Gre-Gory, Big Bad Vampire Bat, was a Mattel company creation from 1979, designed to appeal to horror-obsessed youngsters or to those with a fondness for large rubber bats. Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that fundamentally, Gre-Gory is not really a good name for a bat, pun or not, it’s time to open the garishly daubed box and see whether its startling declarations (“even his teeth bend”…” use your own string and hang him upside down”!) hold true.
Greg-Gory had two special design features; the first, that by gripping his sides and waving your arm up and down, you could make his wings flap in a most realistic manner. This, sadly, is more an act of physics than Mattel’s genius. What they did come up with and the real appeal, was a see-through chest cavity, showing in breathtaking detail the inner workings of the fiendishly life-like mammal of the night.
By pressing a clunky button on the bat’s back, blood would pump around his a-cursed organs filling all with dread and wonder. Fret not though, the box makes it clear that the ‘stomach is tightly sealed to prevent leaks’.Though pleasingly large and cast about as well as you would imagine, Greg is a rather strange maroon colour, a shade which no longer seems to exist aside from old toys. Ultimately, it was clear that this rubber monstrosity served no useful purpose other than to annoy younger sisters, though there is no denying that Gre-Gory, the Big (yes) Bad (also, yes) Vampire Bat, is the Rolls Royce of rather disappointing toys which looked so much better on the box.
Daz Lawrence
