Found another goofy old kid's halloween mask, and after all the internet research in the world I only came up with the fact that it's been made in a number of variant color schemes (see last image below.) Guess I'll just call him the bulbous, brainiacal, buck-toothed beast from the Black Eye Galaxy of Coma Berenices. Anyone with any real info please leave a comment...
Strange one indeed.
ReplyDeleteThis feels like a mask by committee! "I want the big brains guys from Star Trek!" "No, I wanted a beaver!" And on and on it goes, and the frustrated artists throws up his hands and makes this wonder of an age.
ReplyDeleteI'd wear it. Everybody would want to know what I was, and I'd have a lot of different answers!
I don't know how you managed to find what you did, even. I can't narrow down web searches anymore. It seems like the AI's goal is to give me as many hits as possible by helpfully adding results for terms I didn't search for. As far as I am concerned, this is, like, the opposite of how searching should work.
ReplyDeleteDepending on the paint job, this guy looks to be a Nosferatu-style ratlike vampire? Or maybe an alien clown? That "glow in the dark" product card makes it look like this is a fairly modern product. I've often wished they'd print the make and model on the inside of these masks.
I like it! I wish I could be more helpful.
I think the mask maker was aiming for the Alien face from the movies Space Probe Taurus, later used in The Wizard of Mars. Both had the alien with a brain like head, big ears and a big nose. Maybe they added the rat like teeth to avoid copyright infringement, or they only vaguely recalled the way the alien looked in the movies.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how close the paint job is to this mask in the British Museum that is about 200 years old:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am1986-18-13
Haha you're right, Mike! Same color scheme... go figure!
ReplyDelete