I’m gonna start this post with a trigger warning for myself: GIANT HEADED PUMPKIN THINGIES APPROACHING! GIRD YOUR LOINS!
To be honest, most of the older Halloween cards aren’t all that strange. The ones that are creepy are supposed to be, and most of them are supposed to be lighthearted. But there are a few trends that drive…me…nuts…
This is a series from a company called Barton and Spooner (as far as I can tell), and these bulbous, pumpkin-headed things terrify me. Like, I honestly don’t like to look at these cards. I was updating my site once, and I’d forgotten I had one in the queue, and I had to put the phone down for a few seconds to recover.
I think it’s the forced-jollity on their faces. The weird uncanny valley of the childlike lower half combined with the impish macrocephaly (look it up) that just makes me want to put my closet down as a forwarding address.
It’s also that the expressions are always so over-the-top manic-with-a-dose-of-too-much-cocaine. There’s no hiding from the PAIN OF HAPPINESS in these faces.
Like that thing up above. It’s a Frankenstein monster of vegetable wrongness. But it’s grinning and grinding its teeth into a powder of glee. It shouldn’t exist.
I happily do not own any of these physical cards. I would not willingly purchase them. If someone, only a sadistic enemy, sent me one, I would burn it. Publicly. As a statement of warning to mankind.
But others seem to find them amusing, which proves once again that I am a stranger to my species, or at least the part that enjoys looking at really screwed up freaks of holiday nature.
But, you know what? Writing this took too much out of me. These cards have now been on my screen far too long, and I need a nap. If you enjoyed this post, I grieve for your soul.
