It Came From A Vending Machine: Lil' Brats!

Welcome back, everyone!  There is just so much to thoroughly enjoy about this time of year!  Is it the super cold weather?  How about the infinite darkness and daylight that only seems to be around for fifteen minutes in the morning?  What about the holiday music, on endless loop, from every store starting as early as weeks after Halloween?  There's always the rampart holiday shoppers, charging and barging through parking lots and store doors.  Boy, there is just so much, it's a wonder why anyone would be sick of it and wish it was actually just a couple days long like normal!  Buy, hey, before it's over, let's not forget about the children and our segway into today's It Came From A Vending Machine, featuring Lil' Brats!

Like other vending machine toy howlings, I come across them almost randomly, shopping from here to there, and today's is really no different.  These guys seem to be a new addition to the super market inside the plaza, so I figured I would give them a shot, especially because they appeared keshi-like, or at least, as keshi as a painted mini-figure would be.  In fact, at first glance, I thought they were something akin to Homies or the Family Guy miniatures I've covered in the past, so for once, I was pretty excited to waste some coins on some awful plastic.

That was the first impression away, because what awaited for me inside the capsules was something much different.  Even from the picture I took with my tree, it's hard to imagine them, hollow, with the same sort of texture and softness as you would expect from one of those tropical fish squeeze bath toys.  Yeah, to my surprise, these mini-figures were very not keshi in almost any way.  They were hollow, very soft, and sculpted to possibly be squirting toys, once upon a time before bootleggers rehashed them.  Poses on them seem to indicate they were intended to spit out water or what have you, but now with giant holes in the bottom of their feet, leave that feature dry.

Immediately disappointed, I looked for something salvageable with these guys.  In my head, I knew I couldn't rightly add them to my keshi collection, but maybe there's something to like about them all the same.  Although I'm sure readers know I'd rather have zero paint application than any, the application on these guys is straight up horrible, even by bootleg standards.  Smudges of different colors plague every mini-figure.  Colors not even found in other places appear smeared on the back of a head here and down a leg there.  Some paint scuffed completely off.  I suppose I don't need any more evidence that these guys all traveled together, loose, and whatever happened along the way just happened.

Lil' Brats look and smell like toxic waste, and I imagine they would taste the very same.  These guys, will most certainly be freebies tossed in with trades with forum members, and I hope for your sake, you don't ruin your festivities with more awful Lil' Brats.