The Strange History of Creepy Crawlers: Plastic Bugs, an Animated Series and Action Figures?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 жов 2020
- Creepy Crawlers, is an activity toy made by Mattel, beginning in 1964. But it was also an activity toy made by a company called ToyMax and also by a company called Jakks Pacific.
Creepy Crawlers was also an animated series that lasted 2 seasons and a had a line of action figures based on that series.
Help the channel continue to grow by checking out our Patreon: / toygalaxy
To become a UA-cam channel member:
ua-cam.com/users/toygalaxytvjoin
Follow Dan on Instagram:
/ toygalaxy
Toy Galaxy
P.O. box 3976
Manchester, NH 03105-3976
Business Inquiries:
toygalaxytv@gmail.com
/ toygalaxytv
/ toygalaxytv
teespring.com/stores/toy-galaxy - Розваги
I remember I made my own "Creepy Crawler" as a kid by carving bug shapes into blocks of clay and then filing them with white glue dyed with food coloring. No heat required, and I ended up with some pretty cool rubbery neon bugs.
Now THAT'S creativity!
Now I have the urge to search for tutorials to do that.
Do you need the clay mold to be flexible to remove the figure, or can you use baked clays for multiple uses?
@@drillerdev4624 I supposed you could bake the clay, but I just had some of that oil based, non drying kid's clay. The glue stays flexible when it dries so it's not difficult to peel out.
@@episodenull Thanks, man!
You were a very clever child. Wish I was that creative.
I'm a special effects artist by trade. It was my dream since I was 5. Getting the creepy crawler oven was a game changer for me. I played with that thing constantly. Mine was super sketch. It didnt have a cool down lock. You took the hot mold out and droped it in water.
Its a miracle i only burned myself once.
That is awesome. I'm curious how one ends up a special effects artist.
Here's an old article and interview a local paper did about 3 years after i finished my apprenticeship. If you'd like talk more, you can reach me at woodleysfx@gmail.com
www.google.com/amp/s/thecampusvoice.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/shock-the-world-a-profile-on-jay-woodley/amp/
I had that version too. It was super satisfying to hear the sizzle when you dropped the hot mold into the water.
Ours had the lock, BUT... We learned how to lift the tray over it, and then we'd drop it into water. sizzling every time.
"It's a miracle I still have the one good hand!"
In my wildest dreams I never thought anyone would talk about this cartoon, and now that its here, it feels like christmas. =D
Creepy Christmas!
I've been racking my brains for years trying to remember the name of this cartoon. It was driving me insane. Finally, everything is well in the world.
I was honestly starting to think that my brain had imagined the cartoon existing.
I had this in the early 90's. Good dangerous times.
I had one of these as a kid in the 90s, my brothers and I made countless scary scary bugs with this thing - we used it so much that the plastic forked spatula that came with it eventually melted and warped to the point where we had to modify it so we could still use it with the oven.
Also, that early 90s model had a retractable plastic door in the oven opening that was designed to prevent kids from putting their fingers inside while the oven was on; the problem was that door would also warp over time due to the heat, and in my experience would constantly jam, forcing you to pry it open with a flathead screwdriver (or other similar tool).
This led to a lot of ruined trays with spilled plastigoop, as you had to simultaneously pry the door open while inserting and removing the tray.
One thing we liked to do was take an already finished scary scary bug and place it on top of a freshly filled mold of the same type, and then cook it - when it was done you'd have a double-sided scary scary bug.
I think I used to do the same thing with the double-siding of them! I still remember that unique smell, too! What the hell was in that stuff? I've worked with silicone and resin since then and nothing smells like that
the song on the commercial though " CREEEEEEPYYY CRAAWWWLEERRRRSS theyre nana and anan and nana and greeeeeeen"
"The creepiest little creatures that you've ever seen!" I loved those commercials.
Melvin Shine RIGHT ?!?! Lol
Black and yellow and purple and green...I think.
@@Acid_Ink possible... I really can't remember I also didn't speak english taht well back then
@@melvinshine9841 “Gross out your sister/embarrass your dad!/You can be a little creep with-out being bad!”
30 seconds into the video and now I have the jingle from the 90s commercial stuck in my head.
