Where the Horror Began

The twisted toys, cards, and cartoons of my childhood.

When it comes to being a writer, people often ask “why horror?” I never really know how to answer that other than to say it’s always been my favorite genre. And when I say always, I mean always. Even as a child I was enthralled by all things spooky. The excitement of being scared (while also being safe) was the crack cocaine of my childhood (the crack cocaine of my adulthood is crack cocaine. I kid, I kid).

Thinking back on the stuff I loved as a little boy, it’s not difficult to see a pattern of horror fandom and the influence cartoons, comics, and especially the toys of the 1980s had on me. For those of you who weren’t born yet, the ’80s were a wild time for action figures and playsets. While nowadays the focus is on superheroes and educational games, back then there were many toy lines with downright terrifying villains. The situation was so out of control that parents started complaining about the constant representations of evil in stuff targeted toward their children. It was these very toys that I always asked my parents for, bypassing the heroes in favor of the freakish rogues.

Take Masters of the Universe for example. This cartoon show, and the action figures linked to it, was ripe with horror baddies, from leech men to two-headed ghouls to a buff, blue leader with a skull for a head who rode a panther like a horse. While the good guys had some interesting half-animal/half-human hybrids, the rogues had a much richer selection of mutants, monsters, and madmen. Just look at these figures for Hordak and the ridiculously named Scare-Glow.

These figures alone are more frightening than any children’s toys on the market today. While He-Man had the goth Castle Grayskull, Skeletor had the more sinister Snake Mountain. Guess which one I had as a kid.

Ah, memories of evil…

The same goes for the equally popular G.I. Joe. While the heroes were mostly boring military men in camo fatigues and sailor suits, their rivals, the terrorist organization COBRA, had cyborgs, man-serpents, and bikers who wielded diamond-studded chainsaws. G.I. Joe’s playset was a dull aircraft carrier, but COBRA had this much cooler terror dome, which I was also lucky enough to have as a kid. In my playpen, the villains had mansion forts while the heroes had nothing.

G.I. Joe didn't stand a chance.

But the true king of 1980’s horror toys is the Dungeons & Dragons action figure line of ’83. The roleplaying game had already caused quite a stir with Godfearing parents, who believed it was a gateway drug to Satanism. With the premier of the Saturday morning cartoon show, a series of toys were released that looked like they’d been forged by black magic. The bad guys of the line were truly the stuff of nightmares, with evil sorcerers, swamp monsters, reptilian ghouls, and straight-up demons.

That one demon is literally made of hellfire.

While I was never that into the cartoon, and to this day have never played the roleplaying game, I absolutely loved these figures. As with G.I. Joe, the heroes were fucking lame—Sir Lancelot types, wizards, and elves—but the villains were truly spectacular, with three-headed griffins and diabolical barbarians that looked right out of a Frank Frazetta painting.

Warduke is not even the scariest of the toys.

The rogue’s castle was called The Fortress of Fangs, and it remains the most frightening playset I, or anyone else, ever had.

Not Satanic at all.

My memories of playing with it are joyous, but I remember being somewhat creeped out by the details of the fortress. It had a moving wall of spikes you could impale heroes with and a trap door that dropped them into a Hell-like pit where burning skeletons writhed in flames. May I remind you this was a toy for fucking children?

Look into the fires of Hell, kid.

Shaped like a snake’s head, this set also came with a purple, winged demon with a skull belt buckle. It’s not difficult to see why parents were concerned about the occult implications of these toys. Dungeons & Dragons received serious blowback, and the line and TV show disappeared rather quickly, but I held on to some of those toys in a tote in my basement with other childhood memories of horror.

Adorable

In addition to all the scary figures, the ’80s was also the first decade that encouraged the penchant for grossness all young boys have. Garbage Pail Kids cards were all the rage when I was a tike. These collectible trading cards featured artwork of plump children vomiting, eating boogers, crawling out of the grave, blowing up their own heads, and generally being killed in revolting ways. I cannot overstate how popular these cards were. Even now, the originals sell for big bucks on eBay. We also had Madballs, which were softball-sized foam spheres with monstrous faces. My personal favorite was Slobulus, a Frankenstein-like, green goblin with one eyeball hanging from the socket by connective nerves. Other characters included a horned cyclops, a bloodshot eyeball, a smiling skull, and a gruesome head with an exposed brain.

So much better than playing Little League.

All these things were huge parts of my childhood and instrumental in strengthening my affection for horror. Combing them with book series like the Crestwood Monster House books and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and it’s no wonder I was writing horror stories by the time I was seven. There were other contributors, such as the Remco classic monsters figures and shows like Count Duckula, and as I entered my preteens, I discovered heavy metal, which in the ’80s was obsessed with songs about evil and devil worship. Just look at this Mötley Crüe video. I was about twelve when I read my first Stephen King book and fourteen when I read my first Clive Barker tome. Throughout my school days, I wrote my own scary stories in spiral notebooks (often when I was supposed to be paying attention in class) and by the time I turned sixteen I’d decided my life’s goal was to become a professional horror author. It took decades, but I’m very proud to have accomplished this dream.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the people who designed the disturbing toys, cards, and cartoons of the 1980s. My era wasn’t as soft on kids as the world seems to be today (we even had toys guns that looked real). In some ways, society has progressed for the better from the culture of the ’80s, but the pop culture of that long, lost decade is untouchable, and its plethora of horror entertainment is still highly celebrated. Scary movie fans know nothing beats the stuff from the ’80s. This was the heyday of John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Stuart Gordon. Freddy Kruger was one of the most recognizable faces of the decade. Even pop icons like Michael Jackson made horror-themed music videos. Now we have throwback scary movies and shows set in the ‘80s, such as Stranger Things and Maxxxine, and more remakes of the era’s horror classics than anyone could possibly want.

I’m glad I grew up when kids’ toys were scary and the videos on MTV were full of demons and pentagrams. One only needs to read my books to see the long-lasting impact those early influences had on me.

Horror is in my blood. It is my passion, my life.

For as long as I can remember, it’s been the driving force behind all my creative endeavors, and that will never change.

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My latest book, Pure Evil, is now sold out in hardback. Thanks to everyone who ordered a copy, helping make this release a big success. If you missed out, don’t worry, because a preorder is now up for the paperback edition. The books are expected to ship out the first week of March, so if you order now, you won’t have to wait long to receive it. Remember, this item is a TRIANAHORROR exclusive and will not be available elsewhere.

Collecting thirteen extreme and splatterpunk stories from the past decade of my professional writing career, Pure Evil offers a broader look at the gamut of horrors I write, and if you look closely, you’ll see hints of my childhood self—that little boy who decided he wanted to spook people for a living.

This is what I was born to do. It’s what I’ll be remembered for, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you all for helping me make this dream a reality.

Until next time, keep reading horror, and if you have kids, buy them something scary for me. Who knows… they may be the next Kristopher Triana.

Your pal always,

Kris