I've posted about my rubber monsters many times on the blog, but besides the usual 'Teachers Pets' and rubber insects and dinosaurs, there were other much smaller toys that I used to collect. About an inch long, they would often appear inside gumball machines, stuck to a card, showing what you could win inside one of the little plastic capsules, along with cheap necklaces, keyrings, whistles and other tat. However, when I lived in Liverpool, when I was about 7, there was a sweetshop at the top of the road, which sold other novelties along with the sweets. On the way to school, a few doors down, I wet in with my pocket money and saw in the glass case a little try laden with little rubber monsters - probably about 1p each (standard Teachers Pets were about 5p - pre decimal). So every day, would run in, choose a couple from the tray and go into school to show my friends. Although most of the monsters from the photograph above have survived to this day, the little tiny one have long since disappeared.
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| Image via Ebay |
However, back in 1974, I saw a game advertised on Christmas tv for something called 'Screech' by Parker, which involved a plastic owl and a small bag with the very same little rubber creatures in it! Although it immediately went on my xmas list, I never got a copy of the game, or ever saw it in a shop.
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| Contents of the Ebay item box |
As always ebay provided an image and Board Game Geek, a description to jog my memory.
I was however amazed to find the little blue bag complete with the 16 little rubber monsters in it just this week, so I grabbed it. Each one was as I recalled them and even more interesting was the fact that one or two are based on their larger cousins, the Teachers Pets.
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Teachers Pets themselves came about from a series of Topps cards, called Ugly Stickers - based on art by Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood and Norm Saunders. See here for the full breakdown:
https://whosoutthere.ca/2020/01/07/tentacle-tuesday-ugly-stickers-uglify-the-world/
Lovely find Wote!
ReplyDeleteLooking at your childhood photo with a glint of pure envy in my eye, the younger you certainly had an impressive menagerie of those rubber critters, Bill. Screech is worthy addition to that legacy. Brilliant find!
ReplyDeleteHoly Synchronicity Batman!
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about those rubber creatures I had as a kid and the possible pop culture references that inspired them. Specifically, I had a one eyed plant creature with two fronds poking out of it's head. It looked a bit like the Iris character here, but without the arm. I thought at the time it was inspired by the Frodis alien plant in The Monkees final episode. I even had a smaller knock off of this knock off which probably came from a Christmas cracker!
I'll draw a picture of it and see if any of the Moonbasers can help me ID it!
Sounds cool Looey! Send it to me at ygdrassil email - Bill
DeleteI get it, "Scream and Scream Again!" I had a horror magazine at the time that movie came out. I also had at least one of those rubber toys, the squidly one. But speaking of synchronicity and Batman, I had a Wally Wood article ready for my Artist Retrospective series. I stole one o fyour photos for it, but I already had the larger picture of the sticker. Again, funny that we were each featuring that particular monster! https://themichlinguide.wordpress.com/2023/12/14/artist-retrospectives-xvii-wallace-wally-wood/
ReplyDeleteHey Baron - is that your blog? excellent work! That particular monster was always one of my favourites! Heres the original post in case you havent seen it:
Deletehttps://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2011/04/little-blog-of-horrors.html
Super post Bill!
ReplyDeleteI like owls.
ReplyDeleteThe monsters remind me of the Lindy Loony Repulsive monster kits of the 1960s. Not the sort of thing you were likely to see in NZ.