I never knew creepy crawlers was from the 60's. It seemed so late 80's/early 90's, lol! Like the slime fad I remember during that time. I swear some of that slime smell use to nauseate me. Especially the ones that came from the 25 cent vending machines back then. (barf!). The same with those toxic plastic bubble makers.
Slime was out in the 60s as well. I think those kind of toys are on a 10 year cycle.
Lol, just went back in time when you mentioned the $.25 slime. I could smell that stuff as if it was 1993.
I had some Gak that was supposed to smell like pizza but really smelled like SpaghettiO's and botulism.
I vividly remember the smell of the liquid, it was very distinct!
Creepy Crawlers were awesome because you could bake ingredients into inedible monstrosities. Unlike the Easy Bake Oven; where you bake ingredients into inedible monstrosities.
Lol! Oh wow, that was a good one!XD
LOL xD
you mean the incredible edibles? with Gobledee Goop that you could eat the bugs also in the 60s
Loved those when I was a kid. The liquid plastic smell was enchanting.
And toxic.
I loved my Creepy Crawler oven as a kid in the 90s but my parents certainly didn’t love it when my younger brother snuck into my room while I was at school and permanently stained the carpet with the bug goop. From then on my room was the only room in the house with a large rug.
This was one of my favorite toys as a kid. We had the Creeple People set that turned pencils into people! Of course, it did get very hot and according to the instructions, you were supposed to let the molds cool before you handled them. we didn't have that much patience and would plunge them into water, instead. The mold would sizzle and give off a huge puff of steam! Toys now would NEVER have that much dangerous fun!
I just UA-cam searched "Toy Galaxy" "Creepy Crawlers" and here we are! I had zero idea there was a cartoon. But my high-school girlfriend and I used to love playing with the oven, making tie-dyed bugs and such. It was great fun!
This is exactly where I learned not to touch hot things. Thanks Creepy Crawlers!
These were the dopest toys growing up! My grandma would buy them for us just so she could play with them!
Sounds like you had an awesome Grandma. 😊
@@corvus1970 In our teenage years we found out that she used to open all the toys and play with them before wrapping them back up. We just thought that all toys came with batteries already installed. :)
free snacks!
I was today years old when I learned Creepy Crawlers was not the X-treme product of 90s technology.
I could have sworn Dan Cortese was behind them.
The funny thing is I still use the creepy crawler kit I got back in the 90s. As it turns out its surprisingly useful for creating homemade fishing lures, given the various kinds of goop available and the fact you can add attractants and other things to it to make it better suited to specific types of fish
I used to think you could eat them like it was candy 😅 maybe i’m glad i didn’t get one back in the day 🤔
I thought the same thing!
That was the Incredible Edibles that used pretty much the same moulds
@@Clell65619
I was goona say, I know there was an edible variation to the creepy crawlers kind of toys.
Of course it was all fun and games until you realized it was cheaper to just get some candy at like the dollar store than it was to buy the overpriced stuff to make the incredible edibles stuff. That's the problem is so many toys they rely on kids not realizing that 90% of the profit was getting you to rebuy the stupid little specialty goos and stuff.
For best results, mix some Creepy Crawlers in with your stash of gummy worms.
Peter Houle That’s evil! I like it!
Quick question: Was "Queasy Bake Oven" an edible version of the series? Always remember them eating gummy versions of them on TV as a kid.
Larry Bundy Jr Not really.
I would say more inspired by Incredible Edibles.
Ah! So that was the name of the edible gummies i remembered seeing ads for!, but first hello you!
Doctor Dreadful Food Lab is the 1 I remember seeing in the U.S. during the '90s
Doctor Dreadful Food Lab had more than just edible gummies. I recall a drink, and IceCream maker in the brand.
2019: Dan looks like Berlin from Money Heist
2020: Getting Joaquin Phoenix vibes off of him...
Loved the Creepy Crawler commercials when I was a kid. Still sing the tune every once in a while. Dan, ever thought about doing a video on the Animax toys/comics?
I feel like I remember the voiceover of the commercials being performed by Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from classic Addams Family series). If not, a deliberate impersonation of him.
