That New Costume Smell

October 23, 2014 10:52 AM

If you were a child in the 70s who dreamed of being Boss Hogg or an 80s baby desperate to be a Rubik’s Cube, your dream could come true for less than $5. For that was the Golden Age of Ben Cooper and Collegeville Costume. Relive their glory days by perusing some vintage catalogs.

Collegeville: 1966, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1983, 1992
Ben Cooper: 1973, 1980, 1981
More photos

Halco costumes also deserve a mention, though they don’t seem to inspire as much nostalgia. Perhaps because they licensed less popular characters like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Heinz Pickle.

posted by jrossi4r (61 comments total)

I can still feel the sharp edges of the eye and mouth holes, and the condensation building up under the mask. Good times.
posted by Kabanos at 10:56 AM on October 23, 2014 [26 favorites]

Oh, man, what a mindfuck. I had the Digger from Shirt Tales costume in Kindergarten. I'm happy to see it's exactly as creepy as I remember.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:58 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Nostalgia? My childhood Halloweens were tinged with the smouldering resentment of costume failure based on these costumes. I wanted to BE The Hulk dammit, not have him drawn on my chest. The humiliation was only heightened by my Mom not letting me actually wear the mask, the only part remotely close to being an actual costume.
posted by ursus_comiter at 10:59 AM on October 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

I had the Digger from Shirt Tales costume in Kindergarten

OH SHIT I think I had the Bogey costume. Thank you.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:05 AM on October 23, 2014

I had a Casper the Ghost costume for the first several years of my trick-or-treat life. I hated those goddamn things. Even as a little kid I thought it was stupid that you had a mask and then the shirt, instead of being the body of who you were, had a damn picture of what you were and it said "Casper The Friendly Ghost" on it.

What the hell was the point of that?

And then the sharp plastic and the thin elastic that always broke and you thought that was the end of it and you cried until your dad tied it together and then it was too tight and it hurt but you got candy so it was a decent trade-off.
posted by bondcliff at 11:07 AM on October 23, 2014 [14 favorites]

Damn, here it is! Top row, second from the right. I guess it was just a generic ghost, not Casper.

What a stupid costume. I'm surprised I didn't get a bag full of rocks.
posted by bondcliff at 11:09 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Had this Cinderella costume. It was crappy and I took the mask off as soon as possible.
posted by emjaybee at 11:09 AM on October 23, 2014

My childhood Halloweens were tinged with the smouldering resentment of costume failure based on these costumes

I was always so jealous of the kids in the "normal" costumes. My parents considered them a waste of money and failure of imagination and insisted on homemade. This led to disasters like the year dad got ahold of some giant food posters from the supermarket, cut out eye holes and stapled us inside them. I was a can of Cream Corn.

The year they feathered my hair, stuck a plastic spigot to my head and sent me out as "Farrah Faucet" was pretty clever though, even though no one got it.
posted by jrossi4r at 11:11 AM on October 23, 2014 [17 favorites]

My mother was a fine art major and taught art before I was born, so she channeled her creative talent into making all our Halloween costumes instead of us buying one of these. I admit to always feeling a little smug about that, like I'd somehow come by my costume more honestly or something.

And dammit, the Miss Piggy and the Hershey's Kiss costumes were cool as hell
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:11 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

But where is Sexy {Nurse, Cop, Epidemiologist}?

I think we're ripe for a comeback of the printed garbage bag and plastic mask costumes.
Thinkgeek or someone could make some good money selling Luke Skywalker re-issues.
posted by madajb at 11:13 AM on October 23, 2014

I was a can of Cream Corn.

That is awesome. I remember one girl in my neighborhood, maybe about 10 years old, going out as a pack of cigarettes. The 70s were a hell of a time.
posted by bondcliff at 11:14 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also I live basically down the block from the Rubie's costume company, who have this year opened a "halloween store" in their factory. I think theirs are the crappy-mask-and-smock costumes that I mostly remember from my youth. Their modern costumes are, unfortunately, much better.

Thinkgeek or someone could make some good money selling Luke Skywalker re-issues.

100% true. Although the licensing cost these days would probably make it really hard to get done cheaply enough.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:18 AM on October 23, 2014

But where is Sexy {Nurse, Cop, Epidemiologist}?

