Is there a story behind the cymbal monkey?
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1666734106
I want one because they look so nasty evil, and I’ve seen them pop up in movies (portrayed as evil). How were these things marketed back when they came out? Did people enjoy them? When did people start thinking of them as “devil monkeys”?
Zette
I just finished reading the Stephen King short story where that monkey is evil, that may be where it originated from. If it’s not, then I have no idea. It’s a really creepy story, anyways. It’s in his collection Skeleton Crew.
I knew my cymbal monkey was evil before Skeleton Crew was published. It looked evil, it smelled evil, it sounded evil.
I would assume that Skeleton Crew is it came from.
But then of course SK had to get the idea from somewhere, so maybe it came from somewhare else. I would guess that if SK did not creat the idea himself, then it probably came fron the Vault of Horror or Tales From The Crypt type comic books from the 50’s.
“Green Tea” By Sheridan Le Fanu had a devilish monkey in it. No cymbals, but still creepy. A local five-n-dime store when I was a younster had one of these cymbal monkeys in its display window. They’re just spooky looking, and you never know when they are going to just up and start clanging those things. So I’ll bet no-one really started the idea. They just naturally qualify as frisson-inducing.
I didn’t think they were real at all, in the sense of being comericially available. Guess I need to shop the finer toy stores more often.
What I would like is a one-man-band, the kind with cymbols on the knees and harmonica and squeezebox.
Anyone want to help me design one?
Hey, if Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders says the cymbal monkey is evil, then it is!
It even transformed Bobo into an evil clone of itself. Horrors!
jayjay
I hate toys with faces. They all scare me. It probably has something to do with the one stuffed bear someone gave me when I was really little. I used to have nightmares about it every night. And I swear I heard it growl at me.
YES.
When I was about four, my parents took me to the zoo. While walking to the entrance, we passed a street vendor selling those things. He had wound up a bunch of them and they were all nodding and clapping their cymbals at the same time. Completely freaked me out.
I read the King story years ago. I could almost believe it was based on a true story.
Sheri
Thanksgiving Day a bunch of years ago, a friend of the family came over, we’ll call him Hank. Mostly because it’s his name, but that’s another story*. He liked to go to gearage sales and flea markets and stuff and buy crappy old toys and fix them up. And old radios. He fixed up old radios and then just gave them away. He just liked to fix things.
Anyway, he brought along some of his recently renovated toys. One was the cymbal monkey. Another toy he broght was this spider thing that would hop around and wiggle when you made a noise. It would shimmy and shake across the floor for a while then stop, waiting for the next noise.
Well, the cymbal monkey makes noise when it slaps its cymbals together. (Duh) It makes enough noise to set of Timmy the Epileptic Spider. So bang, bang, bang goes the cymbals and hip, hop, shimmy, shake goes Timmy.
Timmy wanders around the floor aimlessly and the monkey is sitting there with his legs kinda spread. (You see where this is going?) Well, Timmy blunders into the monkey’s crotch and wriggles and jounces there for a few seconds. If this isn’t funny enough (yes, it is too funny) this is when the monkey opens his eyes real wide and bares its teeth and goes eek, eek, eek!.
This had us rolling!
After the teeth baring, the monkey takes a breather. He stops shrieking and banging his cymbals and gets quiet. In the quiet, the spider quits hopping around in the monkey’s crotch. All is calm.
Then the monkey starts banging his cymbals again and the spider starts banging the monkey. Oh! The huge-manatees! It was funny.
So not all cymbal monkeys are evil. Some are perverted sex fiends.
*The story of Hank
Once upon a time a woman had a baby boy. “We’ll call him Hank.”
The end.
(I didn’t say it was an interesting story)
-Rue.
IIRC there was a cymbal monkey that “came to life” when the UFO was near in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I suspect that there was a suggestion of evil about these toys before the Stephen King story, but its ap[pearance on the cover of Skeleton Crew probably cemented its position. If Stephen King says you’re evil, you’re evil.
years ago I got one at a flea market for around $5.00. Great bargain. The cloth on the face is kind of fragile and tends to wear when you activate the mouth too much (when you smack him on the top of the head the eyes bug out, the mouth opens, and it makes a screeching noise).
You might find one in a Spencer’s for less than the e-bay auction price plus shipping.
http://disturbingauctions.com/view.pl?item=65
It’s the same site as CelticCowboy’s.
“Never before seeing this item have I actually wished I was blind.” Damn that was funny. I think I burst a lung.
When I was in 7th grade my friend had a slumber party at her house. There were about six of us 7th grade girls there, so inevitably we turned to the ouija board. After a while, I got bored, so I excused myself. My friend, whose house it was, had a cymbal monkey in her room. This was not an unusual toy to have at the time.
The house was dark, for optimum ouija-boarding, so I took the monkey, stole down the stairs, and crawled around the lower floor, hiding behind furniture, until I got to a place where I could see the girls playing with the ouija board. I was behind an arm chair. I reached out as far as I could with one arm and set the monkey on the floor where they could see it. No one was looking. With one finger, I flipped the switch, and snatched my arm back.
It was great!! A couple hours of playing with supernatural powers in the dark, and now here was a demonic monkey, come to life by itself!
It was one of my finest hours.
Bluethree - LOL - did you need help peeling your friends off the ceiling?
Rue I liked your story too. Did you get pictures?
I do not, however like cymbal monkeys, or clowns for that matter. (Just thinking about an evil clown populating the world with cymbal monkies sends Enuma scurrying back into the nice protective cyber-ether…)
Huzza!
Evil monkey, here I come! Has anyone seen one of these new in stores? I’ve only seen the old 50’s style ones. That’s the style I want, but if they have brand new ones (in the old style) that would be even better. Lots of the old ones are advertised as not working.
Zette
Zette said:
That’s because they’ve sucked the lifeforce out of their previous owners. They’ll work again, oh yes…
Odd synchronicity . . . I saw a photo of a cymbal monkey on my way to work this morning and was mulling over their evilness. Don’t know when the evil part started, but the monkey toys started out as animatronic Italian organ-grinders’ monkeys. They (the real monkeys, I mean) would dress up, usually in uniforms, and beg for change from passersby (I imagine the really talented ones could also pick pockets). The mechanical ones go back as far as the 18th century, when moving mechanical toys first became the rage.
Slight hijack: This year’s Xmas windows at Lord & Taylor’s feature the usual elaborate scenes, with those tiny animatronic figures making the same motion over and over again. One window features Messrs. Lord and Taylor greeting guests to a party, c1820s. One of the hosts is supposed to be bowing: both arms clenched to waist, mouth open, bending over again and again. He looks exactly like he is having the dry heaves, which never fails to cheer me up as I walk by . . .
Always, always assume that mechanical toys that come to life are evil. It could save your life someday.
I know I read Skeleton Crew but I don’t remember what the monkey does - can someone sum it up in a few sentences?
It probably scared the crap out of me at the time, but was replaced by evil clowns and the short story where the guy has a human-looking index finger coming out of his sink drain.