Doll-A-Day 2023 #282: Monster

   Well, we're coming up to Halloween soon. Emma and AJ have been watching what they are referring to as 'the modern horror classics', like "Halloween", "Nightmare on Elm Street", and "Friday the 13th'. Some they have thought are total crap, and some they have found to be better than they thought they'd be. As for me, I'll have none of that slasher stuff! Give me the old horror classics, like "Dracula", (The 1931 version, with Bela Lugosi. Even the  1974 "Bram Stoker's Dracula", with Jack Palance. But not the Christopher Lee ones. I saw some of those as a kid, and these days I just can't take it!), Frankenstein, and The Wolfman, (The original with Lon Chaney Jr.). Ken and I watched The Wolfman a few nights ago. (Although, I have to laugh often during it, as I wrote a parody of it years ago, and everything reminds me of my jokes. I kill me.) So since we're so close to Halloween, I found a figure amongst the 'sell stuff' a while back that goes along with the season. He might look familiar, but he isn't exactly who you might think he is.

I mean, it's pretty obvious who he is supposed to be. But the fact that the card only says 'monster', tells you that this is an unlicensed "Nightmare on Elm Street" 'Freddy Kruger' figure. (Note that the pink surrounding the package is some Barbie and Ken clothes underneath him, and not part of his packaging!)

 

  It has all the usual Freddy Kruger stuff, which even I know, and I haven't even seen any of the movies! That includes his fedora and scarred face, striped sweater, and bladed glove.

  This figure, which stands about 6 inches tall, was part of a whole line of rip off characters.

Some of the rip offs are a bit less direct than Freddy.

  There's no branding on the package, just 'Made in China'.

  I thought the casting for Freddy was weird when the movie first came out. Prior to being cast as Freddy Kruger, Robert Englund was best known for playing the gentle alien 'Willie' who sides with the Earthlings when his fellow aliens try to take over Earth and eat the inhabitants, in the original "V" television series. Willie would never kill anybody!

  The weirdest thing about the Freddy Kruger movies is that they were based on the actual true events of young men from Laos, Cambodia who died in their sleep. They died when their hearts gave out in their sleep, in what was referred to as Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome, or SUNDS. "Nightmare on Elm Street" creator Wes Craven read four articles about the occurrences of the deaths of  Cambodian refugees who had died in their sleep in very similar ways. One was a young boy who believed he would die if he fell asleep, by being killed by someone chasing him in his dreams. He would stay awake for days, fearing to go to sleep. One of the deaths was of a man who was found to have a coffee maker in his closet. Most of the deaths, including dozens in Cambodia, were young  men between 20 and 30, and 98% of the deaths were between 10PM and 8AM. You can read and article about the movie's basis HERE. Pretty weird, huh?

  See you tomorrow for a more traditional doll!