Whoa, I had Creepy Crawlers as a kid and I've been collecting toys for over 20 years, going to flea markets and different shows and all that, and yet I had never heard of the Creepy Crawlers action figures or the accompanying show until now. Wild.
"Ill trade you 4 creepy crawlers for 10 pogs and a slammer!"
I remember how amazed I was when I had mine back in the 90’s then I started selling custom colored bugs😂😂
My mom would be pissed when I was leaving bugs all around the house lol
Yeess!! I had Creepy Crawlers as a kid (90s) and was probably one of the animated series' biggest fan. Though I had all but forgotten it before seeing those clips. Thanks for the memories.
I got the creepy crawley oven for christmas and managed to get anything similar to what it could make banned at my school single handedly. I'm an artist and was always pretty talented so when i was about 7 i started making crazy looking bugs in it and I'd bring them to school and all the kids thought they were so cool. A kid offered me a dollar for one then next thing i know i was making a profit off the plastic goop bottles so i started basically making them for hours a day and selling as many as i could at school. The beginning of the end was when they came out with the glow in the dark goop and the kids were crazy over them, i even started making cute pretty ones for the girls and next thing i know i'm pulling in hundreds of dollars a month and kids are literally starving all day because they would spend their lunch money on plastic bugs I made. Parents started complaining because their kids would come home starving and not having school supplies because every extra dollar they had would go right into my pocket for plastic bugs.
I told all these kids if they wanted their bugs they better not tell anybody where they're getting them from after some in class announcements were made but an investigation was launched and they called me into the office where i denied everything, they then searched my backpack and it was of course filled with bugs organized in baggies with prices written on them and they banned all selling of items by students and all plastic bugs from the school. I of course didn't listen and it only took a week for me to get caught with them twice more. I even went so far as to walk down there on weekends and hide my stash so i could deal but the final straw was when i got suspended for several days and my parents took my oven away from me.
I literally forgot about all that drama till i saw this random video suggested lol.
I had totally given up on knowing what the strange "upside down bug man" cartoon I vaguely remembered from my childhood was - thank you oh glorious algorithm
"You can't give that to her, it's a dangerous weapon!"
"It's Educational"
"But she could hurt herself!"
"Then that will be a valuable lesson."
I wondered how Mr. Toy Galaxy would make a video from that toy I vaguely remembered ... I had no idea it went back that far or had so many iterations! A+ on your research this week! Thanks for the trip down scary scary bug memory lane!
Dan's toy collection takes a backseat every year by his true passion: Jack O' Lantern collecting
I think Dan said _Mrs._ Toy Galaxy was responsible for the Halloween decoration collection.
I loved Creepy Crawlers as a kid. I always I regretted never having an older sister only because I could never terrorize her with these like in the commercial. Also, why in the 80s and 90s boys were taught to be little snots to older sisters? Lol
They were reflecting reality, not providing a learning tool in the ad. Little boys were snots to their sisters in the byzantine era too, lol
That's assuming that any older sister you might have had would be scared of bugs.
Well, better than the current trend of sisters being stuck in the dryer...
Back in the day, my mother flatly refused to get me one of those ovens because, she said, it was the kind of thing I would play with for two days and then get bored with. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure she was right; I was more interested in the "manufacturing" aspect than the "bugs" aspect, so sticking to the preset molds might have gotten old.
However, 15-20 years later, I got an engineering degree and a job in product development. I guess I won in the end!
What’s your favorite product you’ve developed
@@boejudden9011 I have a soft spot for the 2019 Transit Connect cargo van; I did a lot of powertrain calibration work on it and was pretty closely involved with the construction of the prototypes for drive and crash testing. The 2.7L V6 turbo 4x4 version of the 2017 Fusion sedan was probably the car that was most fun to test drive, though, at least out of the ones I was officially assigned to.
I do robotics and AI research these days, but I'll probably move some of my research to hardware soon. Not a moment too soon, I might add; I've been missing that part of the job.
The 90s girl toy analog of creepy crawlers was called treasures and trinkets, and it was yellow and you could make pretty pastel jewelry with it. 🙄 I believe the plates were interchangeable with both magic makers.
Can I just say, the production yall are doing I find waaaaay more appealing than toys that made us. Keep it up. love the show
So wait,... you couldn't eat them?
