Miscellaneous monster post: Drawdo!

One of my all-time favorite video game bosses is a pretty obscure one. "Drawdo" appears with little to no explanation in one of the final dungeons of Wild Arms 2 on the playstation:



I dig the "Shapeless Slime Monster" title, and I also dig just how loosely they're defining "Shapeless Slime."







See, apparently "Shapeless Slime" means "Melted Pile of Moray Eels with Dinosaur Feet." Naturally, he has only gross, toxic attacks. Optochemical Bomb (kickass name) inflicts almost every status condition in the game!

This guy may very well be my favorite Muck Monster design of all time.





Sorry, Guys...five heads are better than one. And Moray Eel heads are better than not Moray Eel heads.

Used toy run

I recently discovered a magical little "collectible toy store" nearby; a dark, cramped little place resembling the interior of somebody's garage. Somebody who spent decades hoarding toy cars and action figures of every imaginable variety. For just a few dollars, I came away with a wonderful little armful:



The tusked insect from "Sectaurs" was the first thing I spotted that I had to take home. I wanted this particular one when it was brand new in the 80's, and just never got around to getting my own until now. We also have a Stretch Screamers mummy from Mcdonalds, that axe chicken thing from Quest for Camelot, a mystery green monster, a second PROFESSOR, and most impressive of all, a Dungeons & Dragons bendable "Deadly Grell," from the same line as my beloved Carrion Crawler. I already owned a Grell, but you don't pass up an opportunity to own TWO Grell. You just don't.



The mystery monster is pretty neat. He'd be cute and cartoonish if not for the wickedly dangerous-looking teeth. He's hollow like a finger puppet, and has positively no markings.



The second PROFESSOR is missing his BASE FOR GUYS, and shame on you if you don't know what I'm talking about. I really never thought I would see one of these again; they were part of a generic, nameless dollar-store toy line I came across only once, back in the late 90's.

My Halloween

Yes, it's the end of December and I'm just now catching up my site blog to my Halloween.


My Pumpkin this year is a Surinam Toad or "Pipa Pipa," with froglets I sculpted out of Play-Doh.


My friend Jesse carved a nice Haunter (Pokemon)


My other friend Dylan carved an amazing Slimer after I drew him on the pumpkin in pen!


Everyone's pumpkins! I also carved the vertical mouth with lots of eyes, which was kinda lazy and random. You can only see the mouth of my frog, on the far left.



Finally, costumes!

Believe it or not, I have almost never made my own costume or found anything to actually DO for Halloween. It was usually a matter of having no friends, so the most I'd ever do is put on a store-bought mask and go trick or treating. This year I wanted to finally be creative, so I spent two days wiring together a plastic hat, some window screen and over 70 rubber bugs. I also fashioned a sort of "tie" out of other bugs and wore insect puppets on my hands; just a giant swarm of arthropods wearing people clothes.



Jesse put just as much work into a scarecrow costume, sewing a burlap bag into a head and hands and stuffing all his clothes with straw, suffering horrible itchiness and allergies to get the "authentic" scarecrow experience.

Dylan, on the other hand, spent what must have been at least 20 hours on his costume, even with several people helping out. They collected bark from paper trees (the lightest bark available) and tons of spanish moss which they hot-glued to a sweater, overalls and a wire frame for the head. You probably can't tell, but he also had tiny red LED's for the eyes, taken from a light-up rubber ball. His joints could not bend (he had to lie flat in the car), he could barely see, he could only walk at half normal speed and he nearly passed out from the heat...but the constant screams of children and the parents stopping us for photos were all worth it.

Yes, despite our ages we went out trick or treating...or attempted to, anyway. Less than one in five houses were giving out candy...not for lack of Halloween spirit, but EXCESS. I have never, ever in my entire life seen so many people of all ages walking the streets of an ordinary suburb. It wasn't part of an event, there was no party or parade or anything, they were ALL out trick or treating or escorting trick or treaters, to the point that almost nobody was left to hand OUT the treats! No big complaints really, since this made it more like a massive outdoor Halloween convention.

>o[[[>

Toygasm

Back in July, my friend Jesse woke me up to go to the most amazing depository of toys I have seen in many, many years:



Here he is browsing one wall. It's actually just a storage unit, but it belonged to a kind old man (I never met him, but Jesse had on several occasions) who spent his entire life amassing thousands and thousands of toys, records and curiosities. He was claimed by Alzheimer's last year, and wanted people to enjoy his collection, so his son is selling everything for even less than it was originally bought...way less.

LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:





I was overwhelmed at every turn...seemingly every toy line from every decade was represented in some small part, and the most insane part of all? "Most of it was snapped up already"...I don't even want to know what that could have been if this is what I saw today.


Here's what Jesse bought:



Here we have an original Boglin, still in the box. They sold this to Jesse for SEVEN DOLLARS. If you know what these are, you're probably Jealous.



This "Robot 17" was only around eight dollars, still in its box, still fully functional (it fires the missiles and projects a scrolling martian landscape on its chest!)...according to the internet, it's worth $200. There was a whole table of robots like these.



$10 in the box, and his pull string still works!




Now, here's what *I* bought:



A bag of dinosaurs including the elusive Dungeons & Dragons monsters!



