Today’s Mutant Monster knockoff Mad Ball is named Green Multi on the Five Below website, but any Mad Balls fan knows exactly who this is — it’s Slobulus, just reincarnated as one of these glossy bouncy-ball freaks. Slobulus is a classic Mad Ball who shows up all the time in official and unofficial lines.
He’s a booger monster who’s often the butt of a joke, hates being the butt of a joke, and absolutely cannot tell a joke. But don’t mess with him — the dude can snort out snot hands. Fuck around and find out, I guess.
This is classic Slobulus all over: green skin, popped-out eyeball, boogers everywhere. He doesn’t have any hair here, which the real ones usually do… but knockoffs often skip that detail. Honestly, as a Mutant Monster he’s got a bit of a baby face, and it’s kind of cute. And of course he’s sporting the exposed yellow brains that at this point feel like the official hallmark of the Mutant Monsters line. On Green Multi they look infected — which, for a guy like him, totally tracks. You just know if he had legs, he’d be wearing a pair of grubby solid black sneakers. He’s that guy. I can practically smell him coming.
Today’s Mutant Monster knockoff Mad Ball is listed as Gray Multi on Five Below’s website… which is a pretty wild name for a guy who’s mostly blue, but whatever. Gray Multi is a very direct knockoff of Repvile. Repvile is a reptilian monster who, after years of being a boogeyman and scaring kids, learned about Swamp Thing and decided swamp-life was the way to go.
For whatever reason I always wanted to call him Cretin. He just looks like the mascot of an early 90’s punk band in ball form. You can practically see him painted on a drum kit or slapped on stickers the band hands out after shows. I’d have absolutely stuck him on my school notebook and then immediately gotten made fun of by the kids who were “cooler” than me. Man, I do not miss those days of never being able to do anything right according to other kids. Regardless, it would’ve been a cool sticker — and it’s a cool Mad Ball design.
His Mutant Monster incarnation is pretty spot-on. A little more smoothed out than the official one, and of course featuring those exposed yellow brains that might just be the Mutant Monsters’ signature trait. These guys seem to be more in the bouncy-ball lane compared to the foam official Mad Balls, and that thicker coating gives Gray Multi a shinier, wetter finish than Repvile ever had. I don’t mind it, but it’s definitely noticeable. It’s really cool seeing this design again as a Mutant Monster. I genuinely hope this little line keeps going — I dig it
It’s far past time I take a look at Mad Balls here on the site. Like a lot of kids in the 80s, I loved gross things — slime, Garbage Pail Kids, and of course Mad Balls. I’ve picked up various gross-out toys on and off over the years, and Mad Balls have always been a constant because they’re just freaking great.
When I got my most recent batch, it hit me: I’ve never covered them on Zone Base. What the heck? Time to fix that with a look at the new Mutant Monsters balls that have been popping up at Five Below and in Target’s Dollar Spot. The Mrs. grabbed me three of the six currently available… and I’ll absolutely need the other three. These are awesome.
Mutant Monsters are seemingly unlicensed knockoff Mad Balls, basically copying older official designs. And look, I don’t mean to come on too strong here, but… knockoff Mad Balls? Inject that straight into my veins.
They don’t have official names, so I’m going by what Five Below uses — just color descriptions. Weirdly, I kind of love how plain that is. From here on out, I’m just talking about each ball individually. Consider this your required preamble. Moving on.
Orange is one of the more unique Mutant Monsters, leaning closer to an original design. I say closer because it’s clearly playing off Alien with the facehugger-like creature latched onto its head. There was an official Mad Ball with that gag in one of the Horror Series lines, so it’s not totally new… but this version leans more into mutant/alien territory, with a green creature gripping a red head. You might think it has blonde hair in the pictures, but nope — those are exposed yellow brains. Yellow is an odd choice, but honestly? With the rest of the colors going on here, it works.
I’m also not sure why it’s called Orange when it skews more red, but hey, that’s knockoffs for you. The color isn’t even consistent — some spots are lighter, some darker. The monster itself has three angry, bloodshot eyes, and the sculpt reminds me of something you’d fight in classic Doom or Quake. Actually… anybody remember Bio-Freaks?
Orange is a really neat looking Mad Ball — or Sad Ball, as knockoffs are sometimes called. These seem to be more bouncy-ball style rather than the usual foam of the official ones, complete with a glossy finish that makes him look a little moist. Which is perfectly gross.
Want to play with some scary toys this Halloween? Horror House by Zuru Smashers is here just in time for the spooky season. The Mrs and I picked up one of these recently and played with it after a thunderstorm left us without internet for a few hours. As you can see in the video above, you follow an included map and work your way through the coffin's contents. You'll assemble your monster while digging through all sorts of slime, floam, and kinetic sand. There's also assorted insects, stickers, and monster keshi to be found! It was a lot of fun and I want to try one of the mini sets as soon as my local Target stocks them. Frankly, I wish they sold just packs of the keshi as I'd love to just collect all those. Zuru Smashers have done that sort of thing before, so here's hoping.
