Today’s kids are so damn spoiled. When October rolls around and they start mulling over the most important decision of the month, “What am I going to be for Halloween?” they have little to worry about given the vast array of professional-looking costume choices they have at their disposal. Heck, these days when October arrives Halloween costume shops pop up for the month (usually in an abandoned Kay Bee Toys, which is normally just a depressing reminder of the state of today’s toy stores – don’t get me started, damnit!). Today’s kids have no idea what Halloween was like 2-3 decades ago when the only choices for costumes consisted of crappy vinyl atrocities, which rarely resembled who they were supposed to represent and fell apart after you ran around in the yard wearing them 3 weeks before Halloween (damn you, Superman costume!) Sure your parents could make a costume for you, but that never worked out very well either. After pouring through countless examples (on work’s dime, of course), I have assembled some of the best examples of these awful costumes. Click to enlarge.
Behold, Jaws! Yep, apparently the Halloween gods figured out a way to milk more money out of the (adult) Jaws sensation of 1975. Adding insult to injury there was no attempt to make a realistic shark head. The lazy bastards lifted the shark image from the poster and then used the same picture for the front of the costume.
Not to be outdone the people who capitalized on the popularity of Jaws to create the 1977 film The Deep, which really had little to do with sharks, plagiarized the Jaws costume idea and created this silly tiger shark costume. Oooh, scary! At least the “jaws” are pointed in the right direction.
“Look gang, I’m a Rubix Cube! Want to come solve me?” Seriously, did they sell even ONE of these costumes?
I don’t know which of these Peanuts costumes look worse (*cough Woodstock cough*). Years ago while looking at a giant stuffed Garfield Octopunk remarked, “You know, the larger they make a cartoon character the less it looks like that cartoon character.” Octo’s wisdom is just as relevant today. How lazy are these costumes? You mean to tell me that they couldn’t even give Charlie Brown his signature zigzag stripe?
Was there a single kid in the 70s who wanted to sport a Penny “Laverne De Fazio” Marshall” costume? Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer, oh fuck it.
So let’s say you were a kid in the early 80s obsessed with videogames. What better way to celebrate your new (addictive) hobby than to dress up as one of your favorite games? Behold, Asteroids! I’m going to destroy your ship, watch out! I bet he was the life of the party after he drank some of the spiked punch.
So gang, what were your worst costumes?
6 comments:
Great writeup!
The lameness of those costumes really irritates me, mostly because of the common feature that would also irritate me as a kid:
I want to dress up as