Over the last five or six years my love for the film The Monster Squad has taken me to all kinds of weird places when it comes to adding items to my collection. Whether it’s seeking out 33 year-old paper copies of the HBO Program Guide so that I can have proof of when the movie first debuted on the network, or combing through archaic, foreign auction sites hoping to find obscure copies of the film on VHS from all over Europe and Asia, I find my self in some weird places looking for some weird stuff. After years of searching for all the little official bits and pieces related to the film that I can find, I’ve secured most known stuff for the collection. In fact there isn’t much left to search for because of the things that I don’t already own, most of it is either ridiculously rare (I would absolutely love to find a Crew jacket some day) or a part of film history which is way out of my reach, budget-wise (original props, costuming, or surviving creature appliances.) So I was shocked when I logged on to Twitter a month ago and discovered that there was an avenue of Squad collecting that I hadn’t even considered yet. A very rad lady I follow named Kelly Kinsley (who runs a fun White Plains Chronicles fan site), was busy solving a 30 year-old Monster Squad mystery I had yet to even think about, which was figuring out the origin of the Scraps prop.
For those who aren’t as steeped in Monster Squad minutia as myself and Kelly, Scraps is the little puppy plush doll that Phoebe Crenshaw (played by the super cool Ashley Bank) carries around with her through the entire film. It’s adorable as hell when you focus on it, she has Scraps attached to her belt so he hangs off of her like a little puppy-shaped fanny pack. Here are some official photos from the Press Kit that feature Phoebe and Scraps…
Though I love all of the Squad characters in the film to death, Ashley Bank’s Phoebe has become one of my absolute favorites as the years go by. Part of this might be that I have a little daughter of my own now, and I have a whole new perspective as a parent when re-watching the movie. But she’s also overlooked a bit in the fandom and you very rarely see her character pop up in modern fan art or remembrances of the film. I think it’s easy to downplay her importance to the plot as she’s not the flashiest of characters and is designed to be the slightly annoying, yet adorable younger sister, but when you get right down to it she really saves the day, many times through the film. Whether it’s being brave enough to approach Scary German Guy first, befriending Frankenstein’s Monster and bringing him to the clubhouse, or reciting the spell that unlocks limbo at the end of the film, she is a standout hero that does way more than more popular members like Patrick.
Fred Dekker (and Shane Black) did a great job of working in the Scraps prop into a number of moments throughout the film. There’s the moment, at about the midway point where Phoebe’s mom is putting her to bed and Phoebe insists her mother say goodnight to Scraps…
And then there’s the whole amazing relationship between Phoebe and Frank. I love this because it flips the classic scene from the original James Whale Frankenstein film (where the Monster innocently murders a child named Maria because he does not understand what he is doing), making the duo an unlikely set of best friends. The juxtaposition of Tom Noonan’s Monster and Ashley Bank’s Phoebe works so great in the movie and a lot of it plays out around the Scraps doll.
When she teaches Frank to talk, one of the first words he learns is to say “Scraps”…
That relationship between the two comes to a dramatic crescendo at the end of the film when Frank first saves Phoebe from Dracula, and then after she successfully says the incantation in German and opens a hole into Limbo, we’re treated to a heart-wrenching bit where she is forced to say goodbye to Frank as he is being sucked into the netherworld. I still well up a bit every time I watch this segment…
Phoebe, distraught by losing her new friend throws him her beloved Scraps doll so that he’ll have something to keep him company and to remember her by on his journey to limbo. Jesus, I’m misting up now just thinking about it.
Getting back to the mystery of the Scraps prop, Kelly figured out that Scraps is actually a plush from the Russ Berrie Company called Puddles. She posted a picture of the plush doll and the press photo of Dekker and Bank with Scraps above, and the dolls are identical. Great detective work considering how difficult it can be to nail down vintage plush dolls. There just aren’t fandoms so obsessed with them that they’re cataloged the way old boys toys are like G.I. Joe, Transformers and Star Wars. I immediately starting looking at various screen shots from the film and the press materials I had to confirm, and though I can’t see a tag on Scraps clearly, it’s pretty obviously that Puddles and Scraps are one and the same.
So I found myself in the rare position to searching for a vintage Puddles plush online to add to my Monster Squad collection. Luckily, he’s pretty easy to find, and within a week of Kelly posting her find, I had a new and awesome display piece for my collection.
Outside of the official press photos, the only other piece of Monster Squad ephemera that I could thin of that featured Scraps was the Australian version of the poster, one of the few that features Phoebe as a part of the Squad, and of course she’s hugging Scraps…
I’m so stoked to finally have a piece like this for my collection. Sure, it’s not a screen-used version of Scraps, but it’s about as official as it gets and it’s nice to have something that’s not a photo, poster or other scrap of paper. Now, to find a Rambo branded complex Bow for under $300…
As an interesting postscript to this, I tagged Fred Dekker when I shared this piece on Facebook and here’s what he had to add as far as Scraps is concerned…
Very cool that we almost had some official branded merch from the film. Also, Fred is such a sweet dude and I’m endlessly grateful that he doesn’t seem to get tired of my jabbering on about the film all the time.