THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Horror Bags Giveaways Galore (Part III)

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Over the last few weeks we have been exploring the spooky world of Horror Bags, the snacks that went crunch in the night! This range of crisps from the mid 1970s carved out a place in our hearts, but also an eerie empire of their own monstrous merchandise! And in this visit to the archives of the 'Orrible Ouse we are going to take a look at the bestest items Dracula ever offered!

As we have already seen, Horror Bags seemingly always had some mail-order offer going, which followed the then traditional format of collect so many empty bags, plus sometimes a small sum of pocket money, to get the latest proffered ghoulish goodies. However a few packets and a handful of loose change went a long way back in the 1970s... or possibly the ghouls in charge of the Horror Bags merch has miscalculated the exchange rate between the UK and Transylvania. Anyhow, whichever way it was, there was some top-notch tat up for grabs for very little indeed.

And it should also be noted that the gruesome gifts offered by Horror Bags were especially created for the range - it was all bespoke stuff, no shifting of cheaply acquired leftover stock here! A perfect example is the Serpents and Stairs game. Now this marvellously macabre board game, which could be yours for just three empty bags and 30p, was obviously just a horror-themed version of that old family favourite, Snakes And Ladders. But what a gloriously ghoulish redesign it was! Not bad at all for a third of a quid and some litter!

However other giveaways were even more elaborate. The Fiendish Faces kit was a wonderfully simple idea that offered hours of eerie entertainment and imaginative play. Basically the kit consisted of a cadaverous but blank face and a large bag of assorted eyes, noses, eyebrows, lips and fangs. And the idea was that you could create your gruesome ghouls by combining different fearsome features. As I said, a simple concept but one that delivered hours of fiendish fun. And I should know, for although I  never got my grubby little mitts on this particular giveaway, I did have Remus playlist that was very similar - however thanks to the said playkit being too obscure to date, I can't say who borrowed the concept off who.

But perhaps the best ghastly gift offered by Horror Bags was the Identi-Kit game - again yours for just a few wrappers and thirty of your earth pence. And unlike the previous two ghoulish giveaways, this appeared to be a wholly original game. In it were six familiar fiends - the Wolfman, a Skeleton, Dracula, Dracula's Bride, the Mummy, and Frankenstein's Monster. However each of them had sadly suffered a horrific fate - they had been chopped into six pieces. So then, each player got a gravestone to make a tomb, and all the monster body part cards were shuffled into a deck. On your go, you drew a card and tried and reassemble one of the monsters on your tomb... Something that was not quite as easy as it sounded in play.

Again, the concept was a simple one but beautifully executed, and it was a great looking little game that had straightforward rules, challenging gameplay and a great theme and atmosphere. Things that was often very lacking in other board games that cost much much more... Yes, Tank Command I am looking at you! In fact, it a shame that Drac and co., or at least the suits at Smiths hadn't taken the bolder move and had all these marvellous games available in the shops. For with great games like these sold for real pocket money prices, Horror Bags could certainly have given the big boys at Ideal, Denys Fisher and MB a run for their money.

Indeed it is still somewhat surprising to me that given the popularity of the range, Horror Bags were somewhat abruptly phased out. And while their successor to the snacks crown is still around today, even the mighty Monster Munch never boasted such a marvellous array of macabre merchandise and mail-order magic. But you never know, some one might one day resurrect the brand. Let's face it, there a whole range of snacks with the marketing and merch already planned out just waiting to return to the shelves. Plus of course, traditionally Dracula never stays dead in his coffin too long...

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Horror Bags Giveaways Galore (Part II)

Hello dear fiends and welcome back to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat, a place where your collection of old crisp packets are history - and not in a Mum's just binned them way! This week we are continuing our exploration of the legendary snacks that went cruch in the night, the Horror Bags range from Smiths Crisps. Flourishing for a few marvellous spooky years in the mid 1970s, Horror Bags were a smash hit, and spawned an eerie empire of their own macabre mail order merchandise which you could only get your grubby little mitts on by sending in empty packets (and a smidge of pocket money sometimes). And what was on offer was very good indeed! Last time we looked at the standard stuff - the expected cards, t-shirts and bags, but this time we are looking at the more outre items that were only a mere 28 days for delivery away!  