I've been a fan of Treasure X since discovering it a few years ago. Admittedly I haven't kept up with it as much as I'd like to, but have always appreciated what they're doing. The newest series however, wow, so awesome. Monster Gold follows the pattern of digging through a variety of clay and potions to find a figure and treasure. The figure is a hunter that got lost finding the treasure himself! I love that odd little fiction. This time the figures are various monsters and the treasures are wonderfully monstery as well. As usual there rarest treasure is a gold dipped piece, a spider in this series.
This past weekend the wife and I exchanged spooky gift bags. A tradition of ours during the Halloween season for a little extra fun. She put a mini monster and a monster coffin in mine with some other spooky treats. Treasure X is such a neat line, she usually includes some in most gifts for me. It's hard not to like... for me anyway. The mini monster is a basic sized figure in a small coffin. Inside the coffin is a spider-webbed bag full of floam intended to be the spider webs and eggs. diffing through the stuff finds various parts. Once freed from it's sticky tomb, you've got your hunter and treasure! I got Invisibling (pictured above) and the gold spider! First pull and I got the rare treasure! It's name is Bling Back Spider btw.
The monster coffin is a more involved affair. It's much larger and a lot more messy (check out the commercial below). First off you take the attached crowbar off the coffin lid to open everything up. Under is a spiderweb bag full of floam containing monster eyes and a bug. Also are two packets of potion and a suction cup.That's all sitting on a removable tray. The tray is sitting on a paper spider web layer. Mix the two packets of potion in a cup of water and pour it on the spider web paper. After a minute of fizzing and bubbling the monster inside the coffin RISES UP! I got Count Goldula, a blue rockabilly vampire. There's also a specimen jar containing a brain.
Remove the monster from his coffin, take the crowbar, and BASH HIS HEAD IN. No really, you straight up break his head open. Inside is... THE TREASURE! I got another Blingback Spider! Two rares in a row. Neat! Afterwards, the brain from the specimen jar goes inside the head now acting as a button to open the monsters jaws. The jar is now where the hard won treasure is to be displayed. That suction cup from earlier? It attaches to the lever inside the coffin to reuse for later rising from your tomb action. Those eyes? Stick them in the monsters head. What if you get multiples? The figures (both large and small) can exchange parts for new monster creation! It's encouraged in the pamphlet! Exclamation point!
There's also an extra big lab set with even more to do, it's in the video below. Treasure X has a way of turning blind bag toys into a game and that's pretty fun. The new Monster Gold series is just the right thing for a Halloween party. I know with the pandemic lot's of folks are still nervous taking their kids out trick or treating, I can see a Monster Coffin set providing some spooky fun over some webcam Halloween parties. It's a combination of Mad Scientist and blind bag that I never saw coming. Man, what if they made...
Dollar store toys can be an odd thing. Some items seemingly get reused in various discount lines. The Neba Neba Vacuum toys, I think fall into that category. I swear I have that skull. Neba Neba Vacuum is a simple slime toy (neba neba means sticky) that's been recently found at Daiso stores in Japan. I'd been recently seeing it pop up in my views and not to long ago one of my favorite YouTubers covered them (that's the picture above's source).
They're little weirdo characters with included slime. By squeezing the toy, you can either suck up or squirt out the slime. It's not a totally new thing, but silly fun to play around with. As you can see the assortment ranges from spooky to silly and gross. Of course my attention is on the spooky ones. I swear I've got the skull one from another discount slime line. Honestly it's the box art that's got my attention so much. Just look at it, it's majestic! I'd love a sticker set of these guys. The spooky guys are just right to pair with your Ghostbusters or other figures that might find themselves in such a predicament. I'm thinking the perfect pairing for Battle Tribes action.
Between the various monsters of the post movie toys, The Pretenders, and a few un-produced concepts, somebody at Hasbro/Takara clearly was taking cues from the spookier side of things. It's not just Transformers either. Masters of the Universe introduced the Evil Horde, who took the army of Halloween decorations concept of He-Man's villains to new levels. Hasbro had the Inhumanoids, Tonka had the Supernaturals, Kenner had Ghostbusters, and Mattel introduced Mad Scientist. Movies like The Monster Squad and Teen Wolf were popular among kids. There's a bunch of other examples, but I think you get the my point. Clearly, I wasn't the only kid in the late 80's into monsters.
