Editorials
10 Long Lost Horror Products!!
As we travel farther and farther away from childhood, it’s often nice to bask in the nostalgic glow of old items, even if we were never lucky enough to actually own any. Reliving childhood insecurities could even be considered a form of time travel, really.
I’m going to stop now, before I kill myself.
Check out these long lost horror products. They don’t make them like this anymore. Mostly because parents have gotten so lame. Wait a minute… we’re the parents now aren’t we? That’s it. I’m killing myself.
Ecto Coolers
I don’t know if kids these days still drink tons of Hi-C out of rectangular boxes made of waxed cardboard. If not, they’re really missing out on a huge pain in the neck. Those things were two things: Very delicious and very small. If you worked up a thirst playing outside, it’d take at least three of these bad boys to quench it, and Mom usually only gave one.
For many years, probably the most popular Hi-C flavor was the Ecto Cooler, a kind of tangerine flavored sugar pile with Slimer from Ghostbusters on the cover. It made us think we were drinking Slimer’s ass. We liked it that way. Are kids these days drinking any of their favorite characters’ asses? Didn’t think so.
Slimer Gum
There were many Ghostbusters related food items back in the day, more than enough to adequately populate this entire list. So I’m just going to pick one more and move on.
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Slimer gum. You squeezed it from a toothpaste tube into your mouth. It was green. It may have tasted like gum, but it looked like poop. Poop from a very sick person. I have eaten my fair share of tubed bubble gum, but I don’t believe I ever had the pleasure of trying Slimer’s Poo-Poo gum. I wish I had just so I could tell you how awful it was.
Gremlins Cereal
Like Ghostbusters, Gremlins has lots fun stuff for kids because its overt horror elements were hidden within a relatively family friendly package. As a result, we had wonderful items like this Gremlins cereal, though it’s really more of a Mogwai cereal.
Supposedly Gremlins cereal tasted a lot like Captain Crunch. I never had it because I was always too busy eating the Batman cereal, which was awesome. No word on whether or not Gremlin cereal ravaged the top of your mouth like Captain Crunch, but given the nature of Gremlins, it seems like a missed opportunity if it didn’t. Each box also came with a Gremlins sticker, but I hear they tasted awful.
Crestwood House Books
It might just be me, but these books were a huge part of my childhood and movie education. From what I hear, some libraries out there still have them, so I’d look into that if I were you, especially if you have kids.
Why? Because these books offer the best introduction possible to movie monsters of old. From Dracula to The Blob to King Kong (my favorite), each book gave you loads of info (from a kid’s perspective, anyhow) about the movie or history of character in question. This includes both filmography and real life history stuff, so kids could learn about Vlad the Impaler, to give just one example. Absolutely vital stuff.
Stephen King’s Creepshow Graphic Novel
If you went to the library in the late 1980s or early 1990s, it’s likely you and your friends came upon this violent gem. Modeled after old E.C. comics, this graphic interpretation of Stephen King and George Romero’s first Creepshow film chilled bones and thrilled kids for the horror introduction waiting inside. This was before graphic novels were all over the place. To most adults, a book was a book. Many didn’t know what gory wonders this one held. And then, right next to it, was King’s illustrated Cycle of the Werewolf. That guy knew what he was doing.
This is out of print now, but you can easily find it so long and you don’t mind paying and arm and a leg. Of course, you’re old enough now to watch the film without upsetting your mother, but I always found the book much cooler.
Fright Flicks Trading Cards
Fright Flick cards were these amazing trading cards which featured a typically gory screenshot from a 1980s horror film accompanied by a horrible Crypt Keeper-worthy pun at the bottom and a brief, real life horror story and/or urban legend on the reverse side. I had the whole set, and they were about as awesome as not sexual things can get.
If they still made Fright Flick cards today I imagine they’d be pretty Saw heavy, with allowances for torture porn and found footage stuff. Unfortunately, part of the fun of the originals was the inherent effectiveness and/or goofiness of the practical effects we had back then. The series included cool shots from both Alien and Predator, for instance, while screenshots from either monster these days would likely be computer generated. They also came with stickers and a series of collectible cards that created a larger horror collage when put together.
MAXx FX Toys
They don’t make MAXx FX toys anymore, not because of shifting trends, but because dumb mothers across the country got mad about their talking Freddy Krueger doll, and shut their line down. Stupid moms, ruining everything.
In fact, other than that talking Freddy, MAXx FX only got one of their main toys into stores. The gist was really cool. Maxx was a regular looking toy representing a Hollywood makeup guy. He came with add-on pieces that, when applied, turned him to a movie monster. They produced a cool Freddy Krueger one, and had prototypes for Frankenstein’s Monster, Alien, Jason Voorhees, and some additional generic monsters before they closed their doors on the product all together.
Nightmare on Elm Street Board Game
Speaking of Freddy Krueger, he also got his own board game. I never played it but it sounds pretty cool, if a bit overcomplicated by too many rules. Essentially, you and a group of friends each took a regular, every day looking human as your game avatar and traversed Freddy’s house via the 3D game board (it had vertical “walls” separating each room). Eventually, gameplay would force one player to reveal himself as Freddy, bastard son of a hundred maniacs.
So you get to kill your friends. That’s great! The big potential problem is you need at least three players for the game to be interesting. Four would be better. But it’s never easy to get that many people interested in a board game, especially one in which everyone has to learn a bunch of new rules.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre Atari Game
There have been a few video games based on horror characters. Atari had a Halloween game. The NES has both Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street games. But only the Texas Chain Saw Massacre game for Atari let you play as the killer.
As a Leatherface-ish blob, it is your job to kill as many teenager-ish blobs as you can before your chainsaw runs out of gas. Unfortunately, the random cow skulls and wheelchairs strewn about your lawn slow you down. That’s it. Maybe this one is long lost for a reason, though it could find a second life someday as a really crappy mobile game.
Alien Movie Viewer
If you had this when you were a child then consider yourself the luckiest boy on Earth and prepare yourself for the retroactive knowledge that everyone probably hated you.
This amazing toy was a user cranked film viewer in which you could watch (providing you had an adequate light source) roughly two minutes of Alien footage, that’s footage from a violent R-rated film, mind you. It featured three scenes: A bit of Facehugger action, Dallas’ death, and Ripley’s last bit with the Alien. This is just way too cool to have lasted.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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