Thingamababy

What you’re looking at is a child’s doll wearing a cotton baby hat with an attached bloody latex hatchet. It is a real Halloween accessory that fits kids newborn to 6-months-old. We can only wonder why a real baby was not used to model the hat.

Bloody Bonnets are a series of grotesque clothing accessories made by Specter Studios, furnisher of realistic Halloween masks, costumes and props. Haunted houses appear to be one of the company’s key customer segments, but remember that these hats aren’t merely props, but actual clothing sized to fit a baby.

According to the marketing pitch, the hats are "hilarious" and
"in the fine tradition of the arrow through the head."

I was surprised, maybe shocked, when I found the hatchet hat. But, I love a good costume, so I fall on both sides of potential reaction.

The hatchet implies the heinous intentional murder of a child, yes, very bad. But a grub bursting through a head implies an alien invasion or maybe a radioactive mutation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s shocking, but in a very science fiction gory sort of way, like laughing while relishing the ridiculous level of gore in Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness or Peter Jackson’s alien-zombie brain-eating onslaught of Bad Taste (yes, that Peter Jackson).

The dad side of me is repulsed by some of these hats; they are likely the worst violent baby costume accessories in existence. At the same time, the last vestiges of my college student soul likes some of the gore in a non-serious sort of way. But I suppose the clincher is whether I would have my baby seen in public wearing the grub hat, and I think the answer is no.

Oh, but here are some sales links anyway.

• Hatchling at Amazon
• Rat at Amazon
• Brainika, Brain Eater and Gwub at Haunted Adventures

See also:

1. Demented infant costumes: Octobaby and Carriage Critter
2. Bloody Bonnets: worst infant costume, or coolest hardcore baby gore?
3. Twelve unfortunate toddler Halloween costumes
4. Three maternity costumes to buy (or make at home)
5. Twelve embarrassing Halloween baby costumes

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007Holidays