Haul-iday Highlights 2025

 This used to be an annual tradition but it looks like I haven't done one since 2022. At any rate, here's a look at some of the goodies left under my holiday tree by various supernatural beings.

 

 We'll start off with these awesome gift tags that Mrs Dex found. Perfect for me!

 

 Sadly, this art print from Spooky Cat Press isn't a full comic magazine!

 

 Speaking of Krampus, here's a weird plush from the Pinhead Monsters line.

 

 Throwing this in here because it's on theme. This was a gift to myself after we saw the author, Jeff Belanger, do his "The Fright Before Christmas" show. It's just him and some slides talking about the origin of Christmas as a holiday in addition to all the weird dark folklore from different countries. Can't recommend this enough if you want to dive into the darker side of winter traditions.

 

 A great set of figures from Disney's Haunted Mansion. All the most popular characters are here and I found it interesting that they picked the mummy to round out the set.

 

 And to go with them, a Disney Racers Haunted Mansion Hot Rod! Love the details on this: Mdme. Leota's headstone on the front and the pipe organ in the back.

 

 The Indy Temple Trekker is sporting the famous hat and whip. The vehicle is based on the design used for the ride vehicle from the Disneyland attraction.

 

 While we're talking Disney, Mrs Dex got me this very cool Tron: Ares light up popcorn...bucket? container? It's pretty sizeable at just over a foot tall!

 

I was very excited to unwrap this Funko of one of my favorite Muppets: Pepe the King Prawn. There's not enough Pepe merch out there! And he's flocked!

 

 Rounding things out with a pair of Star Wars card games. This Solo Solitaire game comes in a tin that looks like Han in carbonite. It's basic "Patience" solitaire with a themed deck of cards. There's a Jedi Master mode where you add two additional cards: Carbon Freeze which "freezes" the lane when it reveals, preventing you from playing or moving cards there, until you play Save Solo on it to remove it.

 

 Finally is the Stay on Target card game, which I really wanted because it comes in that cool Death Star! Each player takes a squadron color and battles their way through Imperial defenses to take a shot at that exhaust port to score victory points.

Monthly Media Recap - August 2023

 Welcome to September, the blog hibernation month. This will likely be my only post until the end of the month so I can focus on cranking out 31 posts for the annual Countdown to Halloween starting in October!

 

Streaming Series

 

X-Men: The Animated Series (S1, Disney+)

With X-Men 97 coming soon, I thought I'd revisit the series since I never watched it all the way through. The animation doesn't seem to have held up well in places. Some shots are done with weird angles and characters can have funky proportions. But, I still enjoy the stories and was surprised just what they packed in with plots, villains, and guest characters.

Psych (S2, Amazon Prime)

This show is quickly on its way to becoming an all time favorite and it's just getting better season after season. The writing is so damn funny and I would love to hang out with these characters.

Movies

Death Game (1977, Shudder)

I am usually up for a good grindhouse exploitation flick but this one had a hard time keeping my attention.The sex scenes look like they were done by an alien that's only had the concept of human sex described to them. The only thing that really kept me watching was Colleen Camp, who played Yvette the maid in Clue.

Rating: 4/10

Rhode Island ComicCon 2022

 This past weekend was the annual Rhode Island Comic Con. This was only my second time at this show, the last time being in 2018.

I have to say, having just attended Fan Expo Boston a couple months back, the RI show was definitely better laid out. Making use of three locations really helped space out the people. I did also go on Sunday, which is usually less busy than Saturday so that probably helped too.

 

The main draw for us here was Jared Padalecki from Supernatural and Walker. There's some kind of contractual thing that prevents Jared from doing Supernatural appearances unless the con is hosted by a specific company but that's okay because we went to panels for both shows. 

 

LEGO Disney's Haunted Mansion (40521)

Welcome, foolish mortals to the mini Haunted Mansion!

I'm a huge fan of the Haunted Mansion attraction in all its incarnations so naturally this was a must have. However, I do have to say this is not "my" mansion. I mainly visit DisneyWorld and prefer that exterior over the original DisneyLand version.

 

Did you know the original Haunted Mansion concept was for it to be a walk through attraction which included an encounter with the Headless Horseman?

Kindly keep your appendages inside your Doombuggy as you click the jump bar.

Disney Doorables - Haunted Mansion

 Disney Doorables is a series of blind packed characters that are around 1.5 inches tall with big, glittery eyes. This line has been going for years and while Mrs Dex has picked up the occasional Beauty & the Beast or Frozen set, I haven't paid much attention to them until this recent Amazon exclusive set. I didn't even know this was a thing until it appeared on my doorstep. Thanks, Mom!

Doorables are so named because there's usually a door involved, either in the packaging or a mini-playset, and they're adorable. I would love it if they'd do a mini Mansion playset! Or better yet, a series of connectable mini playsets.

Let's go around the back...

Haul-iday Report 2021

 Hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday/New Year. I've been catching up on other blogger's holiday hauls so I thought I'd join in, even if it's a little late.