The Grizzly Growler

Now the 1970s was not only the home decade of Horror Bags but also the golden age of the 7 inch single, and so it perhaps not surprising that records were a common free gift back then. Now obviously slabs of vinyl weren't quite cheap enough to just give away, but that was why the flexi disc was invented. For those of you blessed with enough youth not to remember the days when vinyl was king, a flexi disc was a floppy circle of plastic that had a groove printed on it, and essentially were an ultra-light weight, and hence also ultra-cheap, way of making a single. Now Horror Bags actually did two of these. Or rather it would seem the same disc was released twice. As far as I can tell, one version was a flexi that proclaimed it featured the sound of bats, and was somewhat confusing marketed as the Grizzly Growler mask. Yes, I know bats don't growl. 

To add further bewilderment, the mask wasn't a mask but an admittedly rather nice cardboard print of a snarling vampire which glowed in the dark. And just to muddy the waters even further, the flexi disc that came with it was also reissued later sans the non-mask. However the fun does not end there, for at least one version, if not both judging from some arrows on the packaging, featured the novel innovation that you didn't even need a record player to enjoy this spooky sonics. For each sleeve came with a tiny stylus built-in, so that you could spin the disc yourself by whirling the flexi around with your fingers. Yes, by all accounts it did sound as horrible as you imagine... 

Rather easier on the ears, were a couple of ranges of novelty items that were heavily promoted with tie-ins with popular British comics. In April 1976, if you were to pick up a copy of long running weekly humour comic Whoopee! you could get hold of a Horror Bags Gripper! And what in the name of Frank Windsor was a Gripper I hear you cry? Well, it was a spring-loaded clip, in the shape of a creepy claw, a spooky skull or a bitey version of the Horror Bags Dracula, that well, gripped things.

I am not sure what exactly they were meant to grip - there was vague talk of using them as ad hoc decorations or bookmarks, but personally I suspect much Gripper action involved minor attacks on the flesh of younger siblings, classmates and family pets. And if you didn't get the free one with Whoopee! you could get the full set of three by sending in 3 empty bags and the princely sum of 10p! Bargain! 

In a similar vein, and promoted in a similar fashion were the Creepy Clutchers! These were little printed plastic cards featuring versions of famous monsters on them, with a slot in them so they could be employed as once again as bookmarks and decorations. And while they presently no real risk of nipping any passing target, they were far more impressive visually, with lovely painted renditions of iconic creatures from the horror movies. And, as you can see below, several were clearly based on the old Universal monsters. There were six in the range - Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster, a Vampire Bat, and a Witch (although an ad I found does show an alternate design featuring a skeletal ghoul). 

However the wrinkle here was that the offer was for a trio of these Creepy Clutchers, for 3 bags plus 10p. So then, if you wanted the entire set, you had to eat more Horror Bags in order to send off twice! And to promote this offer, you got one free with an issue of another long-running comedy comic Buster. 

But as creepy and cool as all this swag was, they weren't the best that Horror Bags had to offer! Next time we will take a look at the very coolest mail-order merch that came direct from Dracula's Castle! Or at least the one located suspiciously close to Smiths HQ...  

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Horror Bags Giveaways Galore (Part I)

Hello dear fiends! And welcome back to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Now then, over the last few weeks we've been nibbling away at some spooky snacks from the 1970s - the Horror Bags range from Smiths Crisps! And while these creepy crunchables only were around for four years or so, they spawned a whole empire of macabre merchandise which little horrors could get their grubby paws on by sending in empty packets from Fangess, Bones, Claws, Ribs and Bats! So then, hold on to your hats as we take a whistle-stop tour through all their gloriously gruesome giveaways! (Well at least all the ones I've been able to find... there may be more lurking out there!) 

The range launched with Fangs (cheese and onion) and Bones (salt and vinegar) and in late 1974 there was an offer to send away from a free Dracula mask! Yes, by posting off six packets - and especially for the hard of thinking, they deliberately mentioned in the blurb that they had to be empty packets - you'd get a Dracula mask. Or to be exact, a mask of the top hatted Horror Bags version of Dracula who fronted the range.

Now the mask was pretty cool, but this was only the beginning! For many more ghoulish giveaways would follow, and would grow steadily more ambitious. For example, another early give-away was an iron-on T-shirt transfer offer that again featuring our top hatted fiend's features, but later on a similar offer delivered a proper printed shirt - yours for only 4 bags and the princely sum of 69p. And clearly the Horror Bags Dracula was a hit with the kids as he would feature on a great many of these giveaway items.

His grinning features would adorn a rather nifty bag. This was a drawstring knapsack kind of affair, and was apparently very well made, for quite a few seem to have survived in excellent condition! He would also pop up on a toothbrush, an appropriate but perhaps not terrible exciting item for a range of crisps that included Fangs. The packet tried its best to talk this giveaway up - the brush had a head made by "HALEX" whatever in the name of Cliff that was*, but this one was ultimately probably more appealing to grown-ups than kids. However for 4 empty packets and 25p you couldn't really go wrong. 

