Even though I’ve been a little bummed about this year’s crop of Halloween goodies and the lackluster displays at the various stores, there have been a few interesting new (or newish) products on the shelves. In the same way that I’m happy to see Ghost Dots popping up each season, I’ve also been happy to see Quaker bringing back Cap’n Crunch’s Halloween Crunch each year…
For 2010 the Cap’n has ditched his mummy inspired wrappings of previous years in favor of a new lupine make-over which is heartily welcomed! I’m hoping this theme continues because I could totally see him with a Frankenstein’s Monster make-over…
In the absence of my yearly Halloween Jones Soda fix, the Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up company has stepped in to save the day with some fun redesigns of their mini-cans…
Though these are a much tamer variation on the cans Jones has been putting out for the last four years, I’m glad to see them pushing their annual Halloween designs forward a bit. These also have an interesting feature in that portions of the cans change color when chilled. Basically the characters’ eyes and teeth change, but I’ll warn you that the effect takes forever to happen. We had the cans chilling in the fridge for 10 hours before we noticed anything (and our fridge tends to freeze liquids.) Also, don’t get attached to the color change because as long as it takes to happen, it disapears in a matter of seconds once the can is removed from the cold…
Probably my favorite Halloween themed products this year are the most coincidental in nature. Lego recently introduced a series of blind-pak collectable mini-figs that feature all sorts of cool designs not found in any of their regular series and sets. Among the crowd of surfer dudes, clowns, Spartan warriors, and disco Stu’s are a handful of neat classic monster designs. Thanks to Justin at Weirdo Toys I’ve managed to find both the Vampire and Witch mini-figs from the second series. There is also a zombie available in the first series and a rumored mummy in the third.
While looking for the mini-figs I also stumbled upon this Lego constructible game set called Monster 4. Sort of like Tic-Tac-Toe or Connect Four, the game features monster and Halloween themed pieces including a green monster, a skeleton, a jack-o-lantern, a devil and a werewolf. These are perfect fodder for creating your own custom monster mini-figs.
