Return of the Monster (Cereals)

This is a post that really should have been written in the month of October...but it wasn't. Anyway, I'm sure that there are many adults out there that have fond memories of the so-called "Monster Cereals" from back in the 1970s (give or take a decade). I know that I certainly do. We didn't always get the sweet sugary cereals in my house when I was a kid, but when we did it was always a special occasion (for me at least). While I've never been much of a breakfast kind of guy, if you were to offer me some Cap'n Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms (the list could go on for a long time), I'd be hard-pressed to turn it down.

The Monster Cereals were Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry. [Franken Berry sometimes seems to be referred to as Frankenberry, but I'll stick with Franken Berry, as that is how it appears on General Mills' website.] These cereals were always a little extra special when they'd appear in the house. I mean, not only were they sweet sugary cereals, but they also featured MONSTERS! What more could a Monster Kid ask for in a breakfast treat as he/she was about to sit down to some Saturday morning cartoons? The three cereals mentioned are the main ones that everyone remembers. Some people seem to have a favorite Monster Cereal, but I've never been able to pick one. They're all yummy. Speaking of "yummy", there were a couple others Monster cereals too (Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy) that came and went while the "big three" were always available. I remember Fruit Brute mainly because the upstairs bathroom in my house had a glow-in-the-dark Fruit Brute light switch sticker on the light switch cover.

Here's the box that the light switch sticker came in back in the 1970s
(Image borrowed from planet-q on flickr)

Here's the sticker that graced our bathroom for many years
(Image borrowed from Zooty the Newt on flickr)

I can't say that I really remember what Fruit Brute tasted like, but I remember the cereal and the character because I'd always see the eponymous Fruit Brute every time I'd have to turn on the light to use the bathroom. On the other hand, I don't really seem to remember Yummy Mummy at all. I'm not an expert on this branch of the cereal world, but have heard that Yummy Mummy replaced Fruit Brute at some point after Fruit Brute was discontinued (possibly after I was of an age to be exposed to it?). Whatever the reason, both of them eventually disappeared altogether. As I hadn't seen any of the three main Monster Cereals on the shelves of grocery stores in quite a few years (though I admittedly wasn't searching for them either) I had assumed that they had also been sent to the great cereal bowl in the sky.

Monster Dad and friends (including Count Chocula) in 1987

Well, it turned out that I was wrong. The Monster Cereals are still around--even if only in a limited release form. Like any good monsters they rise from the grave each October to put fear into the hearts of children everywhere (or at least into the hearts of the mothers who probably fret about the high fructose corn syrup and all the other strange and unnatural ingredients their kids are ingesting from these "Whole Grain" cereals that are "part of a nutritious breakfast")!

It might not be this way everywhere, but in my neck of the woods--the Northeast--the Monster Cereals only appear on shelves in October (obviously to coincide with Halloween). And they can't be found just anywhere. The only place I've been able to spot them close to me is at Target. Last year (2010) I was perusing the aisles of the local Target store picking up fun stuff like diapers, laundry detergent and toilet paper when what to my wondering eyes should appear but three familiar monstrous faces (Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry) gracing the fronts of their respective cereal boxes! The monsters had been given a bit of a modern makeover since I'd last seen them, but there was no mistaking who they were. Knowing full well that The Wife would be hugely disappointed in me for bringing fare of such questionable nutritional value into our house I did what any good husband and Monster Dad would do--I bought them and promptly hid them in the basement upon my return home!

The Little Monster was just about to turn five last October, and was really getting into the whole Halloween thing. I may or may not have encouraged this interest, but either way it was a beautiful thing for a Monster Dad to see. I was excited to be able to share the Monster Cereals with her, especially at that time of the year. We both tried each one. I was brought back to a wondrous taste experience from my youth and The Little Monster simply loved them (naturally).

The Little Monster meeting Franken Berry, Count Chocula and Boo Berry for the first time!

I'm not sure how much they've changed the recipes of these cereals since I was a kid, but they all seemed to taste the same to me. They do seem to have changed the look though. From what I recall the cereals used to be made up of little circular pieces with an "x" in the middle of them, and little marshmallows shaped like...little marshmallows. Now the cereal is shaped like little ghosts and the marshmallows come in different shapes and colors. In the case of Franken Berry those marshmallows are shaped like little blue or purple bats and little pink Franken Berry heads.