Come down to GIRLS'S COSTUME WAREHOUSE!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can we please have adults dressing up in these? Please please please?
posted by lothar at 11:26 AM on October 23, 2014

I wish this were a real costume.
posted by bondcliff at 11:35 AM on October 23, 2014 [12 favorites]

I assume these went from smoldering to inferno in 1.5 seconds.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:43 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I still remember the condensation that would build up on the inside of those masks after breathing in them for an hour or so. And the sharp edges on the mouth and eyeholes. Good times.
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:46 AM on October 23, 2014

When I said I wanted to be Pac-Man I imagined a big Pac-Man outfit, a giant yellow pizza-with-missing-slice Pac head with my own head and arms sticking out (like that cool-ass kid got to wear, look at him, the smug jerk) and maybe I could put a trick-or-treat basket in Pac-Man's mouth so people would have to feed Pac-Man candy when I went trick-or-treating THAT WOULD BE COMPLETELY AWESOME AND NOBODY HAD EVER DONE IT BEFORE and instead I got I don't even know what.

PAC-MAN DOESN'T HAVE RED EYES, MOM, HE DOESN'T HAVE RED EYES
posted by Spatch at 11:50 AM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

OMG MY NEIGHBOR WAS FLIPPER. It was creepy then and creepy it remains.

And Secret Agent looks like Mister Rogers to me. I thought spies are supposed to be unremarkable. Not with that loud plaid!
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 11:54 AM on October 23, 2014

PAC-MAN DOESN'T HAVE RED EYES, MOM, HE DOESN'T HAVE RED EYES

He does if he's got...
Pac-Man fever.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:55 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I mean, srsly. Even Ghostie Skeleton is all "WTF, dude?"
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 11:57 AM on October 23, 2014

I had a Casper the Ghost costume for the first several years of my trick-or-treat life. I hated those goddamn things.

My parents were pretty great about Halloween, and my dad in particular came up with some pretty clever solutions to my overly ambitious costume aspirations over the years. That made The Casper Halloween (as I always think of it) that much more ignominious.

I think I had dragged my heels on figuring out a costume that year, so when Halloween rolled around there was a tragic last-minute trip to the store. Everything was picked clean, and I wound up with a shitty Collegeville Casper The Friendly Ghost costume. I hated those smock costumes and didn't even like Casper. I remember feeling way too old to be wearing it (I would have been about 8 or 9) but that's what there was, and I couldn't very well not go trick or treating, so I resigned myself to my fate.

This was also the year that my little sister was sick, my dad out of town on business, and my older brother was doing cool big kid Halloween stuff with his friends. So, although she couldn't take me trick-or-treating because of my sister, my mom did her best to salvage the night by arranging for me to go out with my frenemy down the street. On the way to the car my mask somehow wound up getting dropped, and subsequently run over.

So I get dropped off at Dave's house with my crappy, cracked, Casper the Ghost mask that now has tire tracks on it. His mom put us into their station wagon and off we went. Little did I know that we were only going to be trick-or-treating at one house that night: The Catholic rectory. The parish priest gave us some cider and donuts. Dave and I just sat uncomfortably in the rectory living room for half an hour while his mom chatted with the priest. Then they dropped me off at home and that was it.

Worst. Halloween. Ever.
posted by usonian at 12:01 PM on October 23, 2014 [18 favorites]

WTF usonian? How could she? Your frenemy had the worst mom. WORST.
posted by emjaybee at 12:06 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is a disgustingly shameful self link, some of which have been posted here before, but one of the things I am most proud of as a dad is that my son has always had pretty great homemade Halloween costumes.
posted by bondcliff at 12:08 PM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Man, you got donuts for treats? That sounds kinda awesome.

