A family’s blood ties

If you’re a 5-year-old whose dad just happens to be the voice of Nickelodeon’s wildly popular “SpongeBob SquarePants,” your Halloween costume is pretty much in the bag, right?

Not if you’re Mack Kenny. On a recent October Saturday, the son of Tom Kenny, 41, best-known for voicing the ubiquitous sea-dwelling cartoon sponge, is wandering the aisles of Burbank’s Spirit Halloween Superstore with everything but his dad’s little yellow meal ticket in mind.

“Last year I was Green Lantern,” said the Studio City kindergartner. “And the year before that I was Frankenstein.”

“He was the monster and I was Dr. Frankenstein,” said his father as he tousled the tuft of blue-glitter hair jutting from Mack’s forehead. “And the year before that he was Zorro. We talked about the whole family going as the Munsters this year.”

“Dad, you can be the Frankenstein guy,” Mack said. “I wanna be Eddie!”

“Herman, you mean I’ll be Herman Munster,” Tom said. “And Mom can be Lily Munster, right?”

“And Sparkles can be the one with the blond hair!” Mack declared. (Mom is Kenny’s wife, fellow actor and voice-over artist Jill Talley. “Sparkles” is Mack’s nickname for his 3-month-old sister, Nora.)

“Months ago we discussed being the Marvel family,” Tom said. “I’d be Captain Marvel, he’d be Captain Marvel Jr. and Mom would be Mary Marvel, but that was a little too obscure.”

A 1960s-era monster sitcom? Comic-book superheroes that date back to the 1940s? The choices do seem a little out of step for a fellow whose voice-over resume reads like a cartoon-costume wish list. (In addition to “SpongeBob,” he’s lent his pipes to dozens of animated shows including “Futurama,” “Dilbert,” “The Powerpuff Girls,” “What’s New Scooby-Doo?” “The Yogi Bear Show” and “CatDog.”)

“We’re kind of a retro family,” confesses Tom. “And we don’t watch much TV.”

He does admit that he and his son are currently working their way through a boxed set of the original “Rocky & Bullwinkle” episodes (“It sure holds up well,” he says).

When he lets slip that the family has cats named Bela Lugosi and C.C. Ryder, it’s clear that “retro” is a bit more involved than just the black Ray-Ban Wayfarer frames and “Creature From the Black Lagoon” T-shirt he’s sporting.

And Tom isn’t the only horror fan in the family. At his dad’s urging, Mack describes the haunted house he recently made at home (although a little hard to envision, it seemed to include a gorilla mask, a guitar case and some cushions).

So, as they approach the dark room containing the strobe lights, black-light skulls and strings of pumpkin lights, the task at hand appears settled (well, at least as settled as it can be when a 5-year-old is involved). The hunt is on for something old-fashioned -- something classic movie monster-ish: flat-headed with bolts in the neck, caped and bloody-fanged or gilled and crawling from the ooze.

For an hour and a half, Tom and Mack entertain themselves while perusing row upon row of noose-hung, gaunt-faced effigies, smoke-emitting skulls, glow-in-the-dark spiders, crawling severed hands, bone baskets and caches of medieval plastic weaponry. Mack takes a few moments to watch a vampire head bleed profusely into a birdbath before he and his dad mug for each other with bloodshot eyeballs the size of grapefruits. They jingle plastic chain mail, trigger motion-sensor screaming doormats and clawing-hand candy dishes. They try on Viking helmets the size of big-screen TVs and wave plastic scythes around with mock menace.

All the while, Tom provides his son with a running commentary from an encyclopedic knowledge of monster lore, touching on everything from Forrest Ackerman’s collection of horror memorabilia to explaining the half-mask worn by the Phantom of the Opera.

When Mack picks up a plastic brain, Tom tells him: “I hear your brain is the consistency of oatmeal.” When confronted with a particularly deformed skull on a stick he brandishes it and tells Mack to “imagine what it looked like when it had skin on it!” At one point he suggests that David J. Skal’s book “Screams of Reason: Mad Science in Modern Culture” might help explain film’s fascination with Frankenstein’s monster, laboratory-spawned mutants and space aliens.

But the adventure wasn’t all batwings and broomsticks. A few “SquarePants” moments managed to sneak into the afternoon. One occurred when Tom discovered a kids’ SpongeBob costume (tunic and shoe covers for $49.99) sandwiched between the “Spy Kids” action outfit and the “Star Wars” Jedi cloak.

“Look at this!” he said, pointing to the illustration, “It looks like SpongeBob’s sprouting a human head.” (Tom is quick to point out that he doesn’t see a dime of it. “I don’t get a cut of merchandise sales,” he says, “unless it talks.”)

Another SpongeBob encounter came a few aisles over when Tom and Mack came face-to-face with a mother-son shopping duo -- the son sporting a yellow T-shirt festooned with the cartoon cast of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and waving around a plastic skull-on-a-stick.

“That’s scarier than a real person!” said Tom in his best SpongeBob voice. When the young boy simply stared at Tom, familiar with the voice but not the man behind it, Mack pointed to his dad and said, “He is SpongeBob!” Tom nodded. “I do his talking for him. Aren’t you overwhelmed with greatness?” All the child could do was nod his plastic skull-on-a-stick in the affirmative.

Watching the pair meander around the store, one got the distinct impression that if they didn’t have to leave soon to meet up with Mom and Sparkles (they were due for a birthday party elsewhere in Burbank) they’d be content to spend the rest of the weekend up to their armpits in toy brains, fake blood and plastic skulls discussing the scariest parts of “War of the Worlds.”

Nor did either one seem to particularly care that the chore of picking the family’s costumes hadn’t actually been accomplished. “He’ll probably change his mind a few more times anyway before Halloween,” Tom said.

As they worked their way toward the front of the store, Tom pointed to a door decoration of a big-eyed space alien with a Q-tip-shaped head and asked his son: “Hey Mack, do you believe in space aliens?”

Mack glanced at his dad with the kind of mock incredulity 5-year-olds reserve for silly parent questions and answered: “Of course. What do you think happened to Amelia Earhart?”

As father and son strolled out into the sunlight of San Fernando Boulevard, Tom shot Mack a look of something in between parental pride and astonishment. “Where in the world did you learn about Amelia Earhart?”

*

Spirit Halloween Superstore

Where: 200 N. San Fernando Blvd., Burbank

When: Until Nov. 2; Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Hours sometimes change, call first.)

Info: (818) 848-7119 or (800) 321-2497

Other locations: Pasadena, West Hollywood, Granada Hills and Lancaster

Adam Tschorn can be contacted at weekend@latimes.com.