Vintage Halloween Ads

Recently stumbled upon some March issues of Toy industry mags, seasonal buyers are already looking forward to October by that point so much of these issues is devoted to Halloween. Here are some cool vintage highlights....

Don Post was the premier mask manufacturer back in the day, I remember drooling over their ads in Starlog. They must have sold a million Yoda masks, this year they were gearing up for the release of Return of the Jedi. Oh boy, Ewok masks were in our future......

Clowns frighten me.

These Ben Cooper Sesame Street costumes are just wild, not only do they have that classic "smock and mask" look about them but they're Sesame Street for gosh sakes!

This 1978 Ben Cooper ad upsets me, if you look closely, it mentions Logan's Run, how cool would that have been? Argh! I could have been a Sandman!

Collegeville distributed Don Post masks and sold those "smock and mask" sets we all loved so much. I love their selection for '83, Atari games, I wonder if they made the guy from Adventure?

Krull, there's licensing money well spent! You'd be the envy of the neighborhood being "that guy from Krull". Shirt Tales was annoying but I bet it sold and D & D was awesome but probably sold poorly in the bible belt. Man, I'm crapping on collegeville aren't I?

Below are some Catalog scans I featured on the PS blog

vintage halloween costumes

Can I tell you how much I love that Mr Spock costume? It's not helping my recent leanings to become a vintage Star Trek collector, I especially covet that Remco Belt.

Notice that Steve Austin and Jamie Summers outfits are actually different that yesterdays. The thing I remember best about those masks besides the cheap elastic (which many folks pointed out yesterday that they would break before you went trick or treating) was the tiny little mouth hole they had, a gerbil couldn't breath through that!

vintage halloween costumes

I love how Batman has his name written across his logo, he's so hard to recognize otherwise. Note the Remco Utility belt at the bottom, God I loved that thing!

Sure, they marketed them as "Play suits" but we all knew what they were. These ones were just a notch above the "smock and mask" I got at Halloween, plus these ones weren't knockoffs!( More on that later)

I love the Bionic people's exposed circutry arms, the fact that Superman has a mask but I wonder if Kong Kong would really need to wear a shirt with his picture on it?

Oh and what an interesting move it is to throw the Remco Spiderman Utility belt on this page but isn't Batman more famous for such an item?

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