There was definitely a version you could eat though right?
Where crushed oreos were "dirt" and you could make little gummy worms and spiders to eat with it?
Did i completely create a thing in my head that never existed?
Yes, there still is too. Hard to find now. Was based off body parts: boogers, brains, ect.
I vaguely remember that was an actual thing.
I remember those they were called dr dreadful something
The Queasy-Bake Cookerator.
There was an actual candy in the ol' five and dime I used to work in called "Wermz 'n dirt" that fits that description, right next to Cherry Clan and Lemonheads.
This was a much longer history than I thought it would be. Great video.
Always gotta love the October season for ToyGalaxy's famous Scary-Scary Dans.
When you throw all in on one line, it never ends well.
I love these videos you make. They’re informative but hit all the feels of nostalgia. Thanks man 👍
I remembered watching this show back in the 90s back when I was a kid and still love it, I do still see a very few episodes on UA-cam but not the entire episodes. So why after many years that Creepy Crawlers still not been release into a complete DVD yet, because I think the series deserved a come back just like Street Sharks, Mummies Alive, Biker Mice from Mars and Road Rovers.
I have a huge boxed Creepy Crawlers collection.
Hey Dan, cover the Metal Molder next.
You could also make an entire video about the history of the various Hot Wheels car maker toys. There's enough material to cover in that avenue alone to fill up 13 or so minutes.
I actually still have a burn scar on my hand from this toy. My older brother and sister had the original toy, but I pulled the maker by the cord, and it landed on my hand. Had to go to the emergency room. So every time I look at my hand scar, I think about the great times we had as kids and we have the literal scars to prove it!
I always confused this with the Mad Scientist Monster Lab toys.
That should be next! Love that!
I was just looking for Creepy Crawlers content last week. Awesome!
I love all the Arrested Development clips in the video. "Illusions", not tricks. I also see that they choose to use the earlier and best seasons of the show.
The phrase "kid's home manufacturing" made me chuckle.
Thank you so much for this video. I have been trying to remember this cartoon for, no joke, 10 years. All I could remember about it was the goop in the monsters stomachs. No one I talked to remembered the show and I had no luck on google either. I had begun to think I had made up the memory. Again, thank you!!!
I had these as a kid, and made so many with my older brother. We opened them up during the holidays back in the day.
Even to this day, my brother and I (before he passed last year) would remember just one moment in the animated series just because it made us laugh...
CC 1: "Reporting for duty, sir!" CC 2: "Reporting for duty, sir!" Hocus Locust: "Reporting for doo-doo, sir!"
Dan, have you ever considered doing a Strange History on the Mad Scientist toys? There was the Dissect An Alien toy and some others. All were slime based in some way.
Monster Lab was the other. I had both, and both were awesome. The Alien had a puzzle for organs, the monster lab you would drop the monsters you made into what I recall being vinegar and dissolved it. The skin must have been made of baking soda or maybe you added baking soda to the skin when molding
making creepy crawlers sounds like it would have been a fun thing to do during this pandemic
I had the machine, but I HATED rubber toy bugs as a kid. Happily I got the dinosaur set, and used that one instead the three times I bothered to use it. I even got the Sylvester and Tweety set, but I never got around to make those ones. The thing took up too much space, my parents only let me use it in the kitchen, and rarely at that. Oh, and that Creepy Crawlers cartoon was as generic a TMNT knockoff can be. It played in Sundays in my area, where the dullest, most banal action series played. The kind of cartoon that was literally depressing to watch because you knew you had to go to school the next day and the fun of the Saturday Morning shows was yesterday.
I've been waiting for this for a while. Please cover more products like this!
Dude I'm going through the videos as they come up on UA-cam, and your hair is just luscious here. Great look, great video! It's like a bishounen anime hero became a dad...
I had the 90's version of the oven. That has so many fond memories attached to it. The saftey features were no joke either. I remember starting a mold and then my parents hauled me off to the mall for some holiday shopping. we were gone for probably two hours and when we got back the thing was still intact despite the bugs inside being a little darker than usual.
Fright Factory, Incredible Edibles / Thingmaker, Hell Yeah ! A nice skate backwards on this one. Excellent commentary !
