Epic Win: Creepy Crawlers
Submitted by K Burk
Is it me, or is this old commercial for Creepy Crawlers actually creepier than the product itself? I keep expecting one of the kids to look into the camera with glowing eyes, sorta like in “Village of the Damned.” The only way the ad could be better is if Mattel could’ve gotten Vincent Price for the voice-over.
WARNING: CREEPY AD IS CREEPY.
Know what would’ve been really cool? If there was a Creepy Crawlers candy maker! I totally would have tried my hand at making gummi spiders!
I’m pretty sure there was a candy version of this later on…
I think I remember that too.
yep definitely were and there still are ones around today that make gummy bugs…im always tempted to “brake” one at work…
Yeah it was called Dr. …..’s Lab (I don’t remember the name) and you could make gummy bugs and foaming drinks in a skull cup. It was awesome.
Dr Dreadful Food Lab is what your thinking. The brains did taste amazing.
Dude, does nobody remember Incredible Edibles? That was the candy maker! it made evil gummi foods. There were jube things you had to melt (which never worked) or foamy mixes you could make which worked much better.
Dr. Dreadful was kind of cool but a lot of it tasted awful. The “worms in dirt” were nasty and so were the blood cells.
It was cool though.
dr dreadful
I had one. It was called Incredible Edibles if I am not mistaken. I can’t remember ever actually eating any!
Yes, the candy version was “Incredible Edibles”.
Incredible Edibles was a toy sold by Mattel in the 1960s. This toy consisted of cicular metal molds into which Gooble De-Goop, a candy like gel, was squeezed. The form was then placed in a small oven. The gel then baked into a rubbery but edible soft candy in the shape of worms and insects. A later set (Kooky Kakes) was made to bake small cakes and decorate them with arms, legs, and faces. Gooble De-Goop and cake mixes could be purchased on blister cards as well as a few additional mold sets. The “Incredible Edibles” formula was created by chemist Don Lusk.
I remember the candy creepy crawlers!!!! They DID make them but there was something in the stuff they used that made some kids sick and some stupid kids ere trying real hugs so it was pulled after a very short run on the market. Omg…I miss those things lol
I think it was called “Incredible Edibles.”
creee eee eeepyyyy CRAWLERS!
OMG!! I loved this! The burns from too hot pieces of metal! Heated liquid plastic! The toxic fumes! My childhood!
Things are way too safe for kids these days.
how are they going to learn about what happens when you mix bleach and Windex together, when they can’t even get the cabinet doors open due to safety locks….pretty sad
Yep, what I remember most was the toxic fumes. If this were sold today, it
would include safety goggles, an oven mitt and a gas mask.
.
Ralph Nadar took all the fun out of being a kid.
*goes to dig through closet to find my Lawn Darts*
It is still sold today (the kid I babysit for has one) and there are no such safety accessories.
The new ones don’t use as much heat, and the plastic takes forever to harden.
Also, if you don’t shake it an insanely long time, it never does harden. I called their tech support once about it, and pitied the poor guy, answering phones all day telling people to shake it more…
The old ones, though – I remember going up to dinner once and when I came back my creepies were black ang charred and REALLY creepy.
I had a set of troll doll molds.
Yeah, even like 15 years ago they had these and I burnt myself. My parents correctly blamed ME for being too impatient or careless, and I learned my lesson: that anything that can hurt me is truly one of the most fun things ever.
They didn’t go “Oh, I’m gonna sue the toy company that made it and the store that sold it to us!”
Yes, there was an edible version later on. My brother had both versions. The edible ones tasted nasty.
OH i had one of these, and then my brother had the weird mad scientist candy maker. it made gummi spiders, and other disgustingly aweosme things… we would sit in the basement and make such a mess.
It’s a genius idea–kids can make their own damn toys! Haha…
..I remember these as a kid too, but I remember them being edible; not with “Plastigoo”. I felt like the edible creepy crawlers was a response to the easy bake oven, since, you know, girls liked to bake and the only baking any boy is going to do is creepy candy creatures. Hah!
