Did you pull a costume from a pack or order it from a catalog or comic? Was it a Ben Cooper classic costume? Or was your costume handmade with some help from your parents? Did it end up looking like Charlie Brown's multi-eyed ghost or was it a thing of beauty?
Whether a trick or a treat, share your costume memories today! What did you wear? How about your siblings; were they in on the fun? Did you have costume envy for one of your childhood peers' lavish looks? Or were you costume-averse and went out on Halloween just as yourself? Were you realistic in your approach and journey out as a baseball player or nurse? Were you into ghouls and vampires and ghosts? Or were you more friendly as a cartoon character or cute animal? What age did you stop wearing a costume because you were too cool? And did you return to costuming as an adult as a cosplayer or for Halloween parties?
Take a look at the below advertisements, costumes, and decades-old photos to jog your memory and get that Halloween blood flowing! Note: these photos are not of young Martinex and Redartz; they are simply wonderful photographic history captured through the magic of the world wide web. And speaking of "world wide", we would like to hear from our friends from exotic and distant locales to hear about their country's Halloween costume traditions (or lack of traditions as it may be).
Keep in mind there is much more Halloween fun on the way in the coming weeks as we head toward the 31st. So get ready to get the doorbells ringing! Cheers!
9 comments:
Hi, I'm from an exotic and distant locale :)
When I was a kid Hallowe'en was pretty much a non-event. I don't think we had Trick or Treat at all (not where I lived anyway) and we definitely didn't dress up. When I was 12 (in 1978) I went to a Hallowe'en party where there was "bobbing for apples" (apples floating in a bowl of water and you had to remove them using only your mouth) but that's my only childhood memory of Hallowe'en. For us British kids the big event was Guy Fawkes Night on November 5th - so October was mostly spent collecting junk to build our local bonfire.
Nowadays Hallowe'en is more celebrated in the UK and witches/skeletons/vampire costumes are on sale in the shops but it's still rare to get Trick Or Treaters knocking on my door - and they are always young children, never above the age of 7 or so. I've also seen pumpkins on sale - I never saw a pumpkin when I was young and I've never tasted pumpkin pie.
My father was Scottish and he insisted that Trick Or Treat was invented in Scotland and taken to America by immigrants - I don't know if that's true (I've also heard that Scottish immigrants to America invented the Ku Klux Klan).
We kids all pretty much started dressing like "bums" once we reached the age of 10. Somehow we all had discovered burnt cork = black smudges on the face, lol. And dad's polyester clothes seemed for being a bum, LOL!
As an aside, my children, being french, celebrated a Halloween in a small french village about 15 years ago, when they were about 4 & 6 years old. Mom and Aunt and Grandmere dressed them up as the most beautiful stereotypical American Indians you'd ever seen. They went through the village, knocking at each house, with Mom, Aunt, and Grandmere explaining the American tradition. The villagers, positively thrilled, presented them with entire pies, cakes, cans of pate, and wonderful gems as such to "treat" the two
(French folks, especially back then, didn't really have bags of candy or chips, or cans of soda, laying around the house. That's how they stay thin, lol.)
Anyhow, this Halloween story is wonderfully recalled and I'm sure will be passed down a few generations at least.
Great stories guys. My birthday is around Halloween so in kindergarten I had a party with costumed friends. I was a tiger with a plastic mask and essentially tiger pajamas. We too bobbed for apples.
My grandfather used to dress up as a ghoul and try to scare the trick or treaters on his porch.
I really wanted the Evel Knievel costume.
Usually though we made our costumes - robots made out of cardboard boxes, hoboes, wizards and the like.
Very fun subject!
Marti- my earliest Halloween memory is from kindergarten too! I remember all us kids being paraded in costume around the school. I had a Casper costume, one of those Ben Cooper classics.
A few years later I made my own ghost costume (not a Friendly Ghost like Casper). Our group of trick-or-treaters ended up going to a house full of hippies (this was about 1970). They had incense, lava lamps, the whole scene going. But they did have candy. Kind of freaked us out...
I had that Spider-Man costume in the photo in Grade 3. There was a girl in my class who wore the same costume and our teacher (who was dressed like Miss Piggy) kept fawning over us because we were her "heroes"; very embarrassing.
I wasn't able to do the store-bought costumes like that because around the age of seven, my physique took on the characteristics of a fire hydrant, so those costumes weren't really an option. Before that I usually did the cowboy option because with my personality, it always bothered me that the super hero costumes didn't look just exactly like the ones in the comics. Just too picky. :)
RREd - your "hippie" story made me laugh. Same encounter... we had some "hippies" on the corner... you know, the long-haired types, lava lamps, incense. They were very friendly, though unusual for the blue-collar steel worker crowd of Gary, Indiana.
My earliest Halloween memory goes back to when my Dad was still stationed at Fort Hood, in Texas. My father took me around the neighborhood. I was wearing my pajamas, a store bought mask and a pillow case for my candy. It was just my father and I. If I had to "fill in the blanks", my mother and sister probably went to her school, she being two years older and in school, and I walked up and down our street, maybe the street one over.
I don't have many other Halloween memories until about Junior High, the neighborhood gang was always trying to turn someone's garage into a Haunted House. That was fun. I do remember someone falling out of the attic which may have been the reason we stopped.
When we started having kids, my oldest daughter usually picked the Halloween theme. One year we were the "Big Comfy Couch", another year, the "100 Acres Woods". I was Eyeore.
Now, with the added years and experience, I look back at those years, realizing now, that what we know as "identity" is both fluid and malleable. Shaped by how we see not only ourselves, but how we perceive other's view of us...
"You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is..." a cop, a biker, an American Indian, a cowboy or a sailor. "But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are."
"Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club."
(I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted one time to see you laughing
I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you bathing in the purple rain
I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It's such a shame our friendship had to end
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you underneath the purple rain
Honey I know, I know, I know times are changing
It's time we all reach out for something new
That means you too
You say you want a leader
But you can't seem to make up your mind
I think you better close it
And let me guide you to the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
If you know what I'm singing about up here
C'mon, raise your hand
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you, only want to see you
In the purple rain).
PS: Just a follow up on my scans. I am usually doing two or three different things while scanning (scanning right now). When I did try to scan just the story, I found later I had missed pages. If I finish with 36 scans, I know I'm good... mostly...
I had the Creature rubber mask in the ad-it was the thinest latex made and after a few years it cracked and stuck together. But I usually had superhero costumes. My mom made a fantastic Spiderman costume one year and a gorgeous Shazam costume another. I also went to school as Reed Richards with white shoe polish in my hair. Halloween is my favorite holiday and now I go all out to haunt my house for the 250-300 kids that always come by. I even park my classic hearse out front and it gets a lot of attention! I usually pay for it with a sore back and exhaustion for a day or two but the kids love it so it's worth it!
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