I definitely remember getting the 90s version for Christmas one year. Not only did it smell awful while cooking the bugs, it the toys themselves continued to stink indefinitely
I had one. Didn't really use it all that much. Wished it could have made edible gummy bugs.
Me and me friend are 90s kids and its because of the 1990s Creepy Crawlers sets that its the reason why me and him are into 3D Printing and mess around with 3D printing for fun and practical uses
Cant tell you how many saterday nights me and my friend would play with his creepy crawlers set making gross neon bugs and tossing them into his older sisters room too annoy her and attempt to gross her out
As a kid in the 90's, I had the Creepy Crawler maker and enjoyed the cartoon. Never got the action figures. Good memories and fun times with my brothers. Thanks for this video.
I had one in the 90s. I loved it so much. Made tons of bugs and stuff with my brother. I know that we both got burns from it multiple times. Good memories
This popped in my recommendations and suddenly the song from the 90s commercial started playing on an incessant loop in my head.
Really do love this channel. Ty!
As a kid in the 70s you could get creepy crawlers, thing-makers and plastigoop pretty cheap at just about any flea market. The cool plastigoop colors were the glow in the dark and black.
I've been trying to figure out the name of this animated series for YEARS! THANK YOU
OMG YES THANK YOU! I've been trying to find this show for 15 years now as it was a childhood memory, but apparently one that I alone remembered over here. Started to think I made up these characters. Thank you!!!😭
My mother everyday in the 90s
"Y'all playing with those dam creepy crawlers...I smell those damn creepy crawlers"
That’s crazy I always thought creepy crawlers was a 90s thing. 90s was a helluva time
I had one in the early 70's,I loved it!! I can still remember the smell of the plastic it was awesome! Now I work in a injection molding factory ,hahaha
Maybe I'm just too young, but I recall a toy called "Fright Factory". Same thing, but the plastic was already melted in tubes. You place a filled tray on top of the bed and then turn the crank. Slowly, it would solidify. I don't know if it's just a knockoff, but it reminds me a lot of the same toy.
We spent a lot of time dripping goo into molds to make these things as kids
I used to love the cartoon as a kid. When you said it only ran for 20 episodes I thought there was no way it was that short. But I checked and you're right. It seemed so much longer when I was little.
Cree-ee-ee-py Crawlers! That song from the commercial stuck with me forever. We had the 90s version. I remember it well.
i did some research and found a guy in a forum saying he contacted Jakks Toys and they told him the plastigoop is a compound called plastisol, it's a mix of PVC and a plasticizer that's used to make fishing baits and shirt prints, it's considered a very safe type of plastic and if the dies used aren't toxic by themselves it should be perfectly safe. also that's a way to refill your old kit since plastisol is very cheap.
Creepy Crawlers was a go to toy as a kid. Its what got me interested in metal fabrication and wood working.
I really miss Creepy Crawlers, both the thing maker and the cartoon series.
I had the 90's bulb version and made so many scary scary bugs, but I'd never wait long enough and I'd always get some coloring on my fingers, one could say I...blue myself, great video!!!
I vividly remember the '92 version. Had no idea it was an old concept!
I half remembered this one but couldn't for the life of me remember what it actually was!! Thank you Toy Galaxy
I remember the cartoon, but I would never guess thata was based on this toy! The cartoon here in Brazil was called "Os Monstruosos".
The carpet in my brothers room was covered in stains from us rubbing the tweezers on the carpet after pulling out a creepy crawlie that still had some liquid plastic on it.
I had no idea this had such a long history. Great job guys
😁
I LOVED my "Creepy Crawler" oven growing up. The bugs were fun but the pencil toppers were where it was at! All my friends begged me to make them custom ones for school. I only lightly burned myself on occasion. Never a big issue but can see how some kids wouldn't be quite as careful.
Great Stuff, need to get some Creepy Crawlers stuff. Really wanted it as a kid.
I actually had the Squirminator action figure growing up, though I didn't know, or cared for the accessory molding gimmick. Thanks for the nostalgia trip!
