It can’t be said enough. Republicans are just plain weird.
From Deranged Donald, JD the Jerk Off, and Maniac Marge to Looney Toons Lindsey, Creepy Ted Cruz, and Koo-Koo Kerry Lake, this bunch of GOP misfits bear a striking resemblance to some wacky-looking toys fittingly called Weird-Ohs that I collected as a kid.
Preceding the current cast of Republican characters by over 60 years was a line of grotesque-looking, deranged characters made by toy manufacturer Marx.
“Drag Hag was a busty mama with a baby buggy with a dragster set up
Called Nutty Mad Weird-Ohs, these monochromatic, injection-molded polymer plastic toy figures from the early 1960s stood about 6 inches tall on a flat base perfect for displaying. Each weird character came with their own unique comical, deformed, and weird looks with crazed, bulging, bloodshot eyes, gnarly teeth, dangling tongues, and maniacal expressions.
There was Eddie Digger, Drag Hag, Davey the Psycho Cyclist and Daddy the Swinging Suburbanite
I had been inspired to collect these bizarre plastic characters only after my older brother Andy had been drawn into the popular Weird Ohs model kits made by the Hawke Model Company that the Marx figures had been based on.
Like most 11-year-old boys at the time, when Andy wasn’t busy collecting baseball cards, he occupied himself building plastic models.
When it came to mid-century model kits, he eschewed Revell and their authentic WWII fighter planes and was a loyalist to our local model maker Aurora who also manufactured monster and car model kits. Aurora Plastics had moved from Brooklyn to my suburban Long Island town of West Hempstead, N.Y. sometime in the mid-1950s manufacturing plastic model kits just blocks from my home.
Aurora targeted younger hobbyists like Andy creating smaller less detailed models at lower prices. Their logo was “U-Ma-Kit fighter planes and automobiles.
But by the early 1960s Frankenstein and Ferrari model kits weren’t the only things lurking around hobby shops shelves. In 1963 Hawk Model Company unleashed their line of polystyrene “Weird Ohs” into the world of model kits.
They caught on bigly. No one had ever seen anything like it before.
Suddenly Weird was good. There was no toy on the market like them.
Kids couldn’t get enough of the model kits and they flew off the shelves of hobby shops across the nation.
Weird-Ohs Car-Icky-Tures
The Weird-Oh idea was the brainchild of artist Bill Campbell who did much of their box art. He thought model builders were sick and tired of yet another car or plane kit. He came up with the idea of human-like monsters on hot rods.
The initial Weird-Ohs kits featured strange, oversized, and over-the-top parodies of weird-looking humanoid creatures driving and shifting gears on a hot rod type of vehicle ranging from dragsters to motorized coffins to worn-out jet aircraft.
Called “car-icky-tures” of kooky characters in crazy vehicles they featured crazed, weirdos with wild bloodshot eyes, shark-like teeth, dangling tongues, and putrid skin color.
Exactly what Marx would replicate in their figures.
Fittingly they were all residents of Weirdsville.
Weird took off wildly.
Oh the Smell of Airplane Glue in the Morning
My house was permeated with the smell of Weird-Ohs. Assembling all models required a tube of airplane glue.
At a time when my suburban house was already a cesspool of noxious, hazardous odors from cigarette smoke, lighter fluid, and varnish, the toxic smell from that tiny tube of Testor’s airplane glue overrode all the other odors.
There was also the matter of model paint that came with its own pernicious odor.
For only a dime each, you could buy multiple tiny bottles of Testor’s enamel paint in an assortment of colors to decorate both types of Weird-Ohs. Whether painting the Marx figurines or the Hawk models the cleanup came with the strong lasting smell of turpentine.
Once complete these wacky Weird Ohs weren’t harmful. In time, both sets of Weird-Ohs ended up just sitting on the dresser shelf gathering dust in both our bedrooms.
The only thing toxic about them was the glue used to assemble them.
Now we have Republican Weirdos who are inherently toxic and who want to insinuate themselves into your bedroom in the most dangerous ways.
Don’t send today’s Weirdos to the white house or Congress. Send them back to Weirdsville where they belong
Don’t vote Weird.
Vote wise