I'd love to give out baked goods instead crap candy, but

1. for the past five years, maybe four kids in total have come to the house, even though I have pumpkins and decorate and eveything
2. thanks to long established cop-lore, anything that isn't prepackaged crap is immediately suspect and therefore drugged/poisonous/full of razor blades

I would have gotten into all sorts of shenanigans at the rectory!
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 12:15 PM on October 23, 2014

I was another kid banned from wearing masks and the plastic smocks - the former because my mom thought they were unsafe, the latter because she liked making costumes. She never decided: we'd say what we wanted, and she'd make it, though with alterations to make sure it was practical and warm. When my brother was a robot, he has a cardboard and tinfoil "metal" body, with articulated arms made of dryer hoses. When I was an elf, she covered my sneakers in green felt to match my tunic & hat, so I looked like I was wearing shoes made of leaves. Year after year, we had handmade cat's ears and tail, or a home tailored vest to be Zorro, etc.

Now I deeply appreciate all the effort she put in. But, of course, I was a stupid kid and wanted a "proper" store bought costume with a mask and a plastic smock.
posted by jb at 12:15 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Golden Age??? Even as a kid I knew these costumes were crap. I think we used them one year, and I remember being incredibly disappointed when we opened the box and discovered that it was nothing more than a sheet of plastic with arm holes and a picture of a monster on it. And the mask hurt to wear.
posted by kanewai at 12:17 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

My mom also makes costumes for my niece now. One year, my niece wasn't really clear on what she wanted, and my mom may have gotten the wrong idea, but boldly went ahead and made what she thought my niece wanted: an (awesome) "Dr Devil Vampire Bunny" costume - rabbit ears & nose, vampire fangs, devil's horns, and a lab coat with a hand stitched "Dr DVB" over the left pocket.
posted by jb at 12:19 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Look, Lisa! I'm Radioactive Man!"
"I don't think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with his picture on it."
"He would on Halloween!"
posted by evilcolonel at 12:30 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I would have gotten into all sorts of shenanigans at the rectory!

It was really weird, though; it wasn't like there was a Halloween party at the rectory with other kids running around; we were the only people there. Strangerdanger poison razorblade candy paranoia was well-entrenched even then, but Father C. was a trusted figure in our small community, so donuts from him seemed OK even though my own family went to the Congregational church.

But a couple of donuts was all I got treatwise that year, except for whatever leftover candy we might have had at home.
posted by usonian at 12:32 PM on October 23, 2014

"Trick or treating is too dangerous, what with the razor blades everyone is sticking in their candy. Let me leave you alone with a Catholic priest, where you'll be safe."
posted by bondcliff at 12:36 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

Oh, man! My folks were dead set against these when I was little. "You want a costume? Make a costume, kid!" I wanted to be the guy from The Day The Earth Stood Still when I was 9. My mom helped me papier-mâché a balloon to make the helmet and we gathered bits and pieces of stuff from our "dress-up chest" and blammo! Best. Costume. Ever.
Except nobody knew who I was trying to be.
That was the beginning of a lifetime full of obscure references and the resulting pathetic sense of smug superiority which has sustained me until this day.
posted by Floydd at 12:39 PM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: A lifetime full of obscure references and the resulting pathetic sense of smug superiority which has sustained me until this day.
posted by cmfletcher at 12:54 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hated those goddamn things. Even as a little kid I thought it was stupid that you had a mask and then the shirt, instead of being the body of who you were, had a damn picture of what you were and it said "Casper The Friendly Ghost" on it.

What the hell was the point of that?

In retrospect, I think it was so the neighbors could figure out what you were dressed up as.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:57 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, having to explain your costume is the worst. 25 years ago, I prevailed upon my boyfriend to dress up for a party with me. We decided to be Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd. They were great costumes, too!

But back then, unless you were an extreme Sondheim geek, no one ever heard of Sweeney Todd. We just looked like crazy-looking ketchup-stained people.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 12:58 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wish I had some pictures (or even memories) of my childhood costumes, which were probably from Ben Cooper... in lieu of that, tho, here's a cool picture I found in a box of slides. I'd wager that it was taken in the late 50's or early 60's. *Update* just found a second picture. Appears to be earlier, with an eerie paper mache mask?
posted by lotusstp at 1:00 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, that smell! I used to love going into the store at Halloween time, opening the Ben Cooper boxes just a crack, and smell the shiny newness. Although the smocks with the picture of the character on them were silly, I was still a bit jealous of the kids whose parents took them out to buy colorful pop-culture costumes that smelled like pool toys. (Looking back, I appreciate the creativity our parents instilled in us, but sometimes you just want the New Plastic Thing!)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:06 PM on October 23, 2014

Yeah, having to explain your costume is the worst.

