- by Owen Morton
Bizarre as it may be, despite the distinct focus of this website on intelligent subjects such as He-Man, most of the feedback I get seems to be about my two Fiendish Feet articles (which can be read here and here). Fiendish Feet – those scarily stupid yoghurt pots of the late 1980’s. You know, the ones which had feet (which for some reason were described as ‘fiendish’, though from what I could see there was never anything particularly fiendish about them) and a frighteningly large amount of stupid names (such as Spooky Wooky). They also came in a variety of seriously vile flavours, as I recall. They were usually so deeply unpleasant that no one ever actually wanted to eat them except for the purpose of acquiring the empty yoghurt pot itself.
There never was much of a point to collecting the things, actually. In fact, there was none at all. My sister and I washed them out and played with them in the bath, which is information she’d probably much rather I hadn’t in fact revealed to all and sundry on the internet. As I recall, in these games, all the Fiendish Feet lived in their kingdom (which was, naturally enough for it being a bath time game, underwater), which was ruled over by the wise and all-powerful leader of the Fiendish Feet. I can’t remember which one this was, though it was probably Snortilla the Grunt, that one being perhaps the stupidest of them all. And as I further recall, there was only one of the Fiendish Feet who didn’t live happily in this underwater kingdom, and this was Flossie Flame, who was one of the pots that came with Pack 3. For some reason, Flossie Flame was branded by my sister and myself ‘a Bad Guy’, or Bad Yoghurt Pot, as the case may be, and became the primary villain who sought to destroy the tranquil lives of the other Fiendish Feet. I have no idea whatsoever why it was Flossie Flame who was singled out for this role. I think she was relatively inoffensive (as yoghurt pots with feet go), so why my sister and I would decide she was the one for this indignity is a question that I fear shall never be answered.
Flossie Flame was presumably accompanied in her evil plans – the motive of which was almost undoubtedly always unclear – by some other bath toys, such as the stupid red fish or the motorised frogs, which were almost certainly her slaves, minions, companions or whatever in her half-witted schemes. But Snortilla the Grunt and his army of yoghurt pots were always equal to the challenge presented by her stupid plans, and Flossie Flame was invariably driven off to ponder her latest failure and come up with another idea (though, of course, the Fiendish Feet army did sometimes suffer casualties, usually when my sister or I sat on one of them, at which point the stupid pot would shatter into several bits of sharp plastic, which was of course extremely painful).
Anyway, I have had enough of detailing my childhood bath time games (and I rather imagine my sister has had enough of it too), and so I will proceed to the main point of this article. Once again, someone has responded to my cry for pictures of these magnificent yoghurts, and sent me one. This time, the culprit is not Rare Bob, as it was in my second Fiendish Feet article, but an individual named Vincent Lo, who as recompense for providing me with this picture, has asked that I add a link to his webpage, and so here it is - www.radiofeeds.co.uk/fiendish. (By the way, Vincent, thanks for adding links to my website on yours – only just noticed it!!)
And so, the moment you’ve all been waiting for … without further ado, here is the picture of the first pack of Fiendish Feet!
Pretty crap, aren’t they?
In case you’re interested, which I assure you I am not (I mean, this is only the third Fiendish Feet article I’ve written in two years – this certainly does not imply interest in the subject), I can inform you that the picture, from left to right, shows Spooky Wooky, Fangs A Lot, Frank ‘N’ Stein and the one whose name I couldn’t remember, though having checked on Vincent’s site, I can now inform you is called Rattle ‘N’ Roll.
I have had more than enough of this subject now, and am going away to do something much more useful. FreeCell awaits …