For all of those joining me for the first time, welcome to the Return of the 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown here at Branded in the 80s! I had a blast last year, so again I’m counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. All of these monsters come straight from my vintage animation cel collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.
Today’s spooks are so much ghosts as they are physical manifestations based on dreams that are under the control of one of the Ghostbuster’s coolest villains, the Sandman! These guys hail from episode 7, Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream…
I have to admit that I’m a sucker for skull-related iconography. It has to be one of the basic building blocks of a human’s fear, mixing both the finality of death (how else are you going to see a real skull) and the mysterious unknown inside each and every one of us. So whenever I stumble upon something creepy, imposing and with a cool skull thrown in for good measure, I quite easily fall in love…
I think I also really dug these two because they remind me of two similar villains from my childhood, General Kael (from the much underappreciated Willow) and Warduke (from the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon and toy line)…
Come back tomorrow for another Real Ghostbusters monster animation cel as I count down towards one of my favorite on Halloween day!
Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the Return of the 31 Days of Monsters countdown, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck, and I’m on the Facebook as well.) If you’d like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year’s Halloween blogging event…
