This piece is really about toys. Only we have to take a detour first…
For you see, the monsters of the 1930s and 1940s trickled down to kids by the 1960s. The period between Frankenstein (1931) and The Munsters (1964-1966) was filled with the comedic monster films such as Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1945). This trend at Universal to play their horrors for laughs began the monsters down that slippery slope. Cartoonists like Charles Addams also gave them a shove in that direction. Addams’ cartoons are wonderfully gruesome and not for kids but cartoons, like monsters, all ended up in the nursery.
Whether we are talking about The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Gruesomes on The Flintstones (1964), The Creepleys on Scooby-Doo (1977) or any other version of friendly monsters, we can see things like: a man made from human parts, blood-drinking vampires, man-eating plants, shape-changing werewolves, severed killer hands, and many other ideas from the Victorian Age as playthings for kids. The important question is really…why?
Why had the scariest novel of 1897 become Al Lewis as Grandpa and the influential 1818 Gothic Frankenstein end up as merely Fred Gwynne as a sillier version of Karloff? Yvonne de Carlo or Carolyn Jones as a Carmilla-wannabe, domesticated and sporting a Bride of Frankenstein dye-job. Had these old classics lost their magic, their power to terrify?
Yes and no. The lengthy Victorian prose of most classic horror novels were pretty staid stuff by 1945. The Pulps served up modern, accessible versions of these themes as did their adaptations on film. These in turn fell to the comedians and cartoonists (Abbott & Costello and Bob Hope to name the biggest) or Charles Addams in The New Yorker. Modern readers and viewers were more sophisticated. By the 1960s their children had much bigger things to worry about than Count Dracula. The A to H Bomb, the Russians, the Hippies, juvenile delinquents, Viet Nam, reefer madness, any number of social issues. Monsters needed new threads, and they got them from writers like Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson and Jack Finney.
But the old crowd was still around. And like the furniture of old, when the adults were done with it, these stories weren’t thrown away. They ended up in the nursery. This had happened to the folk tales and fairy tales that the Brothers Grimm and others collected. Too unsophisticated for adults, they became bedtime stories for children. Despite the blood, the rape, the mutilation and all the other nasty bits. People like Andrew Lang edited these out, making them safer for little folks everywhere. Or are they? Little things still creep in, like Cinderella’s sisters cutting their toes off to fit into the glass slipper. Or birds pecking their eyes out after she marries the prince. These were never intended to be kid stories. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker and W. F. Harvey and Guy de Maupassant never wrote for kids. They just ended up there.
By the1960s, comics had seen a lot of “fun” monsters. Casper the Friendly Ghost, who was spawned in the 1930s as a cartoon character, was a comic book star by 1949. He had a lot of new friends from Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost (1953), Wendy, the Good Little Witch (1954) and Hot Stuff the Little Devil (1957). (And even that putz Richie Rich, who managed some child-sized chills in Vaults of Mystery (1974-1982).
After these titles came Millie the Loveable Monster (1962) by Bill Woggon as well as The Adventures of Jerry Lewis (1957-1965) which regularly featured monsters, and the end run of The Adventures of Bob Hope that took on a regular cast of creepies in issue #95 (Oct-Nov 1965) to the finish at #109 (Feb-Mar 1968). There was also Melvin the Monster (1965) who looked like a generic green-skinned creature and Stanley and His Monster (1968), which blended monsters and the modern dance culture in the character of Stanley’s babysitter, Marcia. Most of these never saw the 1970s. Oddly, that decade would see a resurgence in occult studies and scientific research into UFOs, Bigfoot and of course, Nessie. The adults (some of them anyway) were taking the monsters back. Radu Florescu’s In Search of Dracula (1972) and In Search of Frankenstein (1975) showed an interest in how the classic monsters had been created.
On television, Abbott & Costello (1967) returned in cartoon form to be harassed by monsters. Cecil & Beany (1962) found that a boy could have a sea serpent for a friend. The Mighty Hercules (1963), Astro Boy (1963), Milton the Monster (1965), Frankenstein Jr and the Impossibles (1966), Space Ghost (1966), The Herculoids (1967), the list goes on and on. Kid shows and their merchandizing playground, the toy box, were the land of monsters and the mighty heroes that vanquished them.
But what has been given can not be taken back. The kiddie monsters dominated Saturday Morning television with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (1969) and later all manner of others from Masters of the Universe (1983) to Gargoyles (1994). Where a child in the 1950s might have had a Howdy Dowdy doll, the kids of the 1990s were playing with action figures like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, Thundercats, Transformers and Spawn. The idea of an ordinary human toy was hard to find. These were usually soldiers like G. I. Joe or superheroes like Superman or Batman.
Children today live in a world of larger-than-life characters. But is this so different than the kids of the 1800s begging for the tales of witches, giants and heroes? No, the Age of Reason and then the Victorians tried to cleanse the nursery of such “trash”, making children’s fare instructive, sensible and dull. But in the end the monsters found their way back, through films, television, comics. Monsters will always rise up out of the dust, be it graveyard dirt, or nursery corner dust-bunnies, and take what is their right, the dark shadows of the imagination.