Far more exciting was the Dracula Hand Puppet offer (4 bags plus 50p). Admittedly it turned out to be neither a marionette or a glove puppet - rather it was the most humble of the puppet family, a sock puppet, but the design was nice and the packet had pictured the puppet so you knew what you were getting. Also in the cheap but fun category, Horror Bags knew that kids loved puzzles, cards and stickers and hence there were a range of smaller giveaways that were simple but packed with ghoulish delights. 

There was the Horrid Picture Cards set. For sending in just 3 bags, you got a set of six cards each with a suitably spooky picture on the front and a story about Dracula on the back. But the fun thing was that the cards all joined up to make one huge eerie illustration with a massive skull on it! Obviously very cool, for as any school kid will tell you, as massive skulls are always very cool, der brain. 

Equally simple but also cunningly elaborate was the Shivers Stickers set - yours for 3 bags and 28p. Now these were not quite your usual paper with gum on the back affairs, for these were designed for sticking in unusual places! There were spooky cobwebs, spiders and staring eyes that stuck on windows, and for even more gruesome fun there were what the adverts termed "Ghastly Gashes" (stop laughing at the back!) and vampire bite puncture holes to stick on yourself in a primitive horror make-up fashion! 

Rounding off this do and make section of giveaways was the Horror Bags Fungames Set. Now this was a chunky folder jam-packed with goodies. There were two masks - a Dracula one, doubtless identical to the one given away in the earlier offer, but also a rather fabulous Frankenstein mask too.

There were several sheets featuring stuff to do and make, such as a hanging bat mobile and a set of cards to cut out to making a matching pairs game. And there were quizzes and puzzles too. Admittedly these weren't terribly taxing, the little girl always quickly escaped the Baron for example, but they looked cool. 

Best of all though was the Glow-in-the-dark Castle Poster. Now actually this was two posters - one showed a crumbling castle but had lots of doors and windows cut in that you could open. The second poster showed assorted ghosts, ghouls and monsters faffing about. However - and this is the clever bit - you put the castle poster over the monster one, and so when you opened the doors or windows you could see the 'orrible beings that dwelt inside. And hence you had a sort of spooky version of an advent calendar. 

Now the glow-in-the-dark bit was perhaps a tad misleading as these posters did not involve the usual phosphorescent or luminous paint, rather you made the windows light up yourself. The pack presented two methods of doing so - firstly you could put the posters together and hanging them in front of a torch or lamp (not hugely practical really), or you could stick the posters onto a window (a more practical option but not so popular with parents who insist on worrying about stupid things like marks on glass rather than the important things in life such as ghosts and monsters glowing). 

Anywho, which ever way you did it, it actually worked rather well. I know it sounds lame - and indeed I even thought that when I received this set in the post as a kid - but the clever folks at Horror Bags had ensured the posters were exactly the correct thickness, so that when they were put together, they did block out light. But the second poster was also thin enough on its own so that when you opened the windows and doors of the castle the scenes inside would light up rather nicely. Completely brilliant! Or at least it was for the brief time Mum allowed me to stick it to the window...

Sadly my Fungames kit poster is long gone, but here's another creepy puzzle instead that features a little version of the same castle... 

Next time, yet more ghoulish giveaways, looking at the most luxurious of all the Horror Bags tat!

* actually a venerable but now defunct makers of plastic and bakelite items apparently - see here 

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Ghoulish Giveaways!

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Last week we were celebrating the weird and wonderful world of Horror Bags, a range of macabre snacks made by Smiths Crisps back in the mid 1970s.  Now although this line of spooky snacks only lasted a handful of years - launching in 1974, but not surviving to the 1980s - while they were on the shelves, they were hugely popular. And a sign of how well-loved they were is the plethora of related tat they spawned.

Promotional items have long formed part of the marketing of many foods, in particular those that are aimed at children. The classic template has remained unchanged for decades - collect so many tokens or wrappers and send them off to get a free gift. Well, they say free, but in reality there was often a token amount of money involved too i.e. send off ten wrappers and a cheque or postal order for £1.99 to get your free Marketing Tat-o-tron! Anyhow, this kind of give-away offer was very popular back in the 1970s, a time when shopping by mail was exciting and rare, rather than the default as it is now. And while these items were often of the funny for five minutes type and were destined to end up in the bin very quickly, back then it was massively exciting to get something through the post, particularly you couldn't get anywhere else. Indeed, one of the most powerful tag-lines wielded by marketing departments in the 1970s was "not available in any shop!". Team up that line with a time limit, such as "send in before..."  or "only available until...", and you had a powerful formula for boosting your sales, and perhaps harvesting some additional pocket money too. It worked time and time again, even though it often took a ruddy age for the goodies to actually arrive - for "Please allow 28 days for delivery" was the dreaded line of small print in such offers.

