In every child’s life there is the toy that got away. The one that you couldn’t get mom to buy, the Red Ryder BB gun of our childhood holiday dreams. Unfortunately, there isn’t always the happiest ending to these stories and this is one of those stories. Now in fairness to my mother, I probably would have ended up burning myself or the house down, or somehow fused my fingers together, or perhaps even ingested poisonous chemicals, just because of who I was as a kid and my fondness for following directions, but the one toy that never found its way under the holiday tree was the Creepy Crawler Thingmaker.
Now imagine how cool this toy would have been to a young child who loved creating new things…
Chemicals, colors, molds, virtually unlimited combinations of monstrous mayhem all inside a colorful box from the wizard toy makers at Mattel. Actually introduced as the Thinkmaker in 1964, it was the boy equivalent of the popular Easy-Bake-Oven (and yes I would have even enjoyed one of those as a child. I liked to cook.) Allowing kids to squirt Plasti-chemical-wonder into horrific creature molds that were designed to unleash the evil genius in us all. Of course it caused all sorts of burn injuries, was all over the news as a “dangerous” toy and was quickly discontinued in 1978. But it looked so safe and disgustingly fun on the commercial…
But legend and nostalgia are a strange thing in toyland, and the Creepy Crawlers returned in the mid 90’s for another round of delighted 2nd to 3rd degree chemical burns. And Time magazine once listed it as #48 out of the 100 greatest toys of all time. I remember visiting with friends down the street who were lucky to have gotten one. I remember parents hated the ongoing cost of plastigoop and the persistent smell of burning plastic filling the air.
They have been off the market again for several years, but there is new hope as Mattel has announced a new version of the ThingMaker capable of 3D like printing utilizing AutoCAD technology that should arrive in time for the 2017 holiday season.
Even my beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000 took on the beloved memory of the toys and the controversy their burns created.
Do we really need soft, safe, colorful toys or did we learn by our non-lethal mistakes to be more careful creative adults? It may be impossible to know for sure, but I still look for one of these underneath my tree every year and long for that smell of chemical-burning-horror-creativity. Maybe next year for sure.
