1. Mr. Game Show
Can you imagine opening the game closet and this ghoul is behind the door waiting for you? Just writing that sentence sent a shiver down my spine.
I never had a Mr. Game Show, but it can't imagine it was any fun. I think it's safe to imply from this commercial that Mr. Game Show comically insults your family during gameplay. Who doesn't want to spend a Saturday night seated around the kitchen table watching a demonic Guy Smiley spit sarcastic insults at Grandma?
Let's get things straight right here and now, Game Show: the first time you put me down, as you say, I'm putting you in the ground. You think I can't crush your grinning plastic skull with one hand? Try me.
I think it's funny that Mr. Game Show thinks he is the "most advanced game system in the world." I guess that's how it is for toys though: one day you're the most amazing advance in board game technology and the next you're sitting battery-less on a card table between an old TV antennae and some Boz Scaggs records, a ten dollar price sticker affixed to your paint-chipped pompadour.
2. Operation
The game itself doesn't creep me out--though the worrisome concept (Surgery is so fun and easy, even a child can do it!) makes Operation's ultimate creepiness debatable at least--it's the sound, the gut-churning buzz when your pincers touch Cavity Sam's robotic innards, that makes every orifice on my body pucker simultaneously, every muscle spasm in unison, and everything with cringing capabilities cringe in congress. Just thinking about it makes my teeth ache.
3. My Buddy doll
You ain't my buddy, pal! To be honest, I didn't really have a beef with My Buddy before the introduction of Chucky, the doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer from the Child's Play film series, into my life. In fact, I don't even think I'd seen Chucky good and proper before I started to develop a healthy fear of the largely innocent My Buddy doll who sat quiet and smiling in the shared bedroom of the two brothers I used to babysit every Friday night when I was in eighth grade. I never expressed my fear to them, after all, I was their babysitter, I was supposed to be their fearless protector against monsters, of both the closet and under-the-bed variety, the vanquisher of the inevitable nightmares brought on by my allowing them to stay up an extra half hour to watch Are You Afraid of the Dark? And here I was, shaking like a newborn puppy, pants slowing filling with urine, because My Buddy was sitting in a rocking chair minding his own business. "Doesn't this thing frighten the shit out of you?" I desperately wanted to ask. Surely I wasn't the only one. I didn't trust that face, those freckle-flecked cheeks, those dead blue eyes.
As an adult I'm a pretty big fan of Chucky (I own all of his films, even the supremely shitty ones), but I still hate My Buddy and his stupid face.
4. Boglins
Here's the effed up part: I always wanted a Boglin growing up, but my parents wouldn't let me get one. Sure, I used to pal around exclusively with a knee-high plastic representation of my favorite Gremlin, Spike (He even appears in an infamous Easter photo), but I was not allowed to have what is essentially a puppet resembling a lump of excrement with teeth. Sure, Mom and Dad, that makes perfect sense...I'm being sarcastic--you ruined my life!
Nah, I had plenty of weird-ass toys and in retrospect I'm glad I was denied my very own Boglin. Know why? The eyes. Those eyes, man! Brrrr...creepy. I've seen enough YouTube videos of people messing around with Boglins, moving those eerie, human-esque eyes all around, to know I don't want one within 50 feet of me. Speaking of which...
5. Ventriloquist dummies
I know, Neal Schweiber, they're called figures. I don't care what you call them, just keep them all away from me. As far away as humanly possible. Seriously. I cannot stand ventriloquist dummies. They make me physically ill. And why do they always have to be so mean to the hacky comedians that give them life? You think dummies would be a little more appreciative.
I'll never forget attending a camper show with my family (jealous?) and actively trying to avoid a ventriloquist and his little demonic buddy who were making the rounds on the showroom floor. I couldn't even enjoy the campers and motor homes, man! That stupid dummy ruined the whole camper show experience. I have never been to one since. I'm too afraid of who, or what, I might run in to.
6. Any old baby doll
You see them all the time: languishing in the bottom of the toy box at a daycare center; sprawled out on the guest room bed at your parent's house; nude with a dented head covered in violent crayon slashes, winking with it's one good eye from the top shelf at a thrift store. Old dolls: is there any toy sadder or creepier? We don't just throw aborted fetuses all over the place--no matter what they try to tell you in Christian school--so why are discarded baby dolls left out in the open to inspire nightmares? I'm at the Raleigh flea market with my wife and I have to walk by a table covered in naked, dead-eyed baby dolls? My wife doesn't need to see that. We're trying to have a special day and you've got gross, naked dolls all over the place! And why are they always nude? We don't just leave butt-naked babies all over the place. Put a gown on that thing, man! Sheesh!