Here's what the modern Franken Berry looks like

A closer look at the cereal and marshmallows of Franken Berry

...And an even closer look

The cereals were rationed out slowly, as neither of us was really used to eating this caliber of sugary treat in the morning and I didn't want The Little Monster to get addicted or anything. The two of us enjoyed watching fun movies ("Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Young Frankenstein", "Godzilla vs. Mothra"...) and eating Monster Cereals while counting down the days until Halloween and Trick-or-Treating.

Then November arrived. The spooky magic of Halloween gave way to the cold and barren wasteland that is New England in winter. The candy was eaten, the costumes put away...and the Monster Cereals disappeared off the store shelves--once again banished from the world of the living. ...At least until the next year!

I've since learned that the Monster Cereals brand has cashed in on the memories and nostalgia of thirty- and forty-somethings who remember eating them as kids by putting out some new products in addition to the cereals themselves. There are now plush dolls, bobblehead figures, lip balm and other toys and products based the Monsters. They even have Fruit Roll-Ups in Franken Berry and Boo Berry flavors. I haven't tried these, but can just imagine kids begging their parents to buy some when they see them on the shelves of stores.

The Little Monster checking out Monster Cereal plush dolls at the Rock and Shock show in Worcester, MA in October 2011

Fast forward to October 2011. This year I was armed with the knowledge that the Monster Cereals would be available at Target. They were all spotted during a visit I made early in the month (or possibly even at the end of September). I figured I'd wait for a couple weeks to pick up my three boxes. Unfortunately, when I went back later in the month...they were GONE! I don't know if they ran out or if they simply didn't feel like keeping them on the shelves throughout October. Either way I was out of luck, and my new "tradition" of getting a taste of Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry was broken after only one year. I'll have to scoop them up right away if I see them next year.

After scouring the food aisles I did manage to find one end cap that was full of Franken Berry! For whatever reason this was the only flavor they had left--and they had a LOT. They were clearance items and the price was marked down. Apparently Target had a surplus of Franken Berry for whatever reason, and wanted to clear them out before October ended. While I was happy and felt blessed to have found at least one of the cereals I was after, I was also disappointed in what Target considers a clearance price on its items. When I hear "clearance" I generally expect to see deep cuts (40 or 50 percent or more off the original price). Target routinely marks its stuff down ten or fifteen percent, slaps a red sticker on it and calls it "Clearance". Fifteen percent off hardly counts as a very good sale, much less the kind of price slashing I associate with the term "clearance". But I digress... Anyway, I did manage to pick up two boxes of Franken Berry to share with The Little Monster--and saved a whopping forty cents off each box. To be fair, the rather smallish boxes only cost $2.66 to begin with, so getting them for $2.26 wasn't bad.

As I said, I'm no expert on the Monster Cereals or anything--just a long-time fan. For more information on them check out the following:

• Here's Wikipedia's page on them: General Mills monster-themed breakfast cereals. I just looked at that one and it answers some of the questions I had above. There are Wiki pages for each of the five cereals too.

• Here's General Mills' own page on the cereals: Monsters.

• The cereals even have their own Facebook page (naturally): Monster Cereals.

And, finally, here's a few old Monster Cereal commercials that can now be easily found on YouTube:

Here's Count Chocula and Franken Berry showing that they get scared too

(This one has a good look at what the cereals and marshmallows used to look like):

The first Boo Berry commercial:

Fruit Brute makes his first appearance:

Here's when they introduced the monster-shaped marshmallows!:

And here's a rare look at Fruity Yummy Mummy:

THE END

...at least until next year!