AH, but they did have Jackie Coogan, AKA Uncle Fester, narrate the commercial that I saw when I was a kid(and subsequently had to get the Thingmaker for Christmas that year!). God, that was one of the best toys EVER.
Never had this, but I remember it. We used to have a little oven like this or like Easy Bake, that would make sun-catchers. You put the little metal frame on the baking sheet, filled in all the areas with the apprpriate color of plastic pieces, then bake away. Now THAT stuff stunk like, well…. burning plastic!
I was just at a Christmas party at a friend’s house last week, and they (the parents!) had a Star Wars Creepy Crawler maker. The oven looked like R2D2, and you could make little jelly Ewoks and Yodas. I don’t like Star Wars, so I had to take a picture of this freak of marketing evil.
Omg! I loved this thing! Do you remember the awful smell? Ahahaha!
thats when you know they were getting good
The smell was wonderful! The sizzle of the hot mold in the cooling
tank. The burns, the hot plastigoop sticking to the fingers….
FABULOUS TOY! It was a favorite of mine – made a zillion bugs.
The coolest was when Plastigoop came out in GLOW IN THE DARK!
The ultimate. It was the neatest toy a girl could have.
“They feel so soft and natural” would later become the slogan for artificial enhancements. Thanks Creepy Crawlers!!!
Want to make candy creepy crawlers (or other rubbery things)?
Add to Jello mix one additional pack of plain gelatin (or double the Jello per water, or half the water). Same instructions as on the Jello pack otherwise. Add more gelatin for firmer, less for squishier.
Then all you need are the molds. A quick google product search yields lots of them.
Done. Now your wish has come true, you have an infinite supply of cheap mix from any grocery store, and a vast selection of molds. Your ’special paint’ is food color, though you probably need to wait to inject that until it’s partially set up in the fridge.
Non-toxic, fairly safe for even small children, except the boiling water step.
Oh, and add vodka or everclear instead of cold water to make jello shooters. Not safe for children.
It all sounds delicious unless I tell you where gelatin comes from.
Am I channeling Martha Stewart or something?
Oh, and besides the search for ‘bug molds’, ‘creepy molds’ turned up the fact that the Creepy Crawlers bug maker kits are still available.
I had one back in the late 60’s – early 70’s. Being an enterprising young man, I took fishing hooks and placed them in the stuff before they cooled them sold them to my grandpa’s friends as fishing lures!
Gotta love the memories!
My dad used to make his own fishing lures and would use the Creapy Crawlers shrunken head mold to save his leftover lead (used for sinkers). *sigh* Now I ask you, how many kids have fond memories of their dad involving solid lead shrunken heads? I do. And it was all thanks to the hotter’n hell Creepy Crawler plate and molds.
I used to have one of those. They were awesome as hell.
OMG best toy EVER…
I agree, this was hands down the BEST toy I ever had. I loved this thing. I also learned from this thing that touching the surface of the burner was something one only did ONCE. Likewise unplugging it one day I had a finger slip to the plug and got a shock. It taught me not to do that again. It couldn’t be made “safe” enough for over-protected kids today.
OMG—-TOTALLY!! I LOVED the smell of this stuff while it was cooking…I got burned on it too & it’s totally nostalgic! Too bad they had to screw it up and make it all safe & stuff now. And I also got shocked by the thing—ah, childhood memories!!! Was cool having to cool the mold off in water too, and hearing that “sizzle” it made when the hot metal hit the water… I had the Fun Flowers thing too…I bet I still have my Thingmaker & molds shoved in a dark hole around here somewhere… It’s too bad that they have to coddle everyone’s kids now & make everything so boringly safe. WAY too overprotected in this day & age….makes you wonder how any of us survived childhood years ago, eh? Or maybe we weren’t turned into a bunch of namby-pamby wusses who are afraid to play on the swings ’cause they might fall off & skin a knee or something…. So glad I grew up when I did, or I’d never know the joy of Thingmaker blisters, burns & toxic plastic fumes—LOL! LOVE IT!
