Do you smell that burnt plastic smell in the air? You know the smell… it’s that cooking chemical/plastic aroma that used to fill your bedroom when your newest creations started cooking up in your own (kid-safe, kinda) oven. That smell means your plasti-goop creation is almost ready. It’s CREEEE-PY CRAWLERS!
It feels like you’ve been waiting hours watching these molds cook in the neon orange and green oven.Time to pull out your newest mold of spiders and scorpions. Grab that neon green fork and slide those bad boys out.
OUCH!! The metal mold is still hot and left a burn mark on your finger, but that’s just an accepted hazard of being a Mad Scientist creating the perfect plasti-goop color combos.
I’m pretty sure someone at ToyMax saw the Easy-Bake Oven and said, “How can we make something like this that will appeal to boys who want gross stuff?” The answer: Make it creepy, make it messy, make it slightly dangerous, and you get the Creepy Crawlers oven. Did you know Creepy Crawlers was actually first created by Mattel back in 1964 as part of their Thing Maker line? It really saw its popularity skyrocket with the revamped ToyMax release in 1992, the one we all remember.
The setup was simple but iconic:
A neon orange and green plastic oven
Heavy metal molds of bugs, shapes, figures, skeletons, etc.
A plastic neon green tray-fork (careful its flimsy)
And of course, the magic ingredient: Plasti-Goop in its array of colors like slime green, purple and solid black. Heck they even had glow in the dark colors.
Keeping the Oven Warm in the 21st Century
Maybe you’re lucky enough to find your old oven in your parents’ attic, or maybe you grabbed a retro one off eBay. But what about the goop? If you thought you were out of luck, think again. You can actually still get fresh Plasti-goop for your retro Creepy Crawlers oven! A seller is still pumping out fresh batches of goop under the name Patti-Goop. You can grab some directly from Patti-goop to fire up your oven again.
Now that I’m older, I have kids of my own, two boys aged 6 and 8. It’s the absolute perfect age for Creepy Crawlers, but they just don’t make toys like this anymore. Sure, it was a little dangerous, maybe those plast-goop vapors were a little toxic, and the metal trays were guaranteed to burn you at least once per cooking session, but cooking up those creations was pure fun.
If you can get your hands on a Creepy Crawlers oven and can pull your kids off their tablets, it might be a lot of family fun to get your own retro creepy lab going.
Over to the Lab!
Do you have any memorable creations from your lab?
What was your favorite plasti-goop color combo?
What did you do with all those gummy creations once they were done?