The Creepiest Thing: 2nd edition

This week The Creepiest Thing is …

Cabbage Patch Kids

“Snacktime” dolls

Anyone who was a child in the nineties, or above the age of two probably remembers these freaky little bastards.

If you don’t, chances are you forcibly blocked the memory out, as many of us are like to do with overly traumatic events. And if this is the case, I quite honestly can’t say that I blame you.

Dolls are, to begin with, already one of the most heinously freaky things on the planet. Since I was just a wee bit I’ve gotten the willies from dolls. Cabbage Patch Kid dolls are no exception, actually, they’re probably worse. I’m not sure if it’s their vacant, soulless eyes, their arms that are constantly outstretched as if to strangle you, or the fact that my aunt used to collect these horrible things and I had to, on multiple occasions, sleep in a room filled with them.

Whatever it is, they aren’t right.

Like really not right.

As if these satanic lumps of plastic weren’t already full of malice and God only knows what else, in the Fall of 1996 the brain trusts over at Mattel decided they needed to be even more evil. And so along came the Snacktime doll.



Apparently the idea of enabling a doll to chew was, for some reason, a good idea. And the greedy assholes over at Mattel responsible for this weren’t the only ones who thought so. Nay-nay dear Spooky-dos. Children all over the country saw these commercials and proceeded to browbeat their parents into buying them these Chucky”Snacktime” dolls for Christmas.

They were, in fact, the #5 best selling toy in the Christmas of 1996. Not in the Spooky Pie household, mind, this girl wanted an Easy Bake Oven.

So Christmas ’96 over 700,000 shrieking (with glee … for now) children opened up their Snacktime dolls. And for a short while, things were good. They catered to the bizarre need for kids to have dolls with bodily functions (I seem to remember there being a doll that also made bodily waste, how adorable.). Snacktime kids came with plastic stick shaped foods that were supposed to be carrot sticks and what have you, when said plastic foods were inserted into the dolls mouth it would “munch” on them and pull it into itself, to come out in its backpack.

That was all well and good.

But then, dear readers, things went TERRIBLY wrong.

THE DOLLS DEVELOPED A TASTE FOR HUMAN FLESH

I wish I was over exaggerating, which I guess, to a small extent I am, but not by much.

About a month after their release Mattel issued a massive recall of the dolls. Why?

Because 35 different isolated incidents were reported of children being MAULED by their Snacktime doll. Yeah, no kidding, and you thought Child’s play was just a movie. The doll’s chewing mechanism had no off switch, so once it started to devour something the only way to stop it was to practically destroy it. And the hair and fingers of little children seemed to be the Snacktime dolls preferred “snack time” food.



Multiple parents found themselves having to fend the attacking dolls off of their children. Since the mechanism didn’t have that pesky on/off switch, multiple children had chunks of their hair literally ripped for their heads as their parents tried to save them in true blue B-grade horror fashion.

One poor distraught mother found her child’s finger locked in the death grip of one dolls’ mouth, she tore the backpack of the doll off, she tried to beat it down, she couldn’t get the doll off of her kid. It wasn’t until a FRICKING POLICE OFFICER came down and “had to slash the doll's face open and then remove 15 screws" did they get the kid free.

Sweet Jesus, traumatic much?

But here’s the thing Dears and Darlings. The packaging on these terrible things was emblazoned with the a label reading “Feed me”, why in the name of God’s Ass did this set off no warning bells for anyone?

Forget the fact that none of these parents, obviously, must not have seen any of the ‘Child’s Play’ movies or even the ‘Talking Tina’ episode of The Twilight Zone. Had none of them seen, or at least heard of, Little Shop of Horrors?
If something that should not be able speak asks you to feed it

DON’T DO IT.

Unless, of course, you like the idea of spending your days feeding dentists and salesmen to the giant Venus Flytrap you named after your girlfriend.

Or, you know, something like that.



Be sure to tune in next week for another edition of "The Creepiest Thing"!