Gory Gear: Plushybutt

Plushybutts are soft and cuddly creations handmade by Shannon Hahn. Hahn got the idea for making Plushybutts from a Christmas book that featured cute characters. She thought she could do better and put her sewing skills to the test! Without any premade patterns and various scraps of cloth Plushybutts was born!

Hahn creates new Plushybutts on a regular basis, with no two creations looking exactly alike. Her DIY attitude mixed with her love of “cute but ugly toys” lead to her creations of Foxy the Heart Eater, C-section Sammy, Bunny Kill, Bloodsucking Block Head and Wrecker the Worm, along with a plethora of other kooky creations. The toys looks like Japanese animated characters – they are brightly colored, come in all kinds of unimaginable shapes and sizes and are both terribly cute and endearingly ugly all at the same time!

We received Wrecker the Worm for the purposes of this review and this Plushybutt was pretty darn irresistible. Wrecker was made out of soft felt and hand-sewn together. His bright yellow chest and eyes stood out against his mottled, bottle-green body. His little bow tie was so darn cute…the only thing that seemed to be missing were some librarian glasses to complete the “book worm” look!

Plushybutt also carries many other plushy creations – including a gigantic bloody tampon, poop, an ax and many other cuddly (but bizarre) things! Hahn takes special orders so anything you would like can be handmade by her.

Each Plushybutt is unique and handmade, so everyone will get something special…no two are exactly alike! Hahn’s creations already have lots of happy customers (check out the photo section on their Myspace page!!!) and I’m sure many more are to come!

One day, Hahn hopes Plushybutt will be carried in stores like Hot Topic, where they’ll be available for adoption to a larger amount of hipsters. Currently, you can buy Plushybutt by contacting Hahn through their Myspace page or through select stores (check their blog for more info).

Visit Plushybutt on Myspace (website is coming soon!).

Gory Gear: Sock Zombies

It all began in a university biology department. What seemed like a routine procedure in a level 3 biohazard facility went terribly wrong. One researcher felt her foot tingle and discovered…her sock had come back from the dead. Thus sock zombies were born and the infection spread rapidly. By nightfall the socks were rising in every neighborhood!

Be warned – Sock Zombies are dangerously cuddly! Approach with extreme caution…or you’ll be infected with their cuteness!

Sock Zombies are the creation of Emily Williams. After being involved in a “stitch and bitch” group every weekend and wanting to make something other than the standard sock monkeys, Emily came up with the idea of making sock ZOMBIES! Emily has been a big zombie fan for all her life and wanted to create a zombie doll for her three year old son that wasn’t too scary. Her creations are the perfect plushy softness that invite cuddling, though Emily says, “I have doomed to my son. When the zombie plague hits, he is going to run out and try to give them all hugs!”

After she made sock zombies for her son (the first two were named Zack and Zelda, after characters in the novel World War Z by Max Brooks and the movie Pet Cemetery), she realized how much she loved them and decided to sell them online. Emily came up with back stories on each of her unique zombie characters (no zombie is ever the same and each one is handmade) and says, “I enjoy imagining scary zombie scenes. It’s like I’m writing my own zombie movie. Sometimes I make some of my favorite hero zombies. I made Bub once and Trash from Return of the Living Dead.”

We received our own sock zombie named Alex. “Alex played basketball with his Dad every afternoon after school, so he waited eagerly for him to come home from work. Unfortunately, Dad wasn’t feeling well enough to play that night, so Alex sat on the end of his bed and told him about his school day. Suddenly his Dad jumped out of bed and bit him. Alex looked down to where his arm used to be, and blacked out. He woke up hungry. Now Alex and his dad have a new father-son activity…hunting.”

Alex came with a bloodied stump of an arm (red yarn), a holey, bloody sweater reminiscent of the one Freddy Krueger wears, some green corduroy pants and a mop of soft, blue hair. Immediately my first reaction was to cuddle the sock zombie, because he is just begging to be hugged! Little did I know that his cuteness had been my demise…No one is safe against this new threat of the highly squeezable and irresistible Sock Zombies!

Sock Zombies have only been available for six months, but they are going quicker than hotcakes! Need a cool toy for your kids or for yourself? Want to give something unique to the zombie-lover in your life? Want to be the cool aunt or uncle in the family that gets your nieces and newphews rad toys? Pick up a Sock Zombie today and you’ll be a hero to all! Resistance is futile against these cuddly undead moppets, so just give in and buy one already, ‘kay?

You can find them online at www.sock-zombies.com, select farmer’s markets in Indiana and various horror conventions. Emily tells us the next sock zombie invasion will hopefully happen at the It’s Alive Zombie Fest in Pennsylvania, where they even have a zombie walk in the very mall where the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed.

Sock Zombies to march on Monroeville Mall! Be ready! Buy your own Sock Zombie before it’s too late!

Visit Sock Zombies’ Official Site