Toys Of Christmas Past - Part 18 - Creepy Crawlers/Thingmaker

Creepy Crawlers - Mattel 1964 - 1973

The next set of toys on our list is the "Thingmaker" playsets from Mattel.  This toy simultaneously gets my vote for both my favorite of all time and most dangerous toy. Now some might say "Bag 'O Glass" from the old Saturday Night Live skit was pretty dangerous, well that has nothing on this toy.

Bag O' Glass from 1970's SNL skit.

Mattel Thingmaker Playsets of the Mid 60's to early 70's were dangerous as well as fun.  The original which started the entire thing, was the Creepy Crawlers set from 1964.

Creepy Crawler Playset 1964

Metal Molds used to make the plastic bugs and vermin 

What you had here was a glorified HOT PLATE used to "cure" liquid plastic into a solid flexible plastic. You would plug in your "Thingmaker" (the hot plate) and pour your "Plastigoop" into a mold. Using tongs (remember this thing was HOT) you place the mold with goop onto the Thingmaker. You then wait about two minute, and once again using the tongs, take the very HOT (burning) mold and douse it into a water bath to cool it off. When you placed the hot mold into the cooling tray a big puff of steam would be released as the burning hot mold hit the water. After a certain amount of time the mold would be cool enough to touch and you could pry out your creation. 

Thing-Maker Hotplate, "safety" tongs, cooling tray and molds

It was simultaneously great and dangerous !

Here is one of the original commercials from the 1960's.

Creepy Crawlers set was the original. My favorite was the Mini Dragon Set, because you could assemble from multiple pieces an entire dragon. Below is a list of the various play sets

Creepy Crawlers (1964)
Giant Creepy Crawlers (1965)
Fighting Men (1965)
Creepy People (1965)
Fun Flowers (1966)
Fright Factory (1966)
Mini Dragons (1967)
Picadoos (1967)
Eeeeks ! (1968)
Zoofie Goofies (1968)
Dolly Maker (1969)
Super Cartoon Maker (1969)
Jillions of Jewels (1970)

Advertisement for various Thing-maker playsets.

The Plastigoop came in different colors. It was like printer ink. The more you used, the more you needed. It was a cash-cow for Mattel. Later on Mattel introduced Glow In The Dark goop and I had a few bottles of that.

Plastigoop.  This liquid congealed when heated.  It came in various sizes and colors

Around 1973 or so the product went off the market because some consumer safety group deemed it as dangerous (Imagine that). But all and all it was a great toy and one of my favorites!