Bite Some Bubbling Brains!

Quite a find today. It took a minute for me to fully absorb what I was looking at, but once it dawned on me my arms suddenly reached out instinctively and reeled it in. Something I haven't seen in years...

Doctor Dreadful Freaky Food Lab (and a few extras)!

Lightning not included.

Please tell me somebody else out there remembers Doctor Dreadful. Along with Creepy Crawlers, it was one of the major toys I had as a kid. Both of them were similarly themed as scary-ish do-it-yourself playsets. Creepy Crawlers were fun to make, but seeing the squishy insects coming out of the oven probably made kids think of gummy snacks. Eating Creepy Crawlers wasn't something that they recommended on the box, though, and that's where Doctor Dreadful came in.

There were multiple Doctor Dreadful playsets. The Freaky Food Lab, which is what you see taking up the left side of the picture above, was the main one, and there was also the Drink Lab, some of which you see on the right of the photo. There was also some sort of Ice Cream Lab, but I never had it and neither did anyone else I knew, so I never tried it. Come to think of it, I don't think any of my friends had Doctor Dreadful, period. I must've been the only one. For this, I am blessed.

There are a few snacks that you can make with the food lab. There's foamy brains, gummy spiders, brains, worms, and wolfman, as well as monster skin. And the best part of the one I bought today? The packets of powder are still with the set! The same goes for the drink lab. The packets were outdated in 2006, which isn't so long ago, and I'm optimistic about the results I'll get whenever I'm feeling brave enough to attempt to create some "Frozen Foamy Filth" or other such concoctions. Some of them are opened, but have been sealed in Ziploc bags, so they're still powdery, and not rock hard. What's the worst that could happen, other than slow painful death?

There were also two unopened refill packets, located in the center of the picture, which also contain recipe cards. The price tags indicating them as reduced Wal-Mart merchandise are still on them. So let's get this all straight: somebody bought the Doctor Dreadful Food Lab. At some point, they also must've bought the Drink Lab, although it may have come secondhand because there are some missing pieces, the biggest being the battery operated pump for the beaker and test tubes. The Drink Lab pieces also appear to be from the original run, that is, the run from when I was a kid, while the Food Lab seems a bit more modern with a bit of stylistic differences. Also, the Food Lab packets are all sealed minus one, while every single drink lab pack is open and in a single plastic bag.

THEN the same people, despite not using the packets they already had, bought two refills packs, and again did not use them. Thus, 5-10 years later, everything gets stuffed into one box and brought to St. Vinnie's, where it is purchased by the Secondhand Savior. Then again, there's a Christmas tag on the outside of the box reading "To Jillian From Santa." Could Santa also have made a pit stop at Wal-Mart on the way over, just to make sure dear Jillian had enough Bubbling Brains to last through puberty? Unfortunately, dear Jillian was a bit of a shit, only sampling a single packet of brain powder before forever rejecting the notion of such a toy's existence. She buried it deep in her closet with everything else she took for granted and forgot about it. Once she was off to college, her parents dug it out and brought it to Vinnie's, probably still pissed that the god damn kid begged for this piece of shit, tried it once and dropped it. They looked to the sky and prayed that Secondhand Jesus would resurrect Doctor Dreadful from the plastic scrapheap.

Anyways, someday soon I'll be giving ole Doc Dread a whirl, so if I don't return with any more posts, you'll know it killed me. Call some paramedics so I don't decompose into the carpet.

Cost of Doctor Dreadful Lab Extravaganza: $2.44

Thppppppppppppppppppppppppp!