small. It makes me even more mad about the Zombie Zoo idiots. They were so much larger and so much worse. Guh!
Moving from the 80s to the 90s we come to these regular style Spitballs. Well Spitball. I only have one. And it's a pretty cool one. It's named 20/20 and it's a giant Oculus Orbus influenced eyeball thing. The back of the package is full of drawings and slogans and other fun stuff including MORE instructions. Why is it so hard for people to figure out how to use these things?!

There were only four of these, a shark, a bomb and a crying baby were the others. A shark is pretty cool but the other two? WTF? Lame, guys. That's the same kind of lame I would expect from Super Bouncing Weird Balls or Foul Ba-.....OH.....MY.....GOD....Landard. I KNOW THOSE IDIOTS! THEY ACTUALLY MADE FOUL BALLS! OOF! Those were so horrible! But...dare I say, these are pretty good? So, what's the deal?

Oh, that's the deal! They finally make a monster ball that's half decent and it's poisonous! FULL OF LEAD! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Maybe it's some monster ball assassin trying to snuff me out for talking smack on their other toy lines? But that would mean that it was made in the 90's in in preparation for my late aughts betrayal! Like The Terminator!

Well, now that I know my arch-Madball-enemy has tried to assassinate me let's get this over with and look at this stupid ball. I mean the disembodied eye is a classic monsterball design. And this one is filled with details. All those lines in iris, and the three dimensional veins! I will say that it's weird that the actual eye ball has a brow? That doesn't make sense!

But it is cool! Look how gross those giant veins are in the back! Ew! It's almost as bad as that goddamn Lanard logo. Idiots.

And because you've all been so good, you get a family portrait! Well actually, its so you can see scale.

In conclusion, I'd suggest these guys to anyone. They're fun and well designed. Ok maybe I wouldn't suggest the Spitball because it's full of lead but the other ones, totally get 'em!

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!