This is not a personal photo but I wanted to find something fun to start off the post!

We'll kick it off with these awesome Adventure Time Matryoshka dolls. This is not an officially licensed product and I love it all the more for that. You can tell the artist used this actual set for inspiration because PB's pose is pretty much the same. But the "real" set only has 5 dolls while this one has 7. Finn stands around 5" tall to give you an idea how freaking tiny BMO is!

Disney's Haunted Mansion Playing Cards

 Disney has an odd way of merchandising their product. I don't recall seeing these playing cards when visiting Memento Mori, the Haunted Mansion gift shop. Instead, I found these in a shop in Animal Kingdom. Either way, I was happy to add them to my collection.

I do have to commend them for the packaging. They could have released this in a standard box but went with a cool coffin shaped box. Just like they did with this set I picked up in 2014.

Disney's Haunted Mansion Attic Diorama

 I didn't want to do another Haunted Mansion post and start it off with "Welcome, Foolish Mortals!" but what are you going to do? That's like THE thing.

I got this diorama set for Christmas and couldn't wait until October to post it! (Only 285 days til Halloween!) This is one of two sets that are available in parks or on ShopDisney, when they're in stock. The other one is of Madame Leota's seance room and it looks pretty sweet.

Inside the box is a floor, three walls, some connectors to hold them together, the bride, and a whole lot of attic stuff.

I mean, this isn't even everything! I love the chaise lounge with the tiger pelt draped over it. It's hard to see in the pics, but the wedding cake topper has a headless groom. And yes, there's an axe on the table with the tea setting. It wold have been cool if they had a hole in the bride's hands so she could hold it.

There isn't an "official" story of the Haunted Mansion but if you see the attic bride on the ride, she's surrounded by reminders of her previous husbands and they definitely "lost their heads" over her. You can see some of that on the walls, there are portraits of her with different men.

The left wall has a banner that's dated 1872 and says Love Forever, Frank and Constance. The room is more narrow at the back and widens as it gets toward you which angles out the side walls so you can see them without having to stick your head in there to peek at them.

 

 

Adding a little blue light for a ghostly effect.

I really like the way this one came out. If I was more skilled with Photoshop, I could have done a transparency thing to make her a little see through.

This is a really cool set and hopefully ShopDisney will get the other one back in stock so I can get that one too.

I did this one for scale so you can get an idea of the size. I don't have any "spooky" 3.75" figures but I think the scale is close enough.

LEGO on the left, Playmobil on the right.

Hauilday Excerpts

I usually try to do the after Christmas post before the New Year. At least I think I do, I'm not going to go back and check. Here's a few highlights from my gift haul 2020.

Starting off with a couple of really cool shirts. I love the art style on the Strange one, plus is kind of a subtle reference that non-Marvel people will miss. We'll get back to Mando & Son, there's a lot more of them coming up!

I got my first Funko Soda ever. I've always held off on getting any of these because I usually want the 'regular' version and don't want to take the chance on getting a variant. I like the kinda chunky, solid figure design.

The other thing is a Disney's Haunted Mansion diorama set. I've seen pictures of these from the parks and was definitely going to pick one up on my next trip (Which would have been September 2020, thanks Covid.) It's part of the attic scene and there's lots of little bits and pieces to it. This will likely get its own blog post whenever I get around to putting it together. Looks very cool! I also got the Hallmark Hitchhiking Ghost ornament.

 

 

In recent years, the Disney Store has been selling these collector keys. They come in all sorts of themes and characters. This is a pretty cool set that covers a few different aspects of Disney. The Marvel one has Avengers symbols and the Star Wars one has Vader and Luke on it.
 

There's just something really fun about having a "Star Wars Christmas" again and this year was definitely one of those! On the Pop front, we have Moff Gideon with Darksaber and Mando & Son in the desert. Top right is a pair of Mando and IG-11 Cosbaby bobblehead figures. Not pictured, a Mandalorian 2020 wall calendar.

For when you need to shoot and capture your bounty alive: the Mandalorian Polaroid camera! It's the odd perfect combination of modern day Star Wars with 1970s technology. It might be the 21st century but the photos still look like how you remember Polaroids from back in the day.

 

 

The camera itself looks like it would fit right in with Mando's armor and even has a Mudhorn skull on the back. Do you remember the last time you had to look through a viewfinder to take a photo? Me either! My one minor complaint with the setup is the position of the shutter button below the flash. You have to pay attention to your hand position when snapping those pics otherwise you're going to get finger shadows on your subject. The original cameras didn't have a flash, or if they did it was on an additional part of the camera that flipped up.

The film has Mandalorian themed borders and graphics on it. What's really cool is that when you prep a new film cartridge, there is a film protector that gets ejected (bottom right). This one of the Armorer is numbered 5/8 so I'm guessing there's 8 different cards to collect as well.

So that's some of the stuff I got over the holidays. 