Me to trick-or-treating boy: Wow, what a great costume! I LOVE Robin Hood!

Boy: *stony silence and glare of death* I'm. Peter. Pan.

Me: Oh, that's nice, too. *slips extra bag of candy for emotional damages*
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:09 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Some years we'd have three costumes, though: One for school, one for the party, and one for trick-or-treating. Harder to do that with storebought.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:11 PM on October 23, 2014

Yeah, having to explain your costume is the worst.

Years ago, before we were married, my wife went on a windjammer cruise in the Caribbean. She went because she loves sailboats and the brochures promised adventure on the high seas and the opportunity to help sail. It turned out to be a boat full of people who wanted to get shitfaced all day, which is not my wife's thing, so she didn't really fit in with the crowd.

One day, before everyone left for a day on an island, the captain announced that there was going to be a "Pirate, prostitute, and pimp" costume party that night and that everyone should pick up something with which to make a costume before they returned to the ship. The costume had to be of something that began with the letter "P."

Most of the women, of course, came dressed as prostitutes, which I'm sure was what the captain had in mind.

My wife is rather creative, and not really the sort to dress up as a pirate or prostitute, so she put a banner around her that read "Go hang a salami, doc! Note; I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod. I’m a lasagna hog."

She spent the entire party explaining to a boat full of drunken idiots what a palindrome was.
posted by bondcliff at 1:12 PM on October 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

One day, before everyone left for a day on an island, the captain announced that there was going to be a "Pirate, prostitute, and pimp" costume party that night and that everyone should pick up something with which to make a costume before they returned to the ship. The costume had to be of something that began with the letter "P."

UGH. Kudos to her for her gracious subversion of a shitty idea.
posted by emjaybee at 1:28 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I have that crappy Pac-Man costume in my collection and I really think costumes like that are just phoning it in. I love when kids come to the door in real costumes, not those bags with mask.

This is what a Pac-Man costume should look like. That was my first big costume and it started me on a road to spending my free time every October making a big costume. I didn't even own a sewing machine when I made that one. These days the costumes are much more complex. (Check out my Yoda costume!)

This year I'm going to be Jon Snow riding a huge dire wolf. It's not really accurate (Jon Snow never rode his wolf), but I'm unwilling to make a costume where I'm just a person in an outfit.
posted by HappyEngineer at 1:39 PM on October 23, 2014

According to one of the links, there was a Lassie one? But I don't see any pictures? Help?
posted by Wolfdog at 1:52 PM on October 23, 2014

I actually went to college in Collegeville, and every year around mid-September the Halloween Surplus Warehouse (as we called it) would open up within walking distance of campus. You could find the most spectacular crap there, dirt-cheap, much of it cracked or sun-faded or mysteriously stained. So many masks of licensed characters and celebrities nobody remembered. It was wonderful. I wonder if the place is still around, all these years later.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:02 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I will take any opportunity to share Ladyhawke's "Dusk Till Dawn" video.

My mom was a dressmaker so we always had awesome costumes. And I certainly remember seeing these in stores but I also don't remember too many kids wearing them. Someone had to, though. (I'm surprised they lasted into the '90s.)

But I'm surprised that someone hasn't tried to do these again for adults. Although I think a lot of places have restrictions on wearing masks, so that might limit the appeal of these.
posted by darksong at 2:22 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

This brings me right back to the most depressing Halloween ever. I think it was 1983? It was the year of the Tylenol scare and there was talk of razors in candy and things like that. My parents, uncharacteristically conscientious, decided that we wouldn't be trick-or-treating that year. Unfortunately, my parents were divorced and Halloween fell on a weekend that year, so we were with our father -- and away from our friends, school activities, and pretty much anything that would have made Halloween fun.

My father tried really hard! We got to buy costumes from the store, which sounded like a special treat. However, my younger brother and I both chose the ET costume. We sat there, double ETs, in dim light with Dad, reeking of vinyl, halfheartedly making candy apples from a kit, listening to the laughter coming from outdoors, the glee of the children whose parents didn't imprison them that year.

