SPIRIT HALLOWEEN’S LEATHERFACE: ANOTHER TRAGIC TALE OF DISAPPOINTMENT

I bitched about Slim, now it’s time for a similar tragedy from the same 2023 season. Our story begins in June, when Spirit Halloween released the names of their upcoming animatronics in a very clever gravestone motif. In a surprising bout of canonical inconsistency, one of these graves read “Thomas Brown Hewitt,” which is the real name given to Leatherface in the less-than-elegant Texas Chainsaw remakes, despite the fact it was clear this prop would be based off the ‘74 original. Either way, this was very exciting to hear, since we were not only getting a Lowe’s and Party City Leatherface, but a Spirit one as well! Three Leatherfaces! And with Spirit promising theirs to be the Pretty Woman look, how could this go wrong? How could this go wrong… 

Now, when the Lowe’s Leatherface litigiously leaked back in February, I was understandably excited. I mean, this was the first Leatherface animatronic in nearly 20 years, still made by Gemmy! But this new Leatherface also serves as a perfect reference for the downfall of Gemmy. Instead of moving eyes and lifelike appearance, we have coloring-book paint jobs and pitifully laughable rotating waist movement. So the still images that were leaked of Tekky’s Party City Leatherface looked like the Mona Lisa in comparison. Just so much better appearance-wise, even without knowing what it exactly does. Now competition was fierce, we could only imagine what Spirit’s will look like/do! You know, it’ll probably be the best one yet, better than all of them! 

Oh boy, Spirit just released a huge teaser showing off some of the new props! Hey, there’s Leatherface! I’m so excited— ROTATING WAIST MOVEMENT. 

THIS IS JUST THE FUCKING LOWE’S ONE. 

And that is the one glaring problem with this prop. It’s a reskin of the Lowe’s Leatherface slapped in a blue suit and an even shittier attempt at a Pretty Woman mask. This mask looks too squeaky clean with such a meager amount of lipstick applied, barely an attempt at eyeshadow or blush. Then down to his waxy manikin hands, which hold the laziest, saddest excuse Spirit has ever pulled (and they’ve pulled a lot.) This isn’t even an accurate chainsaw! It’s literally the generic prop chainsaw that they sold the same year, just haphazardly colored yellow! It’s the same exact chainsaw I bought for my Leatherface costume and haphazardly spray painted yellow myself! Is that what you want?! Would you pay $400 for ME to twist my spine awkwardly while pressing the trigger on a prop chainsaw?! And guess what, the prop couldn’t even do that. Numerous weld failures that left Leatherface bent over and exposing his Texas ass. Jesus Christ. I fucking hate Party Time. 

I know it sounds like I’m being way too nitpicky, but for THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FFFFFFFUCKING BONES I begin to expect a level of quality and attention to detail, especially on a licensed character. I’ve been told before in Youtube comment sections that “It doesn’t matter what it looks like, people will still recognize who it is, say ‘cool’ and just walk past it.” But I’m not buying this just for oblivious trick-or-treaters, I’m buying this for myself! I like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre! It would be so cool to have a life-sized replica of Leatherface that I could also use as a Halloween prop! I want it to look good and accurate to the film! But when the prop looks like THIS, and they’re asking for THIS much, I say NO! The fact that Tekky’s is cheaper and looks just downright gorgeous makes it a nobrainer on where you should spend your money. But, yet again, FAR too many of my mutual creeps caved in and bought this fucking awful prop. How do you sleep at night? Do you dream about what stick welder you should buy because your $350 unwise investment was too weak to hold itself up? Or are you blinded by its ugliness, desperately still trying to convince yourself that “it looks alright, I love TCM so much I don’t care!” I love TCM. I care. I want my money to go towards merchandise that, above all, looks good. I recently spent $100 on Mezco’s 1:12 scale Leatherface figure. A pretty penny for an action figure, I know, but holy shit, it looks really good! The sculpt is practically one to one accurate, and it literally forces my decrepit mouth into something resembling a smile just when I look at it. I feel like it was worth every dollar. So it pains me to see people spending four times as much for a product that is simply just not worth it. A product that was made with almost zero passion. Hey, that’s a good slogan for Party Time: No passion, High price! 

I gruesomely apologize for criticizing people's personal spending habits, but hey, that's the kind of creature I am. If you want to throw away your money, that's completely up to you, my fiend. Just don't say I didn't warn the masses.  

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