NEW — Aug. 22, 2026: The eight-foot Green Goblin head that menaced motorists from the front of the Happy Toyz truck in Maximum Overdrive has arrived at GoblinCon in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Local station WKDZ reported Saturday night that owner and restorer Tim Shockey brought the original screen-used prop to the two-day UFO and paranormal gathering. The convention continues Sunday at the Bruce Convention Center, giving visitors a chance to meet a movie monster with a survival story almost as strange as the film.
The prop had a rougher trip than most movie stars
According to Shockey's account to WKDZ, his brother alerted him to the discarded prop in 1987, a year after Stephen King's movie was released. Shockey drove through the night from southern Ohio to retrieve it and displayed it in his video store for roughly seven or eight years.
When he sold the store, the head moved to his backyard, where it remained for more than two decades. It had already suffered major damage, including missing and burned sections, and later had an unfortunate encounter with a riding mower. If anyone is keeping score, the Goblin has now survived the junkyard, Ohio weather, lawn equipment and 1980s film reviews.
Shockey completed a substantial restoration in March 2013 and began showing the prop at conventions. His Green Goblin Project website documents it as the original head used on the Happy Toyz truck.
Maximum Overdrive became a cult survivor too
The 1986 film, based on King's short story Trucks, imagines machines turning homicidal after Earth passes through a comet's tail. It stars Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington and Yeardley Smith, with an AC/DC soundtrack that does not believe in indoor voices.
The movie struggled commercially when released but developed a durable cult audience. Its giant green truck ornament became one of its most recognizable images, which helps explain why Shockey now takes the restored head to conventions and appears in a documentary about the project on a Blu-ray release of the film.
GoblinCon is an especially appropriate stop. Hopkinsville's paranormal identity traces to the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, when residents reported strange creatures outside a rural farmhouse. The convention celebrates that history with speakers, vendors and exhibits. On Sunday, it also has a large fiberglass reminder that sometimes the monster from your childhood is doing better than the lawnmower that hit it.
Sources: WKDZ, reported Aug. 22, 2026 at approximately 10:33 p.m. CDT; The Green Goblin Project, Tim Shockey's project website; WKDZ GoblinCon coverage, Aug. 22, 2026.
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