With Halloween around the corner and more vampire movies hitting screens than you can shake a pointy stick at, there's no shortage of vampire-themed merchandise on the shelves. And while you'd expect a certain amount of horror from products that deal with the undead, some of them cross the line into all-out madness.

From the insanely creepy Twilight shower curtains with the floating, disembodied head of Robert Pattinson to the completely inexplicable pair of 30 Days of Night underwear,
this is the stuff we're hanging up garlic to keep out of our houses, and we've gotten Chris Sims to round up some of the strangest -- and worst -- vampire merch we could find and thrust it into the searing glow of sunlight.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer Stake Replica



This is a piece of wood.

It retails for one hundred dollars.

We'll go through that one more time for those of you in the back: This is literally a piece of wood, which is something that literally grows on trees. It has been sharpened and put in a very nice box, and for this service it carries an MSRP of $99.99, although to be fair, you can pick it up on Amazon for ten bucks less.

This is the exact item that made veteran retailer Mike Sterling start referring to the back half of the Previews catalog as "The End of Civilization," and the strangest thing -- at least for us, the crowd that's usually pretty okay with shelling out a few bills to get stuff like Green Lantern rings that don't even give you super-powers -- is that it's not even all that appropriate. It's not like Buffy has one stake that she uses throughout the series. It's like if a gun store was throwing whatever pistols they had laying around into commemorative boxes and calling it a Frank Castle Replica Pistol, except that in this scenario you would have to be able to find a gun virtually everywhere for free.


Besides, why spend the hundred dollars when for only $225, you could get this?

Real Vampire Heart Display



According to its listing on Etsy (spotted by our pal Anna), this -- which also comes with a fetching wooden box -- is the "perfect gothic gift" for Valentine's day and Halloween. And what makes it so perfect?

That's a real heart.

Specifically, it's a taxidermied pig's heart, which is about as close as you can get to human without attracting the attention of local law enforcement, although to be honest, you're probably still going to end up on one watch list or another. We have to admit though: A real heart with a stake in it? That is goth as hell.

Reborned Vampire Horror Doll



We were almost afraid to ask, but Anna informed us that "reborning" is when people take dolls and paint them to look more like real babies, which makes this one of the few items on our list that is actually made less creepy by turning it into a vampire.

It's a popular theme on Etsy, but this one--in addition to haunting our nightmares for years to come--stands out by virtue of the fact that it comes in what appears to be a lace-cuffed red velvet smoking jacket, and if you take away the fangs, that makes us think of it more as a Baby Hugh Hefner doll. Which, again, is actually creepier than a vampire.

"Twilight-Inspired" Forks Perfume Oil



The crazy popular Twilight novel series--which, as we'll see, will be a recurring theme of this article--is set in the town of Forks, Washington, which described by the main character as being "under a near constant cover of rain and clouds," hence this perfume's purported scent being "reminiscent of the smell in the air after a thunderstorm has passed."

Not a bad idea for a perfume, but as Forks actually does exist in the real world, we asked Washington native David Campbell if it was accurate, and he informed us that rather than than vampires and swooning, Forks' chief characteristics in real life are more along the lines of pine trees and meth. Which, now that we think about it, would be pretty easy to make a perfume out of.

In either case, we've got your vampire-themed bathtime taken care of already:

Glow In The Dark Blacula Soap



This is soap that has Blacula on it and it glows in the dark.

This is the most awesome thing we have ever seen and we are not even joking.

Sexy Vampire Reusable Cloth Menstrual Pad



Rounding out the arts and crafts section of our review is this item, which we spotted both on Etsy and its scathing sister site Regretsy. The jokes pretty much write themselves here, but we will admit that sopping up one's menstrual blood with a vampire makes a lot more sense than doing it with Pikachu.

Tru Blood Fruit Drink



Released as a tie-in to the HBO's vampire-centric series True Blood, Tru Blood is a fruit drink made of--what else?--blood oranges that, according to TV blogger and comics artist Chris Piers, tastes like "a really nice orange creamy soda but with some Flintstones vitamins mashed up and mixed in." So if you're part of the narrow Venn diagram overlap of Vampire Enthusiasts, Exotic Fruit Lovers and People Who Like The Taste of Cough Syrup and Chalk, then this one's for you!

The packaging is, of course, done up to look like the synthetic blood marketed to vampires on the show, which means that this drink makes it easy to pretend that you're drinking pretend blood, which is something we have a pretty hard time wrapping our heads around.

Which is why we might just stick with this:

Blood Energy Potion



With Halloween coinciding with the release of a metric ton of vampire movies, Blood Energy Potion has been marketed pretty heavily online, despite the fact that the product itself isn't scheduled to be released until January. You know, January. When everyone's thinking about vampires.

Regardless, Blood claims to offer nutritional content similar to human blood while tasting like delicious fruit punch, and we're willing to give it a chance, as it's basically just Capri Sun with the label swapped out, and if we're remembering elementary school correctly, Capri Sun is pretty awesome. Then again, the combination of "vampire" and "energy drink" doesn't make a whole lot of sense, unless it's being marketed directly at some kind of vampire skateboard champion. Plus, "potion?" Really? What, did Professor Snape brew it up after exams?

Still, it'd make a great touch to a Halloween party (if it wasn't coming out in January, anyway), and hey! It's got electrolytes! And as to what you're going to do with all the energy it gives you...

Vampire Condoms



Yes, Vampire Condoms: For when you want to feel the embrace of the grave without spawning any children of the night. Dr. K tipped us off to these after he discovered them while teaching a class on Dracula, and in addition to being the perfect way to keep your hundred-dollar stake replica in mint condition, it's the perfect way to let potential mates know that you're willing to take this whole vampire thing way past the point of "hobbyist."

But not as far as some people:

The Vamp: The Unofficial Twilight Dildo



Yes, you read that right: The Twilight Dildo. This thing is such a perfect storm of bootleg sex toy, and complete insanity that it's been covered just about everywhere, but as shocking as it might be to believe, the most striking thing about it is not the inlaid glitter that means, like the vampires of Twliight, it actually sparkles in sunlight.

No, the real craziness comes from the product description, which touts both its "deathly pale flesh tone reminiscent of the moon's soft glow" and the fact that it "retains hot and cold temperature," so you can "toss it in the fridge for that authentic experience," thus selling it on the strength of how accurate it is to a corpse's wang. That's right, folks: This may in fact be the first sex toy to be marketed directly to the amateur necrophiliac.

Congratulations, Tantus Direct: In the battle of the creepy vampire merchandise, you win.


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