Collectibles: The Mystery of the Creepshow Traveling Ashtray

The film CREEPSHOW (1982) holds a painfully special place in my heart. Back in 1982, my parents dragged me along to a dinner party at a friends house. The house was full, many families attending, and like most dinner parties of the 1980s the kids were all forced into the “basement” - which at this house was an entire “hang out” floor with carpet, couches, a big TV, and a VCR. (Math time - in 1982 a VCR averaged $700 - Which is close to $2,300 in 2025 cash!)

I was by far the youngest kid there - by a lot. I recall most of the others being “tween” or teenagers. I was 5.

And they were watching CREEPSHOW.

Like most teens, they didn’t care that I was way too young to watch this film. So I hid behind the couch, every so often peaking my head up to get a glimpse of an ocean soaked zombie, or the overly fanged “fluffy,” and then ducking my head back down until my bravery returned.

Later in life I learned to appreciate and love CREEPSHOW. When Paragon FX Group got Creepshow as an early license, I was excited. Our first project - The Traveling Ashtray.

While mostly known as the prop that kills off “father” in the first film sequence, the ashtray was given the nickname “traveling” because if you look closely, the ashtray is seen in every sequence of the film, and even briefly in the 2019 Creepshow TV pilot “House of the Head.”

The problem being, it is never really in focus - It is always slightly out of focus. Being a prop REPLICA, we needed to know what it looked like, and about how large it was. This was shockingly harder that anticipated.

For one, the original prop was just something George Romero owned and liked, so there was no “prop maker” to talk to. Secondly, a shocking number of people claim to own the original. More so claim to own a replica cast from the original. These ranged in quality from pretty good to awful, and if you can’t trust a provenance, you can’t use it. We decided the best way to do this was to sculpt our own.

I personally handled the sculpting of this piece. The cherub body itself was a simple, basic, and classic design. I looked at similar styles of sculpting and based on the screenshot “blur and shadow” of the face, put together a good estimation.

The base became an issue - Not because of complexity of sculpt, but marble vein pattern. How do we assure the veining is the same across the run? We tried many many methods from hand painting to hydro dip texture, and in the end the easiest solution was the best.

Lets just make it out of verde marble.

Sure, the veins wouldn’t be the same, but the piece would be real marble. The resin cherub became pewter, and when it was done we had a frankly awesome replica.

After some math based on the screen shots and some measurements from an owner of a verifiable pull of the original, the replica was complete, and became quite a hit in the horror collector community.

Funny enough, some time later my boss asked me if I based the sculpt of the cherub on myself as a kid. And while I didn’t the resemblance is uncanny.

I can’t help that I had an angelic face.

This project also gave me the chance to design what I think is some of my best packaging work!

Fun Fact - I got the biggest accidental compliment on this piece. After it’s release I received an email from “the owner” of the original prop, telling me that he was contemplating legal action because “I copied his original without his permission.”

After informing this owner that ownership of a prop doesn’t equate to ownership of rights, I sat back and smiled. This replica was so faithful that the guy who owns the original thought we directly copied it.

In a really messed up roundabout way - what a wonderful thing to say!