Things That Go Bump In The Night

On Halloween, I like to take a moment to reflect on what the holiday once was for me.

Watching horror movies with my mother all day leading up to Trick Or Treating. Every year wearing a silly funky smelling Friday The 13th hockey mask and having my parents drive me around door to door to get candy in my McDonalds bucket, while my sister sat in the car frightened from the one time experience she had going to a friend of the family's door and them jumping up from behind her. Playing pretend with some of my favorite horror characters with friends, yeah I was a young horror buff,  like Michael Myers, Jason, Chucky and Freddy Kruger. Then there was also the one time I went to a Halloween party just to play football outside and act like some of my favorite players from the 90's.

I know that last one doesn't sound Halloween-ish, but if you grew up then, you knew there were some scary players on the field. It was a different time in the game. A time where the game was played and not throwing out yellow flags for tapping a Quarterback on the shoulder. A time when big hits and unexpected plays weren't controlled by reviews and referees.

You had chilling names like Ronnie Lott, John Randle, Randall Cunningham, Steve Atwater and Derrick Thomas that got under your teams skin. I bet players and teams are still having nightmares about facing these guys.

In 1994, Coke celebrated some of these Monsters on the field with a special Monsters Of The Gridiron set. 31 of the NFL's scariest were monster-ized on cardboard and given names for their monster. I have just recently started adding some of these frightening pieces to my collection as I don't have a full set yet.

The set was distributed at a special Super Bowl card show in Miami but also in 12-packs of Coke.

 In this photo you see players like Jesse Tuggle as a Tarantula and Sean Jones as a Ghost.

Or Tom Rathman as Psycho or Maro Coleman as a Cobra and Ray Childress as a freaky scarecrow

Steve Atwater is The Bandit coming for your footballs....or just your candy.

 Derrick Thomas is right behind you as an Attack Cat!

It's a fun off-the-beaten trail set of cards you just don't see everyday anymore. It stood out to me as soon as I saw it. I just need to finish putting together the rest of the set. I am also curious how many of you collected these, still have them or now want to collect them.

I hope all of you have a Happy Halloween. Please be safe if you are taking your kids out and make sure to keep an eye on them and check their candy afterwards. You simply just can't trust everyone today. If you are going out yourself, please make good decisions especially if you are going to a party and have to drive home afterwards. And if you are just sitting at home handing out candy and cards, please be considerate and kind to the kids who come to your door. Set a good impression.

Also make sure that Steve Atwater isn't around, you don't need The Bandit running away with your stuff.

The Origins Of A Cardboard Addict: Halloween

**insert music from Halloween as Michael Myers approaches....

I watched a ton of Halloween movies growing up. My mother would rent 7 movies (VHS tapes because that's how we rolled) for $7 for 7 days. It was a great deal and gave us plenty of entertainment for a week.

So my mother would fly over on a broom to the Horror Movie section and pick out a bunch of different films. From Night Of The Living Dead to Childs Play to Halloween to Friday The 13th to Killer Nerd to IT to well, all. We watched every VHS tape in that store. I can't remember all of the  names as some of them were the cheap flick films, but would remember the films once they start playing today.

And when I say growing up watching these, I was roughly 6 when she put those movies on for me to watch with her. It was my Sesame Street I suppose.

Despite my age, I wasn't ever scared of the films. I actually grew to liking them and wrote stories and acted as some of the characters with my friends. No, not in a "I am going to kill you" way. Growing up when I did, you could watch any type of movie and play any type of video game and not act it out. We weren't idiots. We also didn't have YouTube to be idiots on for "hits".

Enough with me ranting on today's generation, I could go on and on by the way, let's go back to the Origin story.

Growing up my favorite holiday was obviously Halloween. Candy and dressing up as some of my favorite characters, awesome.

We had some great masks back then. Some were crispy plastic while others had this odd candy corn scent to them and were made out of rubber. My parents were always cost efficient when it came to picking out a mask, so every year, I got to wear the iconic hockey mask of Jason Vorhees. You know the hockey mask wearing, knife wielding killer from Friday The 13th.

When I was at Walmart recently, I went to the mask section to snap a pic for this post and noticed how sad the masks have gotten since I needed to wear one.  There wasn't a lot of variety and most weren't even Halloween related characters. Isn't that what the holiday is all about?

But, seeing that Jason mask brought me back to those Trick Or Treating days. We would only go to a few houses of people my parents knew and one we didn't. More on that one in the next paragraph.. One of them I will always remember. It was an older husband and wife couple, she would always open up the door and serve the candy while her husband hid around the corner outside, played dead on the porch or was there to scare you in some other way. He got me a few times. One year he scared my sister so bad she wouldn't ever go back on that porch. She sat in the car and made me request the candy for her. It was funny for me, but scarring for her.

Another house we would always hit up, even though my parents didn't know them, was known as the "money house." They would give you huge handfuls of  change and full size candy bars. If that wasn't money I don't know what is. The only thing that could have been better would have been if they handed me some sports cards. Which I never once came across.

I don't remember the age I quit Trick Or Treating but pretty sure it was long before I was a teenager. It seems today's generation has changed the way you do Halloween. Many don't even go house to house anymore, my wife and I gave out candy for five years and had a total of five kids in those years. Many do this Trunk Or Treat thing when you decorate your trunks and have candy out of the back of them while setting up at a park with many other families. Doesn't seem the same to me. While many others do Harvest Parties or get together not based on Halloween. Or the parents just buy the kids candy and stay home.

It may also depend on the area you live in as some of you may notice things differently. This is just my perspective from where I am.

Every year I think about handing out candy again and adding in some card treats, but after many years of no kids coming I figure it would be a waste of time.

As for my Halloween now, even I have changed. I no longer watch scary movies since I got with my wife. I do watch some Halloween movies but we will see those tomorrow's post. I also don't write horror either anymore despite having a book long word document that I almost sent to presses I did years ago. It still sits on a pin drive. However, the one thing I do still enjoy is my candy. Every year we buy a big bag of chocolate and I also snag a bag of candy corn. Not everyone's favorite, but I do enjoy a little.

As for my mom, she still watches horror and gore. I didn't expect that to change ever. My sister watches it with her now instead of me.

Where I live now is not very far from where I grew up and Trick Or Treated. Sometimes I am very tempted to test fate and see if that guy still hides on his porch on Halloween or if he has moved on or passed on. It would be more scary knowing he has passed and still on the porch.....

Scary Cardboard

Just for fun being that it's Halloween, I thought I would post a card of a character I would find scary if it actually existed. (you may have seen this card before on The Card Bin)

I think Ultron would be the ultimate choice here for me.

 

Can you imagine having him on the loose? He is the ultimate Supervillian with superhuman levels of strength, speed, stamina, durability, and reflexes. He would be pretty much unstoppable in our world unless The Avengers existed to. Who knows even if they could stop him in the end? Scary thought.

By the way, in case you are wondering what this card is, it's a 2015 Upper Deck Marvel Dossier #12 ULTRON Foil Parallel. Despite how scary Ultron would be in real life, the card of him isn't. It's actually pretty sharp with the gold/rainbow shine.

What character on a card would you choose that you would find scary if existed? Let me know in comments and tell/show me which card it is and why you chose it.