Probably my new favourite print advert!
As regular readers know I’m a bit of a fan of Halloween, and I was going to save this beauty for the Big Day… however, the advert is simply too cool not to share right now!
Enjoy 🙂
The Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit
Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture. 1976 print advert. US.
Endorsed by horror legend Vincent Price (I love the line: ‘Look for Vincent Price’s pretty face on the cover’), the Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture was a kit enablng you to decorate and bake apples in the form of nightmarish shrunken heads! Accessories included a baking capsule (The Shrinker) which you heated using a 40 watt common household light bulb , hair, beads, templates for carving facial features, cord, a paint brush, and a carving tool.
The artwork for my 1976 print advert was created by Mort Drucker, a long time contributor to Mad Magazine. The Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture was produced by Crafts By Whiting, a Milton Bradley Company.
Detail from 1976 Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture print advert.
TVTA bonus trivia!
As well as the Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit, Vincent Price was hired by Milton Bradley to appear in advertising campaigns for two of their other popular products: the games Hangman and Stay Alive.
That’s all for now, vintage mates. Thank you for shrinking fruit with us 🙂
The Vintage Toy Advertiser 
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“This could be your head!” !!!!!!
That’s pretty amazing. I’d love to find one of these.
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Brilliant yes. I had to do a double take when I opened the comic the first time and that ad popped up!
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I’m not surprised! I sat staring at it on the screen for a few minutes thinking “yikes!”
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Amazing! Love this post, and I adored Vincent Price’s movies.
I had to follow you, again. I don’t know why… but sometimes Follows fall off. It could be a WP thing, or perhaps clearing my cache and cookies causes some to fall off. Anyway, many bloggers have the same experience.
Ah, also, the email notifications stop working time to time.
I just don’t want you to think that I was not following you. xoxo
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Same has happened here in the past. Must be a WP thing. They’re always tinkering in the background, changing things without letting you know, messing things up. Last week I had a functioning spellcheck button in my editor, now it’s disappeared!?
Our blogging overlord is a restless beast!
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Speelchick? Wat is zat? Sorry I just thought I had issues with WordPress “tinkering”! I haven’t even seen the spellcheck option (luckily I am fairly fluent in English).
This Shrunken Head Kit is way out bizarre and I have seen quite a few of your posts.
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Hi FT, best compliment I’ve had in ages!
The splelcheker button was a good otption (while it lasted) even thouhg I am nomrally good at sptting my typos 🙂
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Hahahaha! That could be a hi-tech super hero! Restless Beast!
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Awesome! The perfect thing for Halloween! 🙂
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Absolutely! Even without the Vincent Price endorsement this would still be a cool thing, but seeing his face on the packaging gives it that extra spook-appeal!
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I once had one and I recall it being a lot of fun. RE-posted on twitter @trefology
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Thanks tref 🙂 Seems it was a tradition to bake and carve apples for Halloween even before this kit came out. And it’s still popular today. Brilliant to hear you had one of these kits!
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Looks like my ex!
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Ouch !! 🙂
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He had a face only a mother could love, lol
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Eww! LOL! 🙂
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🙂
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Truly bizarre. 🙂
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Yes. I fell in love with it straightaway 🙂
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