Now this kind of promotional giveaway was a common feature with breakfast cereals aimed at kids, something that continues to this very day. However even in the golden age of collect and send in offers, for other food related brands such as sweets and crisps, they were more occasional. Usually they turned up when a new line was launched - with adverts on the telly sometimes, but more often in the pages of popular comics - or when a new flavour or variant was added to the range. Therefore the nature and frequency of such promotions was a very good gauge of how much traction assorted brands actually had. A send-in giveaway that would net you some merch that tied-in to some popular TV or film, or famous pop star or sportsman, showed that the brand was big enough in the playground to be seen as an effective form of marketing. However a product doing collect-and-send-ins for tat featuring its own brand showed that it was an even strong line. It was big enough not to need to hitch its wagon to other properties in the mediasphere, big enough to star in its own promotions as it were.Now Horror Bags started off in the usual fashion, with the earliest packets of Fangs and Bones running an offer for a free Dracula mask in late 1974.

However this item was just the first of a long line of ghoulish goodies that took an maddening 28 days for delivery. And over the years, Horror Bags did a massive amount of these giveaways - at least 15 by my count (and a few more may well have slipped under our nostalgia radar too). And given that they were only really on the shelves for around four years, it would appear that not only were they constantly running these giveaways, but also (according to my back of beermat mathematics) they were running these offers pretty much quarterly! What's more, all these giveaways were for Horror Bags related merch, with not one being done as a tie-in to some other popular property du jour! And that may well be some sort of record! Indeed, the only brand that seemed to run as many send-in-giveways was Trebor's Double Agents... but that's a story for another day! 

However all of this does leave us with a trickier question - why did Horror Bags disappear if they were so successful?  Well, it would seem that they were killed off to make way for a new rising star in the crisp world. For in 1977, Smiths decided to launch another horror themed snack - Monster Munch. And while Horror Bags gained a new flavour (and shape) in the form of Bats in 1978, at some point in the late 1970s it was decided that the line had had its day, and all future spooky snackery would be Monster Munch shaped. Possibly this was one of the many ripples in the great dank pond of pop culture caused by George Lucas dropping in a large rock named Star Wars.

For while spooky stuff had been very popular with kids in the 1970s, now the future looked scifi flavoured and possibly it was felt that as the fluffy creatures fronting Monster Munch weren't steeped in the macabre and the gothic, they could pass of the kind of weird aliens that populated the Cantina Bar. Indeed, if memory serves, the early telly ads for Monster Munch implied they lived on a planet of puppet monsters. But whatever the reason, Horror Bags disappeared from the shelves, while Monster Munch continues to thrive to this very day.

But even the mighty Monster Munch didn't have quite as many giveaways in its early years as its elder brother Horror Bags! And next time, we will be presenting the fun and freaky items that sending off empty packets of Fangs, Bones, Claws, Ribs, and Bats could net you!  

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Bags of Horror!

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Tat! Come in, come in! That's right, just step over those dropped aitches! Now then guys and ghouls, in recent trips exploring the crapalcade of dodgy delights in the 'Orrible 'Ouse, we've been looking at some of the stranger and spookier ice lollies produced in the 1970s. And as we remarked at the time, the '70s saw a real boom in scary stuff aimed at kids, with Count Dracula happily hawking blood-red lollies to the ankle-biters! However it wasn't just ice cold snacks that could chill the blood of a hungry 1970s kid. Vampirism is, as we all know, a highly contagious disease, and true to form, it had soon infected other munchable goodies! 

Now one of the oldest makers of crunchy delights, was Smiths Crisps, established by Frank Smith and Jim Viney in a garage in Cricklewood not long after the First World War. Early on, Smith bought out Viney's shares in the business, and in the 1930s had even established itself in Australia too. Now their stock-in trade was crisps (that means chips to most of you outside the UK) and other crunchy snacks. Now for decades the crisp market was largely dominated by different companies jockeying for position by releasing, and indeed in some cases inflicting, allegedly exciting new flavours on an unsuspecting public. However despite short-lived flavours such as tomato ketchup, Bovril or even hedgehog (yes, that did happen) being unleashed you couldn't really beat the old favourites such as ready salted, salt and vinegar, and cheese and onion. But in the 1970s, crisp making technology entered an exciting new era when machines were devised that could mould pulped potato and maize into any shape you desired.