Check out the attached commercials above and the print ad below for the Pretender Monsters. Hasbro's clearly selling the monster shells above the robots. The very top commercial is the Italian ad. Notice how they're selling the Monster aspect super hard with slime oozing off the already gross rubbery skin. Then you get the awesome monster hands ripping apart Scowl's shell to show the Transformer robot who also turns into a monster inside. I particularly love the scary Monsters logo at the end of the ad. I swear they were copying Mad Scientist ads a little here, and good on them.
The second ad is the American one and it's not very different, though the monsters are presented without slime, monster hands, and scary logo. Not sure why, they made for a better commercial and Hasbro was clearly selling the monster aspect. Both have that great original animation with Pretender Starscream (sans shell) lowering them into the vats of goo to create these new Monster Pretenders. I truly love the original animation made for Transformers toys around this era. Not only because the show was in reruns at this time, but it's pretty great looking. Maybe Hasbro was trying to not looks so much like Mad Scientist here, even though the shells do match up design wise.
I really wish the Monsters would make a comeback. A cool team of Monsters that made for a great combiner, whats not to love? Considering the amount of slime, monsters, and generally gross toys out on shelves you'd figure Hasbro would jump on the bandwagon again with new versions. I'd figure anyway. Mostly because I want that to happen. So very badly.
Smacks is a pretty good cereal, but I can't lie, it takes a good prize inside for me to get a box. I don't have to explain how badass the glow in the dark (swoon) Mad Scientist sticker set was. I've already expressed my appreciation for Mad Scientist here before, but man what a great toy line. As an adult I still love it's imagery and just looking at this ad for it just does it for me. Too gross, too yucky, too perfect.
The stickers in this set was pretty great. If you'll notice in the below back of box art, you'll see the paper insert with the perfect backdrop for bringing these freaks to life on. The stickers were an assortment of parts, enough to make three monsters with. Either with matching parts or mismatch together some real weirdos. There's no wrong way to be a Mad Scientist.
One of the coolest toys of the late 80's was Mad Scientist by Mattel. Everybody loves slime and incorporating it with monsters was perfect. The Monster Lab was one of the most popular sets. Essentially you'd take a plastic skeleton, cover it in flesh, and create your monster. Then you murder it by dropping it in a vat of chemicals that melted the creature before your eyes. You gave the monster life and then took it away in morbid fashion. That is fantastic.
Just take a look at the Japanese version of The Monster Lab's packaging. I'm a fan of Japanese logos, kanji, and Asian horror as is. The straight J-Horror visuals of the box are just wonderful to me. In Japan the line was called 'The Laboratory of Mad Dr. Fear'. It's pretty hard not to love that. Unless you're some sort of monster, and we kill those horribly in this laboratory. Suddenly that names pretty amazing huh?
Another popular set was the Alien Dissection kit. If the commercial above doesn't clue you in to it's amazing nature, let me explain. You have an alien filled with internal organs and slime. Then you rip it out. That's it. The play feature of Mad Scientist was torturing monsters to death in violent and horrible ways. Dammit that's awesome. There was other play sets of varying horror and grossness. Though the last of the line was only released in Japan and worth taking note here. It's pretty great.
Ma-Ba Zombies were a sub-line that followed the initial play sets with tiny rubber freaks and monsters. The figures were hollow with the intention that you'd fill it with slime. Squeeze the monster and watch it ooze out. Pretty simple, but simple usually works the best. There were a few series of these on their own outside of the main line. Mad Scientist was a collaboration between Mattel and Bandai that often gets swept under the rug in most peoples memories. I suppose a toy line of gross monsters that you effective murder violently would be a touch too much for the more lame members of society. I do see various homages to the monsters (mostly the alien from the dissection kit) in the occasional designer toy though. I'm pretty jealous of those lucky kids of the late 80's in Japan. I'd love to have had Ma-Ba zombies.
Manglors were one of those weird toys that came along at what was seemingly the right time with Master of the Universe and other fantasy toys making big bucks at stores, but somehow fell by the wayside. Maybe it's my anticipation of new stuff in the Godbeast store tomorrow that's got me thinking about cool monster toys. Slime based toys seem to be all the rage with kids right now (thankfully, I love slime and am glad to see it in the spotlight again) and can't help but to think Manglors would be a hit right now.
Whenever Manglors come up, the subject of the 'pull apart' feature comes up and how it never really worked so well as the gooey substance dried up or didn't stick together well. That's probably one of the pitfalls that made Manglors a hard sell back in the day. But I'm sure if packaged a as cheap toy like slime, folks would be more patient with a toy that's not going to last long. Another thing that occurred to me was what if instead of toys, Manglors got a new life as gummy candy? I can't count how many times I've ripped apart a gummy and stuck it together with other gummy candy. A bear headed snake, that's magic and I still do it. Who wouldn't like a gummy devil or dragon?