Occult Noir and Mythos meet!The classic Mythos collection!
For you see, the monsters of the 1930s and 1940s trickled down to kids by the 1960s. The period between Frankenstein (1931) and The Munsters (1964-1966) was filled with the comedic monster films such as Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1945). This trend at Universal to play their horrors for laughs began the monsters down that slippery slope. Cartoonists like Charles Addams also gave them a shove in that direction. Addams’ cartoons are wonderfully gruesome and not for kids but cartoons, like monsters, all ended up in the nursery.
Whether we are talking about The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Gruesomes on The Flintstones (1964), The Creepleys on Scooby-Doo (1977) or any other version of friendly monsters, we can see things like: a man made from human parts, blood-drinking vampires, man-eating plants, shape-changing werewolves, severed killer hands, and many other ideas from the Victorian Age as playthings for kids. The important question is really…why?
Why had the scariest novel of 1897 become Al Lewis as Grandpa and the influential 1818 Gothic Frankenstein end up as merely Fred Gwynne as a sillier version of Karloff? Yvonne de Carlo or Carolyn Jones as a Carmilla-wannabe, domesticated and sporting a Bride of Frankenstein dye-job. Had these old classics lost their magic, their power to terrify?
Yes and no. The lengthy Victorian prose of most classic horror novels were pretty staid stuff by 1945. The Pulps served up modern, accessible versions of these themes as did their adaptations on film. These in turn fell to the comedians and cartoonists (Abbott & Costello and Bob Hope to name the biggest) or Charles Addams in The New Yorker. Modern readers and viewers were more sophisticated. By the 1960s their children had much bigger things to worry about than Count Dracula. The A to H Bomb, the Russians, the Hippies, juvenile delinquents, Viet Nam, reefer madness, any number of social issues. Monsters needed new threads, and they got them from writers like Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson and Jack Finney.
But the old crowd was still around. And like the furniture of old, when the adults were done with it, these stories weren’t thrown away. They ended up in the nursery. This had happened to the folk tales and fairy tales that the Brothers Grimm and others collected. Too unsophisticated for adults, they became bedtime stories for children. Despite the blood, the rape, the mutilation and all the other nasty bits. People like Andrew Lang edited these out, making them safer for little folks everywhere. Or are they? Little things still creep in, like Cinderella’s sisters cutting their toes off to fit into the glass slipper. Or birds pecking their eyes out after she marries the prince. These were never intended to be kid stories. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker and W. F. Harvey and Guy de Maupassant never wrote for kids. They just ended up there.
By the1960s, comics had seen a lot of “fun” monsters. Casper the Friendly Ghost, who was spawned in the 1930s as a cartoon character, was a comic book star by 1949. He had a lot of new friends from Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost (1953), Wendy, the Good Little Witch (1954) and Hot Stuff the Little Devil (1957). (And even that putz Richie Rich, who managed some child-sized chills in Vaults of Mystery (1974-1982).
After these titles came Millie the Loveable Monster (1962) by Bill Woggon as well as The Adventures of Jerry Lewis (1957-1965) which regularly featured monsters, and the end run of The Adventures of Bob Hope that took on a regular cast of creepies in issue #95 (Oct-Nov 1965) to the finish at #109 (Feb-Mar 1968). There was also Melvin the Monster (1965) who looked like a generic green-skinned creature and Stanley and His Monster (1968), which blended monsters and the modern dance culture in the character of Stanley’s babysitter, Marcia. Most of these never saw the 1970s. Oddly, that decade would see a resurgence in occult studies and scientific research into UFOs, Bigfoot and of course, Nessie. The adults (some of them anyway) were taking the monsters back. Radu Florescu’s In Search of Dracula (1972) and In Search of Frankenstein (1975) showed an interest in how the classic monsters had been created.
On television, Abbott & Costello (1967) returned in cartoon form to be harassed by monsters. Cecil & Beany (1962) found that a boy could have a sea serpent for a friend. The Mighty Hercules (1963), Astro Boy (1963), Milton the Monster (1965), Frankenstein Jr and the Impossibles (1966), Space Ghost (1966), The Herculoids (1967), the list goes on and on. Kid shows and their merchandizing playground, the toy box, were the land of monsters and the mighty heroes that vanquished them.
But what has been given can not be taken back. The kiddie monsters dominated Saturday Morning television with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (1969) and later all manner of others from Masters of the Universe (1983) to Gargoyles (1994). Where a child in the 1950s might have had a Howdy Dowdy doll, the kids of the 1990s were playing with action figures like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, Thundercats, Transformers and Spawn. The idea of an ordinary human toy was hard to find. These were usually soldiers like G. I. Joe or superheroes like Superman or Batman.
Children today live in a world of larger-than-life characters. But is this so different than the kids of the 1800s begging for the tales of witches, giants and heroes? No, the Age of Reason and then the Victorians tried to cleanse the nursery of such “trash”, making children’s fare instructive, sensible and dull. But in the end the monsters found their way back, through films, television, comics. Monsters will always rise up out of the dust, be it graveyard dirt, or nursery corner dust-bunnies, and take what is their right, the dark shadows of the imagination.
