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Showing posts with the label Toys

Boggled by Boglins

Last Octoberween, we took a campy nostalgic stroll and created some creatures for 5e Dungeons and Dragons (and a hidden Risus one) out of Blurp Balls . There was a significant amount of “family friendly” macabre-influenced media in the '80s and early '90s, as we mentioned previously. I do tend to revisit some of that media around this time o'year, and that might be a discussion for a later post. Like last year, I want to focus again on the "gross" toys that came out in the time period . Other than the Blurp balls, there were a few other horror-lite themed toys in my collection as a kid. Most, if not all, have likely been donated and hopefully found their way into the hands of some lucky kid instead of a landfill. I don’t think I ever owned any Madballs , but another toy that's held out in my mind are Boglins. So let's work again to see how we might transform an '80s toy into some tabletop RPG inspiration! If you don’t remember them, Boglins were esse

They Cajole, You Roll... Blurp Balls!

Horror, in the 80s and early 90s, often worked its macabre influence on the era's more “family friendly” media.  During thus time period, we saw the likes of Goosebumps (er mer gerd!), The Dark Crystal , and blockbuster movies like Ghostbusters . There are cult classics like Goonies (which helped inspire the name of this very blog) and Little Monsters with Fred Savage. The line blurred further when some movies were adapted to cartoons specifically for kids, like Beetlejuice and The Real Ghostbusters for example. With movies like Child’s Play inverting the forumla, it should be no surprise that this mash-up of horror and "kid thing” bled offscreen into toys, as well - many of which were childhood favorites. There were the Garbage Pail Kids, My Pet Monster and Mad Balls, just to name a few. And any of these would make a fantastic conversion into...you guessed it, tabletop RPG monsters! One of these toy lines that really stuck with me were Blurp Balls. So, for this Halloween-ad