Do you want serious freaking nightmares for the rest of your life?
Tip o’ the … well, something, to Erin O’Brien, whom I now love just a wee bit less for having put this on her blog.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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January 23rd, 2009 at 9:43 am
I remember that ad from when I was younger, I thought it was a bit creepy back then!
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
Phil,
That is among the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. How long did I have to live until I saw a creature so grotesque it would envy Charlie Brown’s cranium? This long, apparently. Oy!
Yours,
Cheeseburger Brown
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
Traumatic indeed. You’ll be hearing from my attorney sir.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Well, now my life is ruined.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Meh. Weaklings.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
It’s MODOC! Regardless of the horrifying Stephen King monstrosities hawking them, Kinder Eggs still rock. I remember when I got one with a mini pez dispenser inside…what a mind trip.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
Hi I wrote in a past post regarding a kind of star that I see shining over different parts of New York City. I usually wear glasses, so what I see usually is almost like point sun rays of the bottom of what looks like a small sun or star. I took pictures of it last night and this is what I saw. I began seen it ever since Dec 31, 2008. Does anyone know what this is? Originally I was freaking out because I was believing in the 2012 Nostradamus and maya calendar myth,specially when the news talk about how global warming is destroying our planet in such a great magnitude; but some of you directed me to places where I was able to stop believing in it so much. Thank you.
http://i397.photobucket.com/albums/pp51/curiouisgeorge101h/P1000162.jpg
http://i397.photobucket.com/albums/pp51/curiouisgeorge101h/P1000163.jpg
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Gramma?
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
I’m appalled by this anti-dumptite thread. I personally enjoyed hearing a commercial in the Humptish language. While it can be disturbing to watch a Dumptite fall from a wall, it’s all part of the great ecosystem that supports walls, Dumptites, horses, and king’s men.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
Thanks for making my throw up on my work laptop. My employers will be very upset now…
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Thanks for the shout, Phil!
I still say that I want that chocolate egg, but the toys don’t look like much fun.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:44 am
I’ve watched it, now I can’t UNWATCH IT ! Aiiiieee, indeed.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
@Seb:
That’s no star… It’s the planet Venus! (More than likely, since it’s the brightest object in the sky)
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
Kindaaaaa….. scruble shaky…
Confession time… I know it off by heart and I swear I haven’t seen it for at least 20 years. I can still remember that one going viral in the playground when I was a kid.
It obviously significantly traumatised me
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
OK, that was seriously disturbing. They certainly don’t have ads like that here in Germany (where they are called Überraschungseier (surprise eggs)). I thought they were outlawed in the US, because there was a risk that some child might somehow ignore the chocolate, open the plastic egg (which is usually like trying to open a child-proof bottle cap– nearly impossible), eat some small part of the toy, choke and die.
The toys can provide a few minutes of entertainment. They’re fun to put together and may be mildly amusing (or collectible). The chocolate, however, is nasty. Like the worst off-brand milk chocolate you can think of, but worse. Baiscally, Kinderschokolade : chocolate :: Topps : bubble gum.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Seb, glad to hear you have doubts about the 2012 stuff – it’s all complete bunk.
As for your images, well, they are a bit tough to make out with no other information about them. We might be able to give you an idea if what you were looking at was an astronomical object if you could tell us a few things. What time were the photos taken, what direction you were looking in (north, south etc) and how high in the sky the object was (very low, a third of the way to directly over head, etc). If I had to guess I’d say your looking at one of 2 things – if it’s early in the evening (before about 7:30 or so) I’d say it’s Venus you are seeing. If it’s later it’s probably Saturn. Both appear fairly bright in the sky right now.
I have seen artifacts similar to what I think you may be describing and, being a glasses wearer myself, I think I may have an answer for you. Assuming of course that I am correctly understanding what you are describing. In the past I have issues with very small scratches on the lens of the glasses which can cause things similar to what you describe when looking at bright point sources of light – like stars. Try closing one eye at a time and see if the ‘rays’ disappear when one or the other eye is closed. If they do then very slight scratches on the lens are your culprate! Nothing to worry about and a micro fiber cloth will probably be able to buff out the damage enough to make the rays go away.
In any case, even if your glasses are not the culprate here, what you are seeing is certainly nothing to be scared of.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
There is some great astronomy news too.
http://arxivblog.com/?p=1113
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 am
Seb
It’s most likely Venus, as pointed out. I found a great link for you from the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, that details the positions of the planets:
http://www.aaa.org/index.aspx?lobid=950
Venus is very high right now, and very bright. Here’s what it says on the site:
VENUS (magnitude -4.4 to -4.7, diameter 21.2″ to 29.4″, phase 58% to 42% lit) is a brilliant beacon well up in the southwest at dusk. It attains its greatest elongation from the Sun (47°) on January 14th, but will still get higher for several weeks more because it is moving north along the ecliptic. At the end of January, Venus won’t set until around 9 PM. On the 22nd it is just over 1° north of Uranus.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
KINDEREIER!!!!!! Those things are soooooooooooooooooooooo good!
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:53 am
Doubt the nightmares will happen. I guess that’s because I was born with boy parts
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
They have Sontarans doing TV ads now?
Quick, call the Doctor!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Never saw that commercial before, but I still like the Kindereier. Anytime I can get a care package from Germany, I always get some.
