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.
So continuing the trend of one super goofy entry on the Monster Countdown (last year it was Mr. Ham), there was one cel that I just couldn’t pass on picking up. Today I present the vacuum cleaner…FROM HELL!
Has anyone ever seen a cleaning apparatus that was so evil? If my dog runs away from our Hoover like her life depended on it, how would she react to this monstrosity? Probably a lot like Slimer here…
This dusting agent of doom comes from episode 86, Loathe thy Neighbor, which is sort of a take-off on the Addams Family and the Munsters with maybe a little bit of the ‘Burbs thrown in for good measure. Basically, a family living in nowheresville New York hires the Ghostbusters to bust a haunt in their house so that they can get ready for a family reunion party. This family, the Morbids, would do quite well living next to that creepy house on 1313 Mockingbird Lane though. The father is a loose sketch of Gomez Addams and the mother could understudy Morticia. The kids are equal parts cousin Marilynn and the weird hunchback uncle from the ‘Burbs. If I’m not mistaken, I believe there is also a weird reference to Better Off Dead in the episode. Anyone want to guess what it is?
Tomorrow’s monster is also from this episode so stay toon-ed!
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…
