Collectible of the Week: A Nightmare on Elm Street Talking Freddy (Matchbox)

You may not be old enough to remember this arcane bit of Americana, but there was a spell in the late 1980s of...Freddy-mania. 

Okay, perhaps the movement wasn't as big as Beatlemania in the 1960s, but it was still a considerable commercial force. 

Specifically, three A Nightmare on Elm Street pictures starring Robert Englund were released between 1987 and 1989, along with rap songs about this famous bastard son of a 100 maniacs. 

Also, toys of Freddy (and his notorious finger-knives) were hot items. In particular, I always like to remember one particular statistic from 1988 that showed more five year olds of the day recognized Freddy Krueger than they did Abraham Lincoln.  

You can imagine how that went over with the Moral Majority.

Ah, the good old days...

This gruesome representation of Wes Craven's horror movie icon (intended for ages "8 and up") stands a whopping 18-inches all, and comes adorned in the character's trademark fedora and ratty red-and-green sweater.  

And yes, he's wearing his finger knives.

The figure also features "poseable arms and legs," but best of all, croaks out juicy (and evil...) bon-mots, just like his quipping, silver-screen counterpart.

"Each time you pull Freddy's string, he has a special message just for you!" notes the legend on the back of the box. 

Among Freddy's catchphrases:  "Hi, I'm Freddy," "Pleasant Dreams," "Let's Be Friends," "Welcome to Elm Street," and "Watch out, Freddy's back!" 

Imaginatively, the interior of the Talking Freddy's box is designed to look like Krueger's boiler room, the very place he stalks and traps his prey.

It's a little strange to think about America's eight year olds playing with a large action figure of a notorious (fictional) child murderer, but on the other hand, children have always had a real (and I'd argue, healthy...) fascination with cinematic monsters. 

Seen in that context, Freddy was merely the latest iteration of that fascination, after Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla.  After all, his TV series, Freddy's Nightmares (1988 - 1990) even made Freddy a regular fixture in living rooms for a while, a "hosting" job that softened his more horrific movie image.

By 1994, Wes Craven himself was commenting on the yin and yang of Freddy-mania in his Pirandello-esque re-imagination, Wes Craven's New Nightmare.  I think he found a pretty good answer about the whole situation, likening Freddy to the witch from Hansel and Gretel. 

In other words, there's an appropriate place for old Pizza Face in our culture, and that place emerges from our long cultural tradition for enjoying the macabre and the terrifying. 

Here are more details about the toy from original sculptor, Rich Roland. 

He writes:

"I took a few photos for you to see the original size of Freddy's head, close up and un-painted."

"It's my artist's proof casting at full scale of the polished wax sculpt super-master I created, that eventually would be burnt out of the mold, lost wax method. This way they have bunches of seamless vinyls to use as masters and go into production. Castings shrink 3.5% each time, so by the time it gets to market it's 7% smaller than my original."

"At the risk of boring you any more with this techno talk, just imagine how washed out and small Talking Freddy doll was by the time it was bought out from Matchbox and sold at Spencer Gifts by a new manufacturer years after the toy was banned from the shelves because of the AFA and conservative mentalities you mentioned. Right on. It was a first! Ha. The news even made it to Entertainment Tonight. I have the event somewhere on VHS packed in the attic somewhere..."

I want to thank Mr. Roland for sharing with me and the readers some more history behind the creation of such a memorable 1980s collectible...