Can’t find them in the U.S., probably because of the nearly-microscopic parts on the toys. Putting the toys together was always an exercise in three-dimensional puzzles.
I don’t like the giant, giggling Humpty-Dumpty though. It’s telling us to eat it’s young!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
So that’s what Jawas look like under those robes.
I thought they’d be thinner.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
The thought of Kindereier brings back the memory of staying an a hostel in Australia during the Christmas holidays. My roommate was just about 19, a bit dull in the head, but had been adopted as the grounds keeper, a role he allowed to go to his head.
I begrudgingly tolerated this until I walked in one day and there he was with two dozen Kindereier. He was methodically unwrapping each one, removing the toy and lining up the toys to one side.
The smell of bad chocolate filled the room as my brain tried to find a reason for this that didn’t invoke derogatory thoughts involving developmentally disabled folk. Occasionally, he would put a bite in his mouth, stare blankly at the television and give one of the wheeled toys a little push back and forth.
When he had unwrapped the last egg and placed the toy aside, he put all of the chocolate on a tray and stuffed it into the freezer, scooped up hundreds of little bits of foil and left a trail to the waste bin.
I needed to move past him in order to escape to the toilet and that’s when the other scent hit me. Pot. Oh, what a relief! Here was this poor kid, far from his family at Christmas and he was stoned out of his gourd playing with Kindereier. This I could forgive.
But never can forget.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Heh. They used to have a version of that video on Youtube that was a “remix.” It was sped-up, slowed down, zoomed in on the eyes, reversed, “scratched” like a DJ, repeated, and generally made for one “The Ring”-like video. Sadly, it was removed by the owner for whatever reason. It was like driving by a car wreck on steroids – completely captured you, but freaked the scheisse out of you.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Wow- I never would have thought I’d WANT to see some digital-fake animation before now… that thing seriously messes with my uncanny valley- in a bad way.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Is this worth it to proxy my way around the corporate firewall, or should I move along?
CJSF
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Reminds me of this clip. Talk about trippy. Poor kids must have been traumatized!
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Seb,
As the others have pointed out, I’m pretty sure what you are seeing is Venus. I live in coastal NJ and Venus is amazingly high in the western sky after sunset. The exit from my workplace faces west and, if the sky is clear, each night I get the most fantastic view.
If you’re living in NYC or on Long Island the light pollution is so bad that Venus is probably one of the few night sky objects you can make out. The seeing is even pretty bad where I live. Try getting out into the rural areas like the Catskills or Highpoint state park at night and look up. You’ll get a real treat.
I remember the Kinder ads from my youth, and I’m perfectly normal, or so the nice men in the white coats tell me.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Kill it!… kill it with fire!….
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Foreshadowed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D92LvLu8aCY
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Aiiieee! indeed – and foreshadowed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D92LvLu8aCY
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Thankfully, there’s a Flickr group for this sort of thing: I wake up screaming (aka. IWUS).
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I think I might be broken. I thought that was really cool, and not disturbing at all.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Wow! That’s a blast from the past!
I cannot believe that advert didn’t actually give me nightmares as a kid!
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Yes, that is creepy- almost as creepy as the ads the Germans have for animated cellphone characters- namely one resembling a gopher dancing around with a poop statue of himself. They also claim to have an X-Ray scanner program for your phone, turning the camera into a (ZOMG) X-Ray scanner! The skeptic in me knows that there is no way in hell a cell phone battery could put out enough power to generate X-Rays through the cameraphone, so I suspect some commercial trickery. Though, I must admit, these ads are tame compared to ones I saw in Japan…
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
I’ll say this about that – those eggs are quite cool. The chocolate is mediocre, but kids above the choking hazard age and below their teenage years seem to enjoy the toys.
However. That commercial has scarred me.
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
When the character in the commercial speaks, it reminds me of Robert Tilden speaking in tongues!
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Nightmare fuel FTW!
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I don’t find it that creepy, more original and memorable. Maybe they’d do better not showing what the toy is though and save the disappointment for after you’ve bought it. I think I”d rather have an edible yolk even if it was yellow number 5 mixed with triglycerides.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Brain bleach! Brain bleach!
January 24th, 2009 at 12:59 am
That was… odd XD
And huh. The people overseas must be using a difference recipe, because I LOVE Kinder Surprise! It’s probably the nostalgia factor, but every fortnight, my brother and I would spend the weekend at Dad’s (prior to him remarrying *mutter*), and every fortnight, we’d get a Kinder Surprise. (Or two, if we had been good!) We had an entire bucket FULL of them. My favourite was a little line of model gnomes, this one holding a violin.
*wanders off on a nostalgia trip*
January 24th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Seb – I don’t see anything in your pictures – what do you think you see?
If you are seeing rays or multiple images while looking at a bright star or Venus – it might be time for a trip to the eye doctor. Seriously…you might have an astigmatism or something.
January 24th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
It was only seeing this ad again that I remembered where the phrase “Chocadoobey” came from. The impact of this ad was far reaching in the UK as the phrase passed into common playground use for a generation of children (myself included). Even now if something goes well it can STILL be classed as “Chocadoobey”. The ad was scary, the fact that it still has an impact on language 25 years on is even scarier.
And he is a sontaran!!