Friday, June 24, 2011

Blurp Balls and a sad story



Story time! I had Croaky Bugchuck from this set and loved him, but one day we were snowed in, the toilet backed up and there was no plunger. My parents saw him and spent hours talking me into letting them use him as a makeshift plunger to unclog the toilet, promising to buy me a new one. It did work and it was desperately needed, but parents never seem to understand how toys are only temporarily produced and sold. I never saw another blurp ball again. I still have Croaky's fly, though, and treasure the dumb little thing as one of the neatest looking little bug toys in my collection.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Danielle said...

Omigosh! I remember this commercial so often for some odd reason throughout the day, and for the longest time, I thought these were referred to as 'Madballs'- a very similar toy line of much longer notoriety. I don't know who ripped off who, or if they were just two brother-franchises made by the same exact company...or maybe Blurpers are the distant cousins of the Mads?? Who knows?

11:14 PM  
Blogger Lee said...

Wow. That story is just...wow.

2:47 AM  
Blogger Trish said...

That is at once the saddest ending any toy has come to and yet the most appropriately disgusting ending the creators of Blurp Balls could have hoped for.

I remember the little "Phoot!" sound effect (at the .17 mark) like it was yesterday. And my local paper ran an article about how these toys were (in the parlance of TV Tropes) The New Rock and Roll. Fun times.

11:27 AM  
Anonymous Scutigera said...

That is pretty sad. I had a Sharky Skullsquirt toy when I was little, and it was a lot of fun.

Still, as toy deaths go, I suppose saving the family plumbing is a pretty noble end.

10:19 AM  
Blogger strasbourg said...

I'm sorry, as someone who loved his dinosaur and monster toys as a kid SO MUCH I feel your pain, but in the retrospective this is still one of the most hilarious stories I've ever heard...

as a PLUNGER... Parents can be so cruel :)

6:14 AM  

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