The Nightmare Before Christmas opened on this day 30 years ago. Kind of. You see, technically it opened on October 15th, 1993, but it was only on two screens. On the 22nd, it expanded to 563 venues (which still wasn’t a lot), before truly going “wide” the following weekend. So, you can argue amongst yourselves as to if I chose the right date for this or not.

Anyway, I don’t really need to introduce The Nightmare Before Christmas, do I? I mean you’ve all seen it, probably many times. Hell, I bet you can even sing all of the songs! Contrary to popular belief, Nightmare was not a financial disappointment during its initial release, grossing $50 million stateside, which was very good for a movie ultimately aiming for a more or less niche audience. Nowadays, of course, the film has taken on a life of its own (it’s playing in theaters again as we speak!), and is required Halloween (and Christmas) viewing for many.

Sadly, Disney did get cold feet over placing their brand name on the project at the time, at the last minute opting to distribute it under their “mature” Touchstone banner (something they had done for Who Framed Roger Rabbit a few years earlier, and very bizarrely would also do for the family-friendly The Preacher’s Wife in 1996, a film that had no objectionable content outside of one use of the word “hell”!), so merch was sort of hard to come by. Fortunately, Burger King still had a promotion, even if it didn’t include kid’s meal toys, which I’m sure would have been sweet.

I am sorry to say I didn’t get any of these watches. Heck, I don’t even think I knew they existed, as I didn’t go to The Nightmare Before Christmas in theaters when it was new (I’m sure my parents read something about the main character giving a child a shrunken head and assumed it was more gruesome than it actually was; seriously, I think kid me would have loved this movie). They are available on eBay for reasonable prices, so someday I intend to make them mine, although I doubt the batteries still work in them (though hopefully they are replaceable).

If you want something more along the line of actual toys, there was a series of action figures from Hasbro, which is sort of notable since Mattel handled the majority of Disney’s movie merchandise at the time. Again, I am sorry to say I don’t have these, but they all look pretty awesome. And the commercial is fucking dope!

Have a spooky day, y’all!