Today’s monster mask ad is a preview of sorts for a much larger post coming later in the month. For kids my age that grew up during the 80s reading Fangoria, Distortions Unlimited was probably the company most known for their gory and crazy masks. I could never afford any of the masks or props in the ads, but that didn’t stop me from cutting them out and pinning them up on my wall as a wish-list of sorts. Below is the earliest Distortions ad I could manage to dig up. It comes from issue #33 of Fangoria published back in 1984…
I’ve just recently become reacquainted with Distortions through their reality television series that just started airing on the Travel Channel called Making Monsters. It looks like they’re more in the business of making monster animatronics and props for haunted houses these days, but it’s cool to get a chance to peek behinds the scenes.
As for the ad above, I really dig the Slugger mask as it really reminds me of the aliens from Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste (which had a profound effect on me as a 10 or 11 year-old kid.) Though these are all really cool, the company would be producing some much more detailed and amazing masks just a few years later. For those interested though, it looks like you can still get a couple of these masks direct from Distortions…
Anyway, come back tomorrow for more mask tomfoolery, and if you’re looking for a ton of Halloween content all through the month of October, make sure to stop on by the official Countdown to Halloween site and check out the list of participating blogs for 2011. You’ll be glad you did!