The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw

It's nearly Thanksgiving. Compared to all the great movies, shows and cartoons that focus on Christmas, there are relatively few programs devoted to Thanksgiving. My favorite Thanksgiving movie of all-time is easily "Planes Trains and Automobiles" (1987). It's something I try to watch every year around this time. Actually, it's a great movie to watch any time of the year. As far as cartoons and Thanksgiving specials, I never really had a favorite, and there never seemed to be to many to even choose from. I suppose The Peanuts cartoon "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (1973) is probably at the top (especially because of the ridiculous Thanksgiving dinner Snoopy engineers featuring toast and popcorn!). But that show pales in comparison to the classic Peanuts specials that are featured both before and after Thanksgiving: "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966) and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965). Other than the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and all the football games, the holiday seems to have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to movies and shows.

A few years ago I became aware of the cartoon special "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" (1980). Because of my long time interest in Bigfoot I just had to see this one. One of the libraries in our area had the cartoon on VHS and I borrowed it. It seemed strange that I had not seen this when it aired in 1980. I would have been eleven at the time and it seems like it would have been right up my alley. When watching the VHS tape of the show it did seem somewhat familiar. Perhaps I had seen it and had forgotten it. Or perhaps the fact that I watched the tape couple times made it start to seem familiar to me even though it really wasn't. Either way, I liked the show and had a feeling that The Little Monster would enjoy it as well. I wanted to introduce Bigfoot to her at some point, but didn't want to frighten her off or give her nightmares with something too scary. "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" turned out to be the perfect way to give her a bit of Bigfoot-related material without terrorizing her. We regularly read Berenstain Bears books at bedtime so she was already familiar with them. We first watched "Bigpaw" together three years ago when she was three years old. It has since become a regular thing that comes out around Thanksgiving--and occasionally at other times during the year. About a year after first watching the show I found an old VHS tape of it at a book sale at our local library for about a quarter or so. It may have been the very same tape we had watched earlier.

My ancient VHS tape of the show

This year I introduced the show to The Tiny Creature (The Little Monster's little sister) for the first time. She seemed to like it too. They both found it just a tiny bit scary the first time they watched it. That's the perfect reaction. While it's hard as an adult to imagine watching something as kid-friendly as this and finding it scary, that's exactly what I love about the innocent imagination of children (and what I miss about myself now that I'm a grown-up). It's what makes watching old bad monster movies that you'd only laugh at as an adult a thrilling and scary experience as a kid.

The Little Monsters watching the show

The story is about how Bear Country has a Thanksgiving legend about a creature that will come to town and destroy everything if the bears "become selfish and greedy, and unkind to the needy, and insufficiently thankful for nature's great bounty". Mama bear realizes that the legend is coming to pass when she sees a big pawprint in a pan while "reading the harvest honeycomb".

The harvest honeycomb's frightening harbinger of doom for Bear Country

And the actual footprint of the legendary Bigpaw!

Of course the whole point of the story is to teach a lesson about being a good and thankful person. Bigpaw makes his appearance and inspires fear and hatred in the bears. It turns out that he's actually nice, and it's a big misunderstanding. This recalls another lesson that I've been pointing out to The Little Monster in a lot of the books that I read to her at bedtime, namely that you can't judge a book by its cover.

Here's the townspeople discovering that Bigpaw is on his way

Bigpaw makes his first appearance in the show

He certainly makes an imposing impression

But Brother and Sister Bear quickly learn the true nature of the monster

Brother and Sister enter the ominous Sinister Bog

Bigpaw makes his debut and sings his very catchy theme song

Brother and Sister Bear are the first to realize the truth about Bigpaw when they encounter him in Sinister Bog, but of course the grown-ups won't listen to them. Everything comes to a head as an army of bears climb the nearby mountain to do battle with Bigpaw. He is up at Echoing Ledge merely relaxing at and preparing to take a nap by his campfire, but the amplified echoes of his yawns and the enlarged image of his shadow as he stretcthes projected by his fire make him seem every bit as fearsome as everyone already believes he is.

Bigpaw relaxing at Echoing Ledge...

...And the terrifying image of his shadow that Papa Bear sees

Bigpaw prepares to topple a stack of boulders onto his attackers, but stops when he notices that Brother and Sister are in the path of the rocks. He saves them and everyone realizes the truth about Bigpaw. They then invite him to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.