Think I’ll go see if I can’t go dig mine out of wherever it’s stored…wish me luck!
The edible version was called Incredible Edibles. Sam’s Toybox has a page about it:
http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/IncredibleEdibles.html
wow… I was looking for the same from past one hour… thanks for the post, it’s really great.
- Sohail
http://iMobile.us
I remember one of my friends had a Creepy Crawlers set when we were little. If we were exiled from the Nintendo by our big brothers, then we’d go and make Creepy Crawlers in her bedroom and stick them on our Barbies.
These (similar to Easy Bake Ovens) have been discontinued off and on. Kids apparantly burn themselves…
thats the best part!
I had the Fun Flowers version – as girls weren’t supposed to like bugs in my mother’s world. Also fairly awesome. It included some of the nicer specimens of insect – butterflies, ladybugs, caterpillers. It was great!
I had the “girl” version of this – Fun Flowers. Yes, plenty of burns – but very cool (no pun intended) when you took the mold plate from the heat and put in into the cold water to cool your creations. I felt like a scientist! I must have made a million flowers. I wonder if there are any still over at Mom’s house . . . .
The edible ones were called Incredible Edibles. As a kid, if it had a grain of sugar in it then it was good, so I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy eating them.
Yes, in the early 70’s I had something called “incredible edibles”
My brother and I made swirly coloured bug shaped crayons when we ran out of the plastigoop stuff.
I had both the Creepy Crawlers and the Incredible Edibles. I loved Creepy Crawlers, but the Incredible Edibles were truly horrible tasting. I was even a candy fanatic at that time. I mean, I would eat anything if it contained sugar, but I don’t think I made Incredible Edibles more than once. I made Creepy Crawlers all the time, though. I loved swirling the colors together or trying to put a different colored dot on the belly of the big spider. Fun toy!
this was the best toy ever! me and my brother both got the worst burns from this and the easy bake oven. ah, childhood. i kinda miss that gross smell, it kinda smelled like those suncatchers you cold bake, not the pansy ones that you painted.
..that goo stuff was like napalm once it was hot tho…
now they have a marsion matter like this
Oh yeah, fun toy. We had Creepy Crawlers, Fun Flowers, Incredible Edibles and Dolly Maker. The last one you made dolls and clothes to put on them. Our folks didn’t have a lot of money, but these toys kept us occupied for DAYS. The few burns we got made us respect the Thingmaker. Ah yes, the fumes and the SSSSS when you put the hot mold into the bath of cool water. What a great memory.
I remember this toy I loved it to death and i would have a blast mixing different colors in the mold to make some crazy looking insects
good memory’s
My little brother and I had these things during the late 60’s/early 70’s. We had Creepy Crawlers, Fun Flowers and Jillions of Jewels, which let you add plastic ringbacks and other findings to make jewelry, plus metallic goop and glitter.
I had all the molds, as my mom would buy the molds for my ssister and I. The neat thing was you could make multicolor by cook a little of one color in the mold and then adding a different color. Taught me that sometimes making cool stuff took awhile.
Oh man. I sustained so many burns from this thing, and the fumes were horrible…but Oh how I loved creepy crawlers. Probably the most played with toy from my childhood. Pure unadulterated awesome.
I never noticed it before, but Marshie from Homestar Runner totally reminds me of this guy…
ugh when we were little my brother would leave these things in my bed. He still has his mold thingie to we were just talking about it yesterday. weird!
My dad had one. Anyway, what was with the really awful squeezed font warning us about the fact that it’s an electrical toy? I remember them a lot from my youth, but the choice of font makes it nearly unreadable in my opinion. It always annoys me to see the same idea on movie posters.
They had harry potter or goosebumps or something gummy bugs.
Loved them
They tasted like crap.
these were the reason i broke open my chin, dont ask
weird science, indeed. this thing definitely came from a military lab.
BEST. TOY. EVER!!!!!