What kind of cool stuff did you get? 

Let me know in the comments!

Haunted Mansion - Call of the Spirits Game

 Just released at the end of September, The Haunted Mansion Call of the Spirits Game from Funko may be just the place to get your Mansion fix if you're missing the ride.

This is the fourth official board game based on the attraction and only the second that wasn't a Disney exclusive. The first was simply the Haunted Mansion Game in 1972 which is a work of art in and of itself. The Disney exclusives were re-themes of existing games: Clue (2002) and The Game of Life (2010).

Enough history, let us call in the spirits! I haven't had a chance to play the game yet but the art design all around gets an A+.

This is the inside of the box lid featuring the stretching portrait room. How perfect!

The interior sides of the box each have a different set of portraits that can be found in the ride. I also love the way the game board folds so that when you open the box, you are greeting by the Mansion and "Welcome, foolish mortals".

This is the back of the board, the back! How great is this scene?

And here is the front of the board with different areas of the ride. Madame Leota sits in the seance room in the middle. It has a rotating feature which is why you see that large circle opening on the back of the board. The endless hallway surrounds the room and connects to the ballroom, dining room, attic, graveyard, mausoleums, and crypt.

 

Players are represented by these bat stanchion tokens. If you're not familiar with these, they are in the ride's loading area queue holding up the chains. More info here. I love that they included this guy but why not make the player tokens Doombuggies?

To win, you move around the mansion socializing with the ghosts (collecting them). At the end of the game, you score points based on the sets of ghosts you have. Ghosts of the same color score more points depending on how many you have. Some special ghosts, like the Bride, don't have a set but score better if you collect specific other ghosts. The art on the cards does a great job of capturing the...spirit of the ride.

You didn't think there would be a Haunted Mansion game without the Hitchhiking Ghosts, did you? These guys move around the board haunting the players. Whoever has the highest haunt score at the end loses some of their collected ghosts.

Unlike other Funko games, I haven't seen this one hit a major retailer in my area yet. I couldn't wait so I got my copy from Amazon.

Click the image below to see all the participating Countdown bloggers!

Disney's Haunted Mansion

 Well, today was supposed to kick off Halloween Hot Wheels Wednesday. Despite the cars shipping out on Sept. 25th, they just arrived last night. Not enough time for me to pull a post together. In the meantime, enjoy this hastily put together post featuring Disney's Haunted Mansion stuff. 

 

 

Last year, I posted about a Haunted Mansion read along book/record set that was used in schools. 

The post has a link to download the audio and book.

 

Thanks to a recent episode of the Purple Stuff Podcast, I found out about this rocking cover of Grim Grinning Ghosts. The video is pretty fun for Mansion fans, there's plenty of visual references in addition to ride audio in the song.

This is one of my favorite behind the scenes/making of videos on the Mansion. Before there was the internet as we know it, I bought this on DVD. Not only is it a great history of the ride but there are plenty of interviews with the people that made it happen.

Lastly, the Internet Archive has the 1975 Disneyland Haunted Mansion standard operation procedures handbook for cast members. As a Disney park fan, I find this stuff fascinating because it's a peak behind the curtain at how things work.

Click the image below to see all the participating Countdown bloggers!

Disney's Haunted Mansion Hitchhiking Ghost Figures - Super 7

 Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts!

 

Originally intended to be a San Diego Comic Con exclusive this year, Super 7 released a boxed set of ReAction figures based on the famous trio of specters. As with the SDCC exclusive Tron figure, I was easily able to get these guys into my home. I really would have felt I missed out had these only been available at the con.

The box itself is a work of art and I have no problem displaying them this way. The trim and bats are glossy on a matte background so they're only visible when the light hits it just right. I love that Leota is also featured up there on the top.

Ezra has always been my favorite of the group because he's somewhat skeletal in appearance. This incarnation seems to be channeling Rev. Kane from Poltergeist 2. It looks like he's wearing a pair of slippers instead of some kind of shoe. Hey, I'm not going to fault him for his footwear choice. Once you're dead, who cares about fashion? It's all about comfort.

Speaking of fashion, each figure comes with an accessory and Ezra's is his hat. You can't see it in this photo but his left hand has the pinkie extended. He's fancy like that.

Next up is Phineas. His hat isn't removable but if it was, you might mistake him for a substitute teacher. His travel bag...this is my one gripe with the set. That thing is a huge pain to get into his hand!

And lastly we have ol' Gus with his ball and chain. It's not removable and it's a bit of a pain to get it to balance. Depending on which incarnation you reference, some are holding the ball and some hold the chain with the ball hanging down.

This is a great set and I highly recommend it if you're a Mansion maniac. It's way better than the set that was sold in the parks years ago. They're still available at Sideshow for $60. It might seem like a lot, but when you consider individual ReAction figures are currently retailing around $18, it's not. Now if they could just make a scale Doombuggy!

Be sure to visit all the other houses with their lights on for you by clicking below.