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.
To kick off the second official week of the countdown I thought I’d share one of my favorite villains from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, episode 90 “The Grundel”!
Though he might not be terrible scary upon first inspection, this creep has got some dastardly evil up his trench coat sleeves. Grundels are like an infection, kidnappers of all that’s good about youth, both literally and metaphorically. They feed on the angst and anger of young children, seducing them with the freedom to do whatever they want in exchange for their souls…
After possessing a child, they’ll stick close like a shadow and compel them to do bad things, tightening their grasp until the child starts to physically change into a Grundel themselves. At this point the child will be asked to turn another child, like an infection spreading evil through the population!
This episode has some great animation in it as well as some references to Alice in Wonderland that are fun…
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…