I still wonder if I saw this show when it first aired. It certainly became pretty rare in the years since. Now it's one of my (and The Little Monster's) favorite holiday programs. I never read a lot of Berenstain Bears books as a kid, but really like reading them to The Little Monster now. My VHS tape of "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" is very old, but I'm pretty sure that it's now available on DVD. One of these days I might just have to get a new copy. If you have kids (or are a kid at heart yourself) it might be worth checking the show out too. Here it is (in four parts) on YouTube:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

One last thing. We just watched "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" for the first time this Thanksgiving season yesterday. The Little Monster is now in Kindergarten and the students all visit the school's little library once a week to take out a book. Yesterday (knowing that we were planning on watching the show when she got home from school) she picked out "The Berenstain Bears' Thanksgiving" as her book. It is actually a retelling of "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" with a different (more commercial?) title. It even has a lot of the same dialogue that is in the show. I don't know if the book or the show came first, but I was pretty happy to see that The Little Monster had brought it home with her. After watching the show after school I ended up reading the book to her at bedtime.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Resurrecting the Past: Rotary Dial Telephone

For those who remember the old rotary phones that were used for decades until pushbutton phones became standard, this story might be of interest. For those too young to know about these phones, this might be seen as a bit of a history lesson from the relatively recent past. Hopefully it will prove interesting for both parties in some way.

Recently I picked up an old red rotary dial telephone at a flea market. I've been wanting to get one of these for a while. They're not terribly hard to find, but the prices for them seem to vary in range from very cheap to quite pricey. The one I bought was in very good shape and had a regular standard phone jack. This was important, as I didn't want to have to try to rewire a phone that had one of those old style plugs. The deciding factor was the price though. They wanted ten bucks for it, which seemed fair. When I asked if they could do any better they gave it to me for seven dollars. Sold!

I have a nostalgic feeling for these old phones because I remember having and using them in my parents' house when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. The look, feel and sound of these little time machines brings you right back to those old days. What I was really looking for was one of the wall-mounted models--as that was what I remember using most of the time in my house (ours was yellow). This one (image borrowed from the website Vintage Rotary Phones) is very similar to the one I spent so many hours on back then:

Here's a photo I found showing the actual old yellow phone in my house in January 1986!

Since I didn't really want to have to drill holes into a wall to mount one of these models, a desk model seemed like it would be a better choice. I wasn't too concerned with the color. I was kind of thinking that a black one would look nice, or maybe some funky 1970s green or orange number (the kind that would look right at home in the Brady Bunch house). But when I saw this red one I knew it was meant to be! It's like having a direct line to the President. ...Or better yet, Batman!

It's kind of surprising to learn that you can still plug one of these babies in and use it like any other phone. I know there's some kind of difference between how new and old telephones use the phone line, but when this one was plugged in I got a dial tone right away. It's a strange feeling to be dialing a phone number with the rotary dial after all these years--especially since you have to physically dial the whole eleven digits for most phone numbers now. Back in the days of rotary phones I remember being able to simply dial the last four or five digits of a phone number for local calls. When I tried to make a call on my old red phone--and after dialing all those digits--the call went through just as it should. The only problem is when you get a recorded menu and you have to punch in a series of numbers to navigate through it to actually reach a human voice (if you're lucky).

I suppose the main reason it seems kind of odd for these phones to work so well is the simple fact that you don't see them much anymore and they seem like relics from the past. Nowadays you can go to any department store and pick up a phone for anywhere from a few dollars to a couple hundred bucks (depending on the quality and features you want). Back when the old rotary phones were being used they actually belonged to the phone company that provided you with your service. When rotary went the way of the dinosaur and these phones were replaced with pushbuton ones, the phone company apparently went into the homes of their customers and removed "their" phones. In an unused room at my parents' house you can still see the mark on the wall where a phone was removed--as well as the holes from the screws that mounted it. Check out this message on the receiver of my red phone which would let you know that the phone you used in your home wasn't really "yours":

BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY
NOT FOR SALE
WESTERN ELECTRIC

While I bought this old telephone mainly for its nostalgic value, it has actually come in handy twice already. Back in August we were hit with the remnants of a hurricane. There wasn't much damage, but we lost power for a couple days. Without electricity our cordless phones (which have to be plugged into an electric outlet) wouldn't work. We also couldn't charge our cell phone. I plugged the old red phone in and was able to communicate with the outside world! At the end of October we got an early snow storm which again knocked out the power for two days. Again, the old red phone came to the rescue!

