
I'm feeling like a week of Nightmare on Elm Street posts to make up for lost time because I could write those things without a single Google. I grew up on NoES, and for better or for worse, it was a HUGE part of my childhood. I started with the series at Part II when I was six years old. A normal parent would probably scoff or gasp at such news and assume that I must have grown up to torture small animals or light things on fire then for my early exposure to such violence! I didn't. I grew up normal, mostly. And apparently, so did a lot of other kids, because these R-rated horror gore-fests were marketed toward children! And young children at that! Maybe not the movies, but toys. Yes, toys. Children's toys. The kind of toys that children play with.
Even I had them.
Most important to me were the Freddy Spitballs.


(I wanted you to see the complicated instructions on the back)
On a hot summer day I would sit on the porch and Freddy would menacingly shoot water from a bucket at his enclosed "victim," but more often he would shoot at the Jason from the Friday the 13th version that I'm too lazy to post a picture of. The two victims were throwaways, and let's be honest, unless Freddy had unknown acid spit, how'd the victim get slices on his face from a Freddy with no arms? Something to think about.
Very similar, but for the rich kids that could do better than just a squishball of Freddy's head was the Freddy Fright Squirter!

(Does it squirt fright?)
This one was more realistic and, more important to all kids, and boys, especially as they grow up, BIGGER! I don't know if it could promise the same "scary 18ft. squirt," but it was cooler and, really, that's all that matters. Being better than your friends. Kids gotta learn that somehow.
Anyway, Freddy also had...

(The Squish'em!)
Yep. You could squish Freddy. And then he would rebound to his fully-inflated self again for another round. Also a good way to build up hand and forearm strength.

(The Stick Up)
Yes, Dear Readers, you could stick Freddy up almost anywhere with the Freddy Stick Up! And if you look carefully you'll see that it's "Horribly Authentic" too! And that's true if by "Horribly Authentic" it actually means, "This is a horribly-made toy and the guy on the packaging isn't even Freddy." What kid wouldn't notice that Freddy was not wearing his trademark red and green sweater? A tweed coat?! What, was Freddy a university professor in his downtime? The license was obviously being handed out to anyone who was willing to pay at this point.
And finally, speaking of handing out license to anyone AND Freddy in his downtime... it's the Freddy Yo-yo!

("When I'm not slaughtering teenagers I like to "walk the dog," if you know what I'm sayin'.")
Yes, we see that, not only is this a yo-yo with Freddy's mug on it, but FREDDY HIMSELF is using it! There's a very clear white line from Freddy's finger to the yo-yo and it's
obviously the string, so Freddy yo-yos. Can't say I blame him. I mean, you're up all night killing people while they sleep, but what else are you going to do during the day? There's no cable in Dreamworld and Freddy doesn't seem like the kind to take naps, so a guy's gotta have a hobby...
There were far more toys than this, comic books, video games (you think I just
made that image at the top there?!), AND MORE! Freddy was a licensing MONSTER in the '80s and everything has his face on it at some point, almost all of it pointed right at kids. Kids who turned out normal.