I loved Creepy Crawlers as a kid in the 90s - the Graveyard Ghoulies pack was my favorite add-on for the system....good times!
never knew they were based on magic tricks...i was a simple kid and just happy cartoons were on tv
This is the one toy my grandma refused to get me...She was always right.
too scary
I was going to mention that I had the skeleton with the molds for making its organs, but dang dude you had the commercial _right there._ That skeleton set ruled.
In retrospect, I’m not sure I even asked for any of that stuff for Christmas, but I sure enjoyed when I got it.
The questionable safety of this reminds me of my Father-in-law telling me about his chemistry set in the 50s that had uranium in it.
Uranium is most dangerous when inhaled or ingested. It can't be absorbed through the skin so touching small amounts isn't as bad. It should definitely still be used with caution though.
Did it also have nitrogen and glycerin?
I still have my Creepy Crawler stuff and Dr.Dreadful
I had a Fun Flowers Thingmaker when I was a kid back in the 60s. My mom only allowed me and my sister to play with it under close supervision. Even then, I was amazed that a device that got so hot was marketed as a toy. But boy was it fun!
I loved the commericals as a kid, but never had any of these as my mother, and father said they were too expensive, but they were happy to spend the money, and give me, and my brothers 4 wheelers instead, I'm not complaining one bit as I had fun with them, just odd.
I had Creepy Crawlers, Incredible Edibles, the Strange Change Machine, a few different sets of resin molds to makes toys vehicles and boats. I don't remember ever burning myself on the heating elements of any of those but then again that could be due to the fumes.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I got the joy of inheriting a whole bunch of toys from the 1960s that had been my uncle's when he was a kid. Two of those were the original Vac-U-Form toy and original Creepy Crawlers set that apparently my uncle had barely used. I used them to the point of running out of the plastic sheets and the plasti-goop. And by the time I had the toys they were already over ten years old and the vac-u-form had been discontinued and the newer creepy crawlers plasti-goop did not work with the old hot plates version like I had. So eventually the toys got thrown out.
I got _a lot_ of burns playing with them...nothing major but I did have blisters here and there on my forearms and fingers. They were certainly a fire hazard. My mom made me put them up on the window sill and shut the door to my room because the fumes that came off of them were _really_ horrible and they were stinking up the whole house (great parenting, huh?). I didn't know better and usually while doing the heating of the sheets or 'cooking' the bugs, my face was hovering right over the hot plates inhaling the smoke & fumes coming off them, monitoring the progress. I even got a sore throat from it. They both required precision timing and if you overheated them you had problems. Some of the vac-u-form sheets, if overheated, would melt and fall in, landing directly on the heating element, and you couldn't just shut it off while the plastic bubbled and burned, you had to wait for the thing to cool down. The creepy crawlers were very easy to undercook or overcook. Undercooked, they were tacky and gummy, and overcooked they came out rock hard, sometimes curling up, so I was constantly poking them with a toothpick trying to get them just right. The original plasti-goop was nothing like the later versions and it was likely an oil-based compound, because if you got it on your fingers it was difficult to wash off.
They were certainly dangerous toys by today's standards (or even the 70s) but man they were FUN. I remember being on Christmas break from school, and all my friends had abandoned all the toys they got for Christmas (me included) to play with these old toys I had inherited. We even brought the stuff we made afterwards to school and sold them for a nickel a piece! We had spent the entire winter break vac-u-forming anything and everything we could find that would fit on the machine, from hot wheels to making little custom signs (it came with alphabet letters). It only ended when we were out of supplies. Good memories :)
One of my favorite toys were Micro Machines. I was so excited when they announced they were coming back, but the new ones are so cheap and shoddy looking.
i actually got the vac maker back in 2010 to make warhammer figures and i had the 1990s one but could never get any of the refill packs
I know that someone in the US bought the recipe and was making their own goop for sale--both to owners of the molds and oven and to special effects people who needed to make their own stuff.
Search for 'patty-goop' and you'll get an answer and probably more use of their services than I can.
... It sucks to live in a third rate country.
I remember the cartoon, vaguely, I was like 5 when it came out. But my mom got me the easy bake oven version from a garage sale and I remember having fun with it.
I remember they made edible ingredients and play-sets. Imagine mixing those up... yikes.
Also... 90s commercial guitar riffs were awesome.
Fantastic as always