After the storm

I mentioned that these kinds of phones have a certain look, feel and sound that take you back to an earlier time. The "look" part is obvious and can be seen in the photos already posted here. The "feel" part has a lot to do with the sheer weight and solidness of an old phone. Phones of today are very light, slim and small--almost dainty. When you lift the receiver of one of these older phones it's pretty large and you can feel a substantial weight. Compared to modern telephones and cell phones, these practically feel like dumbbells. It's a reassuring weight to be sure.  Of course there's also the long-lost familiar feel of actually dialing a phone number using those little finger holes in the dial instead of pressing buttons.  And even the coiled cord attaching the receiver to the phone supplies another semi-forgotten feeling in this age of cell phones and cordless phones.

Finally, the "sound" part has everything to do with the actual bell mechanism inside the phone that makes it literally ring. It's hard to explain what this sounds like if you have never heard one and have only experienced the electronic "ringing" of a modern phone, or the multitude of ring tones available for cell phones. And there's also the sound of the dial itself, turning as each number is selected and then  returning to its original position. Instead of even trying to explain these sounds I'll post this video I made of my new old phone so you can hear it for yourself. It starts off with a call to our regular cordless phone to set the stage. Next comes a call from a cell phone to the old rotary phone. Finally, the old phone is used to call the cell phone.

Talk about old-school technology meeting new-school technology!

A few years back I saw an old toy telephone for sale at a yard sale for about a quarter.  I picked it up for The Little Monster and thought it would be a good way to show her what it used to be like to make a phone call way back when Dad was a kid.  She seemed to take the idea of a dial in stride (maybe because she already had one of those old-school Fisher Price pull-along telephones).  The funny thing is that the old, kind of shabby toy phone I found just happened to be a red desk model--very much like the real one I would eventually buy for myself!

The Little Monster's toy telephone...

And Monster Dad's "toy"--a real phone!

Pennsylvania-6-5000

867-5309 (Jenny)

Separated at Birth?

Remember those old "Separated at Birth" books that came out back in the 1980s? They were humorous looks at people (generally celebrities or politicians, but occasionally animals) who seemed to resemble each other in photos. They'd put the two photos side by side for comic effect. I think that Jay Leno or David Letterman used to do a similar skit on one of their shows. Anyway, I guess that the idea never really went away. I had one of the books (and probably still do have it, just need to track it down), but kind of lost interest in the subject over time. I haven't done much research (and it wouldn't take much), but I'm sure there are now plenty of websites and other online sources dedicated to this kind of thing.

Here are the two "Separated at Birth?" books from the 1980s:

Which brings me to the point of this blog. I recently stumbled upon something to add to the Separated at Birth list. I haven't had cable for close to ten years. This means that I've missed out on a lot of the big must-see cable-based shows of the last decade ("The Sopranos", "Mad Men", "Weeds"...). Of course this doesn't explain why I've never seen a single episode of the show "24". That show was on Fox, which is, of course, a broadcast network. Well, thanks to the internet, Netflix and DVDs, I've been able to catch up on some of the stuff I've missed over the years (like "Battlestar Galactica", "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Breaking Bad"). The Wife got me a Roku box for my birthday and we've been streaming a lot of stuff on our TV from Netflix through the Roku unit. We've subscribed to Netflix for a long time, but have mostly gotten DVDs from them through the mail. We never really did much "instant viewing" on the computer. Now that we can do it on the TV instead we're getting into it more.

Thanks to the convenience and instant availability of Netflix streaming, we finally started watching "24" recently. The show started a decade ago in 2001, and there are apparently close to 200 episodes. That number feels just a wee bit daunting to us at the moment. We've only seen about half of the first season so far and have a long way to go. So what, you might ask, does all have to do with "Separated at Birth"? Please let me explain...