I just found that costume on Ebay! I kind of want to buy it for my nephew.
posted by houseofdanie at 2:57 PM on October 23, 2014

Oh. The other worst thing is when you have a costume you really love -- maybe you made it, or maybe your talented seamstress Grandma made it, or maybe you bought it -- but your mother makes you wear your coat over it. How is anyone supposed to be a pretty princess or a scary monster with a wool coat on??
posted by houseofdanie at 2:59 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

SFGate's Super Crafty Halloween Costume Contest has fun costumes in the gallery. I look forward to this year's entries, even though it means using the new SFGate web site (shudder).
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 3:04 PM on October 23, 2014

I wonder if the place is still around, all these years later.
Yep!
posted by jrossi4r at 3:34 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Andrew of Armagideon Time writes about Collegeville
posted by pxe2000 at 4:22 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's still there, though very much smaller and I don't think anything is made or assembled locally any longer. I got some glow-in-the-dark face paint last year and I was wavering on the amazingly terrible Roman-inspired costumes!
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:47 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

We too had hand made costumes, and it started a long tradition of my pun-based costumes over the years.

Most of the tricker-treaters we see though; I have noticed that the trend is back towards licensed costumes until the kids are about 10, and then they seem to have some input, and or design autonomy.

That said, even though we decorate, and buy real chocolate for treats, and have moving vampires, and talking heads, glow in the dark flamingo skellies, dry ice smoke and sounds and everything...I didn't give out half the candy I bought. I'm still buying that much again this year, because it's not like snickers goes bad, and kids might show up...but I think trick or treating as a thing may be going away.
posted by dejah420 at 7:19 PM on October 23, 2014

...but I think trick or treating as a thing may be going away.

Around here, it's not really going away; it's just gotten more concentrated in certain areas. There are neighborhoods that get absolutely slammed; vanloads of kids get dropped off and then picked up an hour later. The rest of town is deserted. I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids, but never get a single trick-or-treater because they all get driven to That Neighborhood (or the mall if their parents are really lame).

We never got the full TOT experience ourselves. Mom had hypervigilant tendencies, so she would just take us around to relatives and friends. Of course, when we were prime TOT age we lived out in the middle of nowhere with the nearest neighbor barely walking distance along a dangerous highway with no sidewalk.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:51 AM on October 24, 2014

We're in our first Halloween in a new house, but in a neighborhood we've lived in for a few years already. Our old house was set back from the street maybe 50 feet further than the rest of the houses on the block (it used to be the barn for the house next door), which meant that I stood sadly at the door and watched kids walk right past because they either didn't know there was a house there or didn't want to be bothered walking down the driveway.

mrs ozzy prepared with, no joke, sixteen pounds of candy from Costco this year, since we're on a fairly major thoroughfare and we know there are a ton of kids in the neighborhood. I really have no idea what to expect.

(Thankfully I have that horse mask.)
posted by uncleozzy at 7:01 AM on October 24, 2014

I hated the condensation, vinyl gasses, and sharp eye holes as much as the next guy, but my least favorite 70s costume was definitely Toilet Paper Mummy, which unraveled and disintegrated all too quickly into Embarrassed Child Covered With Wisps of Toilet Paper.
posted by mubba at 8:31 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The street where I grew up RULED for Halloween, I tell you what.

It was one of those stereotypical small-town streets where everyone knew everyone else at least well enough to nod at, in the middle of bumfuck rural Connecticut; it also was a sort of closed-loop lollipop shape, which meant that it got absolutely no thru traffic - so the only cars that ever came down the street were either a) people who lived there, so they would know to be going slow, or b) people who were visiting residents, so they would be driving slow to look for their friends' house, or c) people who were horrifically lost so they would be driving slow and trying to figure out "where the hell am I?" This pretty much made it a turn-your-kids-outside-and-don't-worry paradise for kids year-round as it was.

