It’s kind of weird, in posting all these Trend scratch & sniff stickers I’ve sort of been freaked out by some of the sticker designs. I don’t think I get freaked out immediately by Anthropomorphization, but there’s something about certain designs that just sets me ill at ease. For instance in the stickers I’ve posted so far…

…these six really kind of freak me out. A stack of pancakes with eyes, that weird goblin-like Spearmint sticker, a football with eyes and a mouth made of laces, the all singing and dancing corn and toothpaste, the hamburger licking it’s bun and patty lips, these are all kind of weird and unsettling images. When I uploaded these I was trying to think of similar stuff that I’ve seen in this vein. What came immediately to mind were two scenes from 80’s movies, Better Off Dead and Young Sherlock Holmes, where claymation, anthropomorphized food sings, dances, and even attacks a hallucinating young Dr. Watson.

Here’s the scene from Better Off Dead…

John Cusack’s character has succumbed and gotten a job at a horrible burger joint where he’s left to clean and lock up for the night. In his crazed boredom he daydreams a sequence where he goes all Dr. Frankenstein on a huge patty of beef, bringing it to life, which we get to see ala the magic of Claymation to the Van Halen tune Everybody Wants Some.

The burger hops up and sports a Eddie Van Halen-esque red and white striped guitar and starts singing and, um, well, dancing and stuff. It’s creepy.

In the Young Sherlock Holmes scene, which is way more disturbing than the Better Off Dead hamburger, we get a young Dr. Watson who has been infected with a hallucinogenic drug and is face to face with a bunch of pastries in a graveyard that spring to life, I believe also made possible though the miracle of Claymation, though since the film is widely known for its (of the time) amazing ILM CGI sequences, it might as well be blamed on that.

At first it’s pretty innocuous as the pastries come to life like so many half chopped up broom shards in Fantasia…

…but then we’re treated to the amazingly disturbing barrage of "Twinkie the Kid" looking pastries committing pastry-iside in Dr. Watson’s mouth.

Then it gets even worse when two larger pastries grab a third and shove it down Watson’s throat, shudder, it’s making me squeamish as I write this.

It’s kind of funny actually, because in thinking about it, I really do think this YSH scene is to blame for my aversion to some anthropomorphized food items. My fiancee Carrie also has this aversion, though I don’t know why since she hasn’t seen YSH, at least I don’t think so. There’s a pattern of Bounty paper towels out right now that I mercilessly buy when she’s not doing the shopping just to bug the piss out of her…

For some reason, I guess maybe since I’m doing this to someone else, I don’t find the paper towels as disturbing.

There were these bottles of some weird fruit drink that I picked up in Florida a year ago that had some amazingly disturbing imagery on them. They were super sized fruit with these weird eyes and mouths. I couldn’t find a picture of them, but I believe the artist that was responsible for them was Saxton Freymann who has a series of children’s books with anthropomorphized fruit images that I have to believe is seriously fucking up the minds of today’s youth. Here’s an example of his work…

I mean, jesus, what the hell did the that sweet little apple do to that orange to piss him off so much. C-reepy. Now imagine drinking a fruit smoothie drink with this on the bottle, zoinks.

On the other hand, I do tend to find some anthropomorphized food items kind of cool, like the California Raisins for instance…

…not to mention the Branded in the 80’s mascots, Clumpy and Jr. Salty(squared).

But then there’s stuff like this weird cereal box (via Grickily at A Sampler of Things)

…that just really messes with my head.

All in all the whole thing is just kind of weird and goes to show how narcissistic humans can be. I mean why are most of out creations so human like? Robots, aliens, the front of cars, etc. Of course I think there is also a term for this, seeing the human form everywhere. Just weird…