The Sixties was the decade of the monster boom; creatures and ghouls were everywhere the eye could see. Never having been considered before as a subject for kiddie merchandise, toymakers leapt onto a monster craze that started in the Fifties with re-runs of classic Universal films and hit its stride when West Hempstead's Aurora Plastics Corporation produced its first Frankenstein model kit. Colorforms, Pez dispensers, coloring books, boardgames, gum cards, lunchboxes, silly putty, crazy foam: you name it, monsters creeped & crawled about in the Sixties. One of these items was made by the Palmer Plastics Company. Originally included in a set of eight, this Hollywood horror was sold along with Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, Creature from the Black Lagoon, IT the Terror from Beyond Space (a '50s alien invader flick), Gorgo (a British Godzilla), and the Cyclops (the one featured in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, though it doesn't look like him). Gruesome and charming at the same time, these were slightly larger than your average green army man and were made before the age of action figures had come into bloom. Flat versions (they were literally squashed) were made a year or two later and are easier to obtain than their more popular fleshed-out "cousins".
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