But especially on Halloween, because pretty much every single family welcomed trick-or-treaters, which meant we had upwards of THIRTY houses to hit up each year. And there were also a lot of families with kids about the same ages, so there were always mobs of us out on the street each year. I was friends with the neighbor's daughter, and my brother was friends with the neighbors' son and also with another kid down at the end of the block, so when my brother was really little the fathers and kids our three families were one of the roving packs of bandits, while the mothers stayed behind on handing-out-candy duty. The dads were also particular friends of a few of the other dads on the route that had themselves been tasked with handing out candy, and those dads made sure to have a couple of secret special "treats" for the grownups as well. (One year our dads had a bit too much overindulging and started quoting a specific Dunkin' Donuts commercial at everyone as we walked.)

It was so safe that when I was about nine or ten I was allowed to be part of a separate faction, one unaccompanied by adults. My neighbor's daughter, one of our friends from school, and the friends' little sister and I reveled in being able to set our own pace and pick our own route (FINALLY we could skip the weird A-frame house that our brothers always insisted we go to but it was always a waste of time because NO ONE WAS EVER HOME ANY TIME EVER). The only danger we faced that year was that now we were relatively unprotected from an assault on the neighborhood bully - who actually never did anything worse than hide behind things and jump out at you and say "BOO!" to try to scare you and make you drop your candy so he could steal it. He actually did try that on us once, but we all held onto our loot and ran. But then later as we were passing through someone's yard as a shortcut we thought we saw him up ahead trying to hide behind a tree, so the neighbor girl - whose costume that year was "majorette" - scouted on ahead brandishing her baton while the rest of us followed in a protective huddle. (The image of Lisa jumping at that tree in "ambush", swinging her baton and shouting "HI-YAAH!" is something that will never in my life leave my brain.)

A couple years later Lisa and I opted to take candy duty at her house so her mother could hang out with mine. We dressed up too, and sat around doing our homework until kids hit us up. At some point some families came to the door that we didn't recognize, and the mother with them confessed that she was from a totally different town, but somehow word had gotten out that our street was especially safe for trick-or-treaters, so she hoped it was okay if we were there?...

After that I was always at the Halloween dances at high school, and all the other kids on my block were also similarly-aged and the trick-or-treating kind of dried up. Don't know what it's like back there now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Our neighborhood is sort of like that. Each house sits on at least an acre, and there about 30 houses total, but my kid and his friends are on the tail end of ages. They'll all be 11-12 this year and I'm not sure there are many little kids here at all anymore. Most of the other kids are driving now, so not really trick or treating. I think this is probably the last year the feral pack of boys will go, just because next year they'll all be too worried about being cool. But this year, I get to do makeup for an entire team of preteen Left for Dead zombies. I should probably get back to making claws and scars...
posted by dejah420 at 9:59 AM on October 24, 2014

(FINALLY we could skip the weird A-frame house that our brothers always insisted we go to but it was always a waste of time because NO ONE WAS EVER HOME ANY TIME EVER)

Conversely, I haven't been trick or treating in at least 25 years but I can still tell you the precise location of the weird A-frame house that handed out FULL-SIZED CANDY BARS every Halloween.
posted by usonian at 10:55 AM on October 24, 2014

FYI, this post just merited a write-up on the AV Club.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:08 AM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I can still tell you the precise location of the weird A-frame house that handed out FULL-SIZED CANDY BARS every Halloween.

I straight-up gave out full size candy bars the first two years we were in our home. But kids today are so blase about the entire Halloween experience, they barely reacted at all. I stopped bothering.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:41 AM on October 24, 2014

Actually, my current neighborhood gets kind of into Halloween - there are no less than three completely separate and competing Halloween stage shows within three blocks' walk, and the block where they all happen gets shut down to street traffic and the houses there all accept that they are "trick or treat central" for my neighborhood, so that's where all the little kids are running around all hopped up on sugar and they're all dressed in homemade costumes themselves, so it's little seven-year old Spidermen and cows and mermaids and such. One year I saw a kid dressed in a complete set of samurai armor he'd made himself out of cardboard, and it was awesome.

My office is doing a trick-or-treat at people's desks (you can sign up if you want to have your desk listed as a trick-or-treat site), and I plan on taking part - and dressing such that I can also throw a red bandana around my head and say that i"m also in "costume" as Rosie the Riveter or something.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:05 PM on October 24, 2014