September 21, 2004:
"Grosser Than Gross" party favor sets are my new favorite things in the world. Essentially a bunch of timeless and familiar gags miniaturized and given some neat upgrades, the "party favors" moniker was just the company's way of justifying selling a small pile of fake puke, roach guts and trampled rats for six bucks. The items are next to worthless when judged singularly, but presented together in a great, spooky package with all sorts of disgusting imagery and word balloons, yes: "Grosser Than Gross" party favor sets are my new favorite things in the world.
What kid wouldn't go wild for an assortment like this? Everything from slime toys to injured animals and beyond, all tucked neatly onto a blister card featuring the same mad doctor in the lower left as seen on the art for Dr. Mad's Vending Machine Blobs. I can't believe I've seen Dr. Mad in two different places from two different companies in the span of a few weeks. By January I'll be eating potatoes shaped like Dr. Mad's head.
Each set (there's a few of these; I'll be reviewing another soon) comes with four different vile toys. They're small -- some too small to be anything resembling effective in a prank -- but the quality's kept high and the paint jobs were done by painters who were this close to caring about their work. The six-dollar price tag is steep, but not completely unreasonable. I'll assign a value to each of the four items as we run through Ôem, based mostly on personal bias and whatever numbers I feel like typing.
Sticky Tongue: We've seen a lot of slime toys here on the site, and while the Sticky Tongue is a bit on the small side, it's incredibly realistic with all the right tones and a sandpaper texture on top. Whereas the gamut of slime fingers, ears, noses and eyeballs look positively alien, this body part looks like it was ripped straight from the mouth of an albino dwarf named Charlie Disgruntled.
Value: Can't in good faith go higher than fifty cents, but just know that I really wanted to say seventy-five.
Oozin' Roach: Man, rubber cockroaches sure have come a long way. Only the truly eagle-eyed would notice the roach's secret talent until the right moment: when you squeeze his disgusting bug belly, green guts literally ooze out in a magnificent illustration of roach-squishing. It's gross, just like they claimed. The internal slime is more solid than usual; it's also a thousand times oilier, to the point where I felt criminal not masturbating immediately after handling it.
Value: A buck, solid. Most novelty shops would probably charge more than that, and if we're trekking into the mall, I could see the Oozin' Roach pulling in 2.99 at some of the more ridiculously overpriced shops that cater to the East Side crowd with a mix of salmon roe caviar and rubber bugs with spill-out guts.
Fake Puke: My many childhood years spent with Johnson Smith instilled a permanent sense of wonder surrounding fake puke, a gag item I've owned dozens of times in varied colors, shapes, sizes and materials. I've had plastic, I've had rubber. I've had yellow with green chunks, I've had meaty brown with rubber pimentos. I love phony vomit. It is my totem gag gift.
The Grosser Than Gross' Fake Puke is TINY -- way too tiny to pull off any magnificent feats. It's perfect if you want a twelve-inch action figure to look like it just upchucked a can of soup, but don't expect to fool Pa into thinking Farmer Mark drank sour goat milk again. Made of a dismal yellow rubber with assorted brown-and-red chunks thrown in for gruesome measure, Fake Puke is a perennial fave that isn't connected to Halloween anywhere near as often as it should be. This Halloween, bust out the play vomit. It's time.
Value: Another fiddy-center. Wish I could go higher, but pieces of fake throw-up with a diameter of less than two inches cannot possibly be worth more. I really hope I don't have to use the word "vomit" again today.
Ratty Shoe Accessory: Well, this one's different. If there ever was a season to prance around with a fake dead mouse attached to your shoe, this is it. The flat portion of the toy has an adhesive strip to allow for massive shoe-stickage, so once you pick out the right setting and sneaker, you're fully prepared to shock the world by insinuating that the murder of innocent mice is fucking hysterical.
Value: Gonna give another buck to this one. It's too big to be a vending machine toy, so it's gotta be worth at least a buck, right?
And thus, we've got a total value of...three bucks. The party favor set costs six bucks, so we're halfway to a justified purchase. Can I add a bonus buck to the assumed value for the inclusion of Dr. Mad on the packaging? Would anyone mind? Is anyone still reading? I've been trying to lose you since the roach masturbation line.
- Matt (9/21/04)
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