September 25, 2007:
Every year, I hatch grand plans of hosting a Halloween party. In my head, I organize the horror DVDs that would play in the background, the food that would be served, the many ambiance-boosting uses of plain white bedsheets, so on, so forth, blah blah blah.
These plans never come to fruition because I have no friends and nobody loves me, but it never seems to keep me from buying at least one or two Halloween "party items" that are of absolutely no use to anyone who isn't inviting people-in-costumes over on an October Saturday night.
Still, if I wanted to at least halfway believe that this might actually be the year that I host a Halloween party, how could I pass by a "Skull Fountain" in a store aisle and not buy it? I wrote last week about how I buy a lot of Halloween stuff purely to cover it on the site, but this thing was 35 bucks. That's just slightly above the spending cap for a Halloween Countdown entry. No, I really wanted to use this thing.
Who wouldn't? Judging from the photo on the giant box, it's a punch bowl with a skeleton centerpiece who sucks up and spits out fruit juice through his eye sockets. In truth, the skull only gets to claim that he does that because he only slightly technically does. The Skull Fountain didn't end up working quite as well as that irresistible box graphic foretold, but owning a skull that even just slightly technically spits fruit juice from its eye sockets is better than owning none at all.
The setup is easy enough. You attach a plug-driven pump to a bit of wiring inside the skull, carefully wedge the skull into its spot within the bowl, and you're done.
You can technically fill the bowl with any beverage, but when you're dealing with something like this, you obviously want blood-colored thirst quenchers. An ancient packet of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid got the nod, mainly because it was the only giant-sized packet of Kool-Aid in my collection, and outside of filling giant, novelty punch bowls, I'm not sure what anyone could do with a packet of Kool-Aid that big.
The Skull Fountain looked a bit more impressive on the box, but most products do. I'll say this: It's definitely large. The skull head is life-sized, and the bowl could probably hold 12-13 liters before filling to the point where the skull would sound like a cartoon fish if he attempted to speak. On the more negative/neuortic side, I've always had a problem drinking from cheap plastic party bowls such as this, as they always seem somehow contaminated. Fortunately, my intentions had slid more to the realm of "perennial indoor water fountain" than "party night serving bowl" by the time I remembered that.
You can't see it in the photo above, but there's a plug running out from underneath the skull's head, over the back of the bowl and to an outlet. I gave it a test run before adding any liquid, and I can confirm that you should never do this. The pump hidden in the skull's head makes a series of sounds reminiscent of 4,000 noisy birds arguing over bird sports teams, and that's probably not good for its gears.
I had to mention that, because speaking as a proud Skull Fountain owner, I know firsthand that there is nobody on this planet who will be able to buy a Skull Fountain and not be just a little bit tempted to turn it on without any punch in the bowl. It's sort of a "don't press the red button" thing.
Finally, it was time to let the beast show off its talents.
I don't know what I was expecting from the Skull Fountain, but it wasn't quite that. The Kool-Aid dribbled from his eyes like juice from a pierced lime, and I certainly wasn't getting the impression that this was just cause to yell out the window for the neighbors to come have a look at "this awesome thing I bought."
Much of the disappointment has to do with how even the reddest Kool-Aid seems clear and watery when it's being pushed around drop by drop, and though a little red food coloring may have helped amend that, it's just as true that the picture on the Skull Fountain's box set my hopes way too high to ever really be delivered upon.
Scroll back up, and look at the box. What the hell is that stuff pouring out of the skull head? It's not even liquid! They used some kind of thick, weird toy slime to illustrate its abilities, and then fucked with the slime's contrast in Photoshop to make it seem even more impressive. There is no way for anyone to live up to the standards set by that box. Had they just shown a picture of the thing not in use, maybe I wouldn't have been so disappointed when I turned it on and saw two tiny streaks of Kool-Aid reenact the classic tale of a fresh bottle of ketchup turned upside-down.
On the other hand, if you're going to have a party, you're going to need a punch bowl. No party in history has had a right to call itself a "party" without one. Even regular punch bowls cost over ten bucks at the minimum, and for 25 dollars more, I guess it's worth it to add an electronic skull that hums while bleeding whatever we want to drink.
Perhaps sensing that they'd taken too many liberties with the awesome-but-doctored photo on the box, the Skull Fountain's creators saw fit to throw us a bone, or in this case, a bone-themed plastic ladle. That's enough to knock it up a point, but its final score still isn't high enough for me to recommend the Skull Fountain to anyone but the select few who have prayed bedside for such a thing to exist.
Looking at it again, I wonder why they chose to make the skull dark gray, when red liquid would've been so much more visible flowing over the more traditional bone-colored skull. Is it because Kool-Aid and other red drinks tend to leave an unappetizing trail of dried dye wherever the land, and it's just harder to see that over a charcoal gray? Just another question to keep me up late at night.
