With Halloween fast approaching, I thought I’d examine an industry that has greatly improved over the decades. If you go to the Disney store or anywhere else for that matter, you’ll see Halloween costumes that have authentic materials and actually look like the licensed characters they’re supposed to portray. But if you were growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, chances are you wore a crappy costume from either Ben Cooper, Halco or Collegeville. How crappy? Well, it’s amazing to think that a hard plastic mask with a fragile elastic band and what amounts to a garbage bag with simply the character’s picture on it to cover your torso were the norm for literally decades, but they were. Kids never complain when they donned their Batman mask with a plastic bib displaying a graphic of Batman doing an action pose. Nowadays, costumes are far more sophisticated with the costume actually looking like the character rather than a walking billboard advertisement for them.
These costumes were uber popular for decades, but really – they were still garbage bag grade plastic draped over your body. So, why were they the dominant force in Halloween attire for so long? Simple: they were cheap and they were everywhere! Ben Cooper, Halco and Collegeville were the masters of mass production. And they licensed the crap out of just about anything you can think of. Sure, there were Peanuts, Bugs Bunny, Superman and other bread-and-butter mainstays, but there was also Small Wonder, Krull, Fire and Ice and Scott Baio costumes, just to mention a few. So come with me now on a trip down memory lane, to a time when your breath would liquify in your semi-toxic hard plastic mask and your garbage bag costume would flap in the cold wind on a Halloween night.
First off, costumes that aren't that bad:
As you can see, some of the costumes actually looked like what they were supposed to. For all you kids of the 90's and 2000's, yes, Freddy was marketed to kids. These were the 80's. Every R-rated movie was marketed to kids because everybody knew they were watching. Oh, and for the uninitiated, the dude up top is Max Ray from the Centurions cartoon and toy line. But that's not the most random costume.
There were many more costumes based on video-games. But these might be two of my favourites (aside from the Missile Command costume, the mask of which I can't find a picture of -- was it a missile on your face or something?). Q*Bert was already the subject of cartoons and colouring books, etc. at this time, but here he gets the typical plaster-a-graphic-of-the-character-on-a-bib treatment common to these costumes. And Asteroids! I mean, you're basically making a costume on an abstract concept. There are no characters in that game. The mask is a frickin' asteroid for eff sakes! What was everybody thinking when they made this costume??
And what kid wants to dress up as Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater?? (and no, I'm not joking. That really is a costume of Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater).
Ah, the ever famous costume of Tattoo from Fantasy Island. I can just see kids in the Woolworth agonizing over whether to get the Spider-Man costume or this gem. Truth be told, Fantasy Island was a hit with the kiddies. But then again most everything was when your parents watched stuff like Love Boat and St. Elsewhere and you had no choice in the matter. sigh
I know My Little Pony was popular and all, but what girl wants to be a horse?
Yes folks, kids could even dress up as their favourite food, although why you would pick peas over candy to dress up as is anyone's guess.
Even sitcoms were not free from the wrath of Halloween costume licensing. Small Wonder is relatively obscure today but was inexplicably popular for about 6 months. That said, Tiffany Brissette should sue for this likeness. Not only is she creepy, but she looks 47.
Remember when Rambo walked around with a shirt that had a picture of himself on it? Yeah, me neither.Today, due to their camp value and the fact that they represented any and every fad in pop-culture in their time, these costumes are heavily prized possessions on the collectors’ market and have risen in price over the years. Sure, you can get masks of this era (some of which are actually pretty cool looking) for a couple bucks on e-Bay, but others, like the 60’s Spider-Man costume fetch upwards of $100.
These sites have a bunch of cool pictures of more costumes. Some are quite good, but a majority are too astonishing for words:
Worst costumes ever! EVER!:
A scan of the 1980 Ben Cooper catalog:
Deceptisean
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