Little Blog of Horrors

My 'Wheres Wotan' post recently scared up some info on the background behind the rubber figures I use as my avatar. Woodstock supplied a great link to a site celebrating the work of Norman Saunders, prolific illustrator and book cover artist. Amongst the many works of Norm Saunders was 'Ugly Stickers' for Topps bubblegum. These were a range of seriously ugly and downright scary monsters drawn in gory and livid colour. So successful were the stickers that they were expanded into a range of rubber monsters - 'Funny Uglies' and later 'Teachers Pets'. These were either sold in open counter top boxes - in my case from Woolies - where you could pick your own or in bubblegum machines trapped in a plastic capsule and distributed at random. 

Above is a photo of a smarmy and self satisfied me, aged about 7. surrounded by my teachers pets sat in the yard of my old house in Dingle, Liverpool. The little train must have been that particular days purchase and nothing to do with the monsters.. Ive still got almost all of the creatures today, in various states of disorder. One or two have fallen out of the box over the years and others have lost an appendage here and there, but after seeing the Norm Saunders site, I finally managed to match up the survivors to their original stickers.