And hence we had a new wave of savoury snacks that made the traditional vaguely round and crinkled crisp look rather boring! There were now crisps in the shapes of hoops, squares, balls and tubes, all of which were happily scoffed by a greedy public. And more exotic shapes were to follow - crisps shaped like tanks, spaceships and even zodiac signs! Now to be honest, such high concept snacks only really looked like a child's crayon drawing of the object they were meant to resemble, but at the time we didn't really care. For the novelty of the very concept of munching on an edible tank, for a time at least, outgunned the deficiency of the often lumpy shapes formed by the moulding and frying process. And hence, once that novelty was exhausted, the brand often quietly disappeared...

However if you could match an appealing marketing angle to a decent snack shape, you could perhaps create a classic snack. Now Smiths had indeed messed about with a variety of novelty shaped snacks before they struck gold. Possibly noting the rip-roaring success of the Dracula themed lolly produced Lyons Maids, in 1975 they made a bid to bring edible horror to the crisp market. Now in the lesser hands, this concept of going monster could well have fizzled out like so many other novelty shaped snacks. However Smiths were thinking not only big but clever too. To begin with, they picked concepts that could be turned into shapes that would not end up an abstract blob after frying, and actually still look like what they were supposed too. Secondly they had the smart idea of not just doing one new brand but building an entire range. And indeed, that brand would would go on to be become a legend!

Launching in late 1974, Smiths unleashed Horror Bags upon the world. Featuring a comedy vampire as their mascot, Horror Bags came initially in two delightfully ghoulish flavours, and - now pay attention for this was the really clever bit - each flavour came in a different macabre shape! Firstly there were Fangs, which were as I'm sure you have all guessed, maize moulded into the shape of vampiric teeth and flavoured cheese and onion. And the real genius of this design was that you could pop these crisps into your gob just like the plastic fangs you got from joke shops - yes, a snack AND a vampire dress-up prop too! But if cheese and onion wasn't your thing, there were Bones! These snacks really did look like little bones in a bag and provided spooky salt and vinegar flavoured fun, although sadly you could not assemble your own snack-sized skeleton from them.

Horror bags were an instant success, and so Smiths expanded the range. Soon Fangs and Bones were joined by Ribs ("Vampire Vinegar Flavour") and Claws (bacon flavour). And in 1978 Bats flapped into the Horror Bags family, which were advertised as being "batburger" flavour which I recall tasted suspiciously beefy.

But not everyone was happy. In typically hysterical style, tabloid newspapers were soon trying to whip up a storm of controversy over these already much-loved crisps, claiming it was a disgrace that what they termed "X certificate" snacks were being sold to children. (The X certificate was the film classification for movies suitable only for 18 year olds and over, and hence the usual certificate horror movies got). In true gutter journalism fashion they even managed to find an expert to back up their manufactured outrage. They reported that a Dr James Willis, a psychiatric consultant at Guy's Hospital, had said that "using unpleasant stimuli as a selling line could disturb a child in the same way that a vulnerable youngster can be disturbed by early exposure to sexual things". Of course, whether the good Dr Willis had really taken a strong stand against Horror Bags or had been merely asked a vague but leading  hypothetical question in order to produce a quote for a story in a newspaper with only the vaguest associations with actual news, or indeed the truth, I will leave for you to decide.

Thankfully however this hate campaign against Horror Bags didn't really gain much traction. Most parents thought that the idea that crisps, even spooky shaped ones, could be harmful was frankly a load of old bollocks. Smiths themselves were a tad more diplomatic, issuing a statement that basically stated the real truth, which was "it's good for children to be on fun terms with things that frighten them". The tabloids dropped the matter swiftly and Horror Bags made a turnover of £4 million quid that year. thanks for the free advertising suckers!

Andspeaking of advertising,  here's the TV ad announcing a new abominable addition to the line!

The Horror Bags Vampire - who was actually meant to be Dracula himself - was played there by Frank Thornton, better known as Captain Peacock in long running BBC sitcom Are You Being Served. Now there were a whole series TV ads for Horror Bags, and many more running in the pages of UK comics. And one of the things that make Horror Bags so fondly remembered was the long line of mail order give-aways and offers Smiths produced to help promote the brand. And next time we will be taking a look at some of these gleefully ghoulish giveaways and learning how Horror Bags gained a stable mate who would provide to be their nemesis!