When you go onto the Netflix channel on Roku and search for "24" a certain image from the show shows up on the screen as an icon of sorts. I see this image every time we start and finish watching an episode of the show. It is an action shot of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) jumping onto a taxi while firing his pistol at (presumably) some bad guys. It's an image that must have been part of the publicity for the show and was probably used on the cover for the DVD set of one of the seasons (or something like that). Well, every time I see this image I can't help but think of... Julia Stiles! Bet you didn't see that coming, huh? Actually, it makes me think of the movie that she was in called "Save the Last Dance". I never saw the movie (and don't plan to), but I do remember the poster for it for some reason.

So who exactly am I suggesting were separated at birth? It might seem like I'm trying to say it was the stars of these two productions, but I don't think that Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Stiles look anything alike. Here the two stars are as an example:

No, I'm not suggesting that they look alike specifically, but I can't shake the feeling that the image from "24" I see on Netflix through Roku and the poster for "Save the Last Dance" were separated at birth. Here are those two images that I can't seem to separate in my mind when I see either one. You be the judge...

Or, more specifically...

What do you think?

* For another example of the Separated at Birth phenomenon please check out Separated at Birth 2: Tim Tebow and Bigfoot.

2011 October Horror Challenge Recap

So the 2011 October Horror Challenge is now history. I've decided to write up a separate post detailing all the movies/shows that were watched throughout the month. This is a convenient way (for me at least) to be able to see everything that was watched without having to browse through seven different posts.

The final score of the Challenge was: Monster Dad - 44 and October - 31

Here's what those forty-four items consisted of:

1. Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (1955)

2. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

3. End of the World (1977)

4. The Fly (1958)

5. The Crazies (2010)

6. Eegah (1962)

7. Contagion (2011)

8. Bigfoot Lives (2007)

9. Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958)

10. The Curse of Bigfoot (1978)

11. Mad Monster Party (1967)

12. Monster Quest: Bigfoot (2007)*

13. The Snow Creature (1954)

14. Trollhunter (2010)

15. Let The Right One In (2008)

16. Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968)

17. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

18. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

19. Night of the Living Dead (1990)

20. The Thing (1982)

21. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

22. The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye (2010)*

23. Return of The Fly (1959)

24. They Live (1988)

25. The Walking Dead: Guts (2010)*

26. Attack of the 50 ft. Woman (1958)

27. Let Me In (2010)

28. Them! (1954)

29. Curse of The Fly (1965)

30. The Others (2002)

31. Creature from Black Lake (1976)

32. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)

33. Young Frankenstein (1974)

34. The Dreadful Hallowgreen Special (2010)*

35. Curse of the Demon (1957)

36. Spooks Run Wild (1941)

37. Happy Hell Night (1992)

38. The Thing (2011)

39. Sh! The Octopus (1937)

40. The Werewolf and The Yeti (1975)

41. The Fly (1986)

42. Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959)

43. The War of the Worlds (1953)

44. Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943)*

* Denotes the five items that could be considered ineligible for the Challenge. That includes three TV shows (the Bigfoot episode of "Monster Quest", the first two episodes of "The Walking Dead"), "The Dreadful Hallowgreen Special" and "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man" (which was watched on November 1st).

 I think that this challenge featured a nice variety of movies--from comedies with horror undertones like "Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy", "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and "Young Frankenstein" to true examples of the horror genre like "The Crazies", "Night of the Living Dead" and the two versions of "The Thing" that I watched.  The titles also cover a very wide time range too--from 1937's "Sh! The Octopus" right up through 2011's "Contagion" and "The Thing".  There is at least one representative of each decade from the 1930s to the 2010s.

The unofficial theme of Bigfoot-related stuff included seven titles: "Bigfoot Lives", "Teenagers Battle The Thing", "Curse of Bigfoot", the "Bigfoot" episode of "Monster Quest", "The Snow Creature", "Creature from Black Lake" and "The Werewolf and The Yeti".

Should you be interested in reading about the Challenge in more detail, feel free to read all seven chapters in the story:

THE 2011 OCTOBER HORROR CHALLENGE

Part One: Day 1

Part Two: Day 2-6

Part Three: Day 7-12

Part Four: Day 13

Part Five: Day 14-19

Part Six: Day 20-24

Part Seven: Day 25-31