Creepy Classics & Monster Bash News

Here I sit again, typing about all the things I loved as a kid. It was the Monster Boom Generation (1950s-1980s). In particular, I was loving life and movie monsters from about 1963 onward. The excitement was at high voltage for me in the 1960s-1970s. But, you know, there was a parallel universe just down the hallway in the next bedroom. My sister's room.

I never took much note of the things she was into at the time. Looking back, I can remember that other dimension of stuff my sister latched onto. Some of it, ever so slightly, similar to my love of monster magazines, toys, and figures.

She had one of those little white wooden toy pianos. It reminded me of the piano played by a vampire in both THE WORLD OF THE VAMPIRES (which I had seen on TV with my Grandpa Adams) and HOUSE OF DRACULA that aired on WNEW-TV Channel 5 one Saturday night.

My sister had dolls. I didn't take too much notice of them, other than a Mrs. Beasley doll (popularized by the TV show FAMILY AFFAIR). She stood out among dolls with that fake hair and granny glasses. That fake hair reminded me that my sister also had some kind of doll that grew its hair, pulling out of its scalp. That was weird. I wonder how the hair retracted? But those dolls seemed to correspond with the models I loved. I would build all those Aurora monster models. Then, rebuild them again as the glow-in-the-dark versions came out in the square boxes. My sister may have had Mrs. Beasley, but I had a real mummy with out-reached arm, walking among the Egyptian rubble with dripping blood that I had carefully painted on.

My sister, Tami, was the one that had a record player in her room. I think it was a hand-me-down from my mom that she had had as a kid. It was white and red with a lid that would latch. Its case was made out of some unknown substance that wasn't wood or metal...and not quite a plastic. Maybe press cardboard with some type of vinyl or rubberized feel. At any rate she had Archies records that were cut out of the back of cereal boxes. She also had a record by The Banana Splits (remember that nutty TV show?). Me, I used my parents' giant piece of furniture in the living room that was a stereo tuner and record player. That's where I played the first two albums I ever got: Meet The Beatles and Wonderfulness by Bill Cosby. If you had that Cosby album too, didn't you just love the bit "Chicken Heart!?" I also had mailed away for the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club through Marvel comics. The club came with a flexi-disc of the song that went with that club. The song had Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Marie Severin (comic writers and artists) singing on it!

Tami had stuff on her bedroom walls like posters and things. I can't even remember what they were. They didn't impress me apparently. I'm vaguely thinking that they might have been posters of little girls with big-sized eyes and maybe some flower stick-ons.

When we visited my grandparents Adams' house, my sister would play games with my girl-cousins. I seem to remember Mystery Date, cut-out dolls, and Colorforms of princes and princesses. Oh, brother. Me, I had, back at home, my DARK SHADOWS game.

Then, there were the sets that came with a little oven. That's how you learned that ovens are hot and you shouldn't touch them. Experience! Run to the sink and run cold water on your fingers! Tami had a Fun Flowers Maker-Pak. It was just like my Creepy Crawlers and Fright Factory...but, for girls. You had that strong smelling Plasti-Goop that you poured out of plastic bottles into metal molds. After baking them you could peel out that rubberized flowers in my sister's case, bugs and skeletons in my case!

In about 1972 we moved to a new house. We were a bit older and my sister was now into The Partridge Family records, and even had a soundtrack LP to the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ. Along with her Partridge Family records came the magazines like "16" and other teen idol mags that the gals seemed to drool over. For me, it was FAMOUS MONSTERS, CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, FOR MONSTERS ONLY, THE MONSTER TIMES, and others. She had the David Cassidy mags, I had the ones with Boris Karloff on the cover.

We lived in a house with two alternate realities. But it was a peaceful co-existence...for the most part. "Hey, don't bend my comic books!"

Ron Adams 
Ligonier, PA 
March 2026