A Mars Attacks action figure! They had TONS of Mars Attacks toys, which are highly rare and collectible. I passed these up back when they were new, so this is my first toy from the line. I figured I should start out with one of the basic aliens.



A giant, bendable biker-cockroach from CAPITOL CRITTERS. I remember this cartoon. It was not very good and a huge flop. I didn't even know there were toys!



He's got bendy limbs, a hollow rubber head and a foam rubber body.



This is part of Modulok, a villain from She-Ra. He originally came with dozens of pieces you could mix and match, but this is a fairly decent minimum to get for just a dollar; these are both of the heads he came with.



Grawww!



OPTIK! I had my eye on this guy for years when I was a kid, and never got him until now.



SWARM! The spider-man villain made entirely of bees in a cape!

....And finally....





MARS. ATTACKS. STRING. LIGHTS.

This is a product I would never even believe existed. I had no idea there was any Mars Attacks merchandise besides the action figures, let alone something you can put on your Christmas tree. These might already be among my all-time favorite possessions...and I'm itching to try them out with different color lights or perhaps the flashing kind.





.....EVERYTHING I bought combined? $30.

One of life's greatest accomplishments

This is the biggest slug I have ever met.

We always had at least seven or eight people (often more than ten) for our Otakon meet-ups, but this year only five core regulars showed up including myself, which actually felt a bit more fun and personal.

Here's some stuff I did and photographed:

Thursday - this is the early day where all you can do at the convention center is pick up your registration, a two hour wait just to get inside. I met up with everyone and we ate at ESPN zone, kind of expensive and not a good selection but we goofed off in the upstairs arcade for a while. We were seated there under the following gigantic thing:



Shaq as Godzilla and some other guy as Gigan! I don't know sports, but I do know monsters. I run bogleech.com after all.

Friday - first actual con day. After my friend Cait and I scoured the whole dealer's room, I watched "Big Man Japan," a live action Japanese movie with some amazing monster designs, definitely worth seeing if you're as big into creatures as I am, though not especially funny and fairly slow paced.



Here's some of the cosplay I recognized and loved:



The Dee Dees from Batman Beyond! In the series, Harley Quinn's crazy granddaughters.



This is a boss monster from one of the Persona games. Never played them, but love the enemy designs and recognized this from youtube videos. Bringing your own stripper pole is classy as hell.



GLISCOR! One of my favorite pokemon + decent costume + totally sexy. She didn't have time to make the claws, but I really appreciate that she thought to hold her hands like pincers.



I don't remember this thingy's name. It's from a recent video game called Blazblue.



Characters from PSYCHONAUTS, one of the most entertaining video games ever put together. I should've asked for a closeup of the homemade turtle, it was absolutely spot-on.



Cait behind a weighted companion cube. Cate went as the Pokemon Shaymin!

Saturday - this is the "big" day for Otakon. There was an early morning Pokemon get-together and Cate went as Shaymin. I took several pics but just uploaded the best few:



That mewtwo was possibly the most professional costume there. The girl who made it was really cute and mentioned her costume design website, but I completely forgot it.



This is about a FOURTH of the Pokemon who showed up at once, which were only about a fifth of the Pokemon at the con in general. Someday, it is going to be pokecon. Just you watch.



JYNX!



Cait is on the right, being adorable and holding her homemade adorable Shaymin plush with the only other Shaymin we found.

The Psyduck guy is HILARIOUS to me, because it's easy to pretend the guy's head isn't there and it's just Psyduck's face warping backwards.




Have I said before that I have a crush on Silent Hill nurses? Yeah, all of them.



THE MONARCH and Dr. Girlfriend from the Venture Brothers! While she didn't look as much like Dr. Girlfriend as a few other fans, the lady apparently made both costumes herself and their amazing quality puts her well above the rest of the VB cosplayers. You couldn't ask for better outfits for an officially licensed production...the Monarch looks like he came to life right from the show!



GIYGAS.



Later Saturday night, Mike and Ben took over an abandoned table in the art room and did five cent napkin commissions. I joined them and honestly had some of the most fun I've ever had at Otakon just drawing goofy doodles for around five people before we left. One girl paid in a pudding cup and a guy gave us a "tip" in squished brownies. He made them himself and they were amazing.

We then all went to "iron editor," which is where they give people some predetermined footage and they have to make an anime music video in just a couple hours. They hold little quiz games while they work, and I got called up entirely because I drew a shyguy on nintendo DS pictochat. Somehow I guessed an obscure anime correctly and won a free DVD, despite my layman's knowledge of anime in general.

Sunday - this is the "winding down" day where the con is only open until the afternoon. It's always a little depressing, but it leaves the rest of the day to just hang out and have fun with ourselves, which is what we're doing right now. We went to a pop culture museum for only $5 per person, basically just a really amazing antique store where nothing was for sale. This made me laugh:



Note the name of this.

On the way to eat, I did take my very final cosplay photo, another totally hot version of a personal favorite Pokemon:



WHY are they making all my pokemons hot?! I'm never going to see Tentacruel the same way again! Not that its name alone didn't conjure enough images.

I bothered this poor girl in the middle of a phone conversation and held up everyone else so I could take a shot, but when would I EVER see someone dressed like a jellyfish monster again? There's no telling! I love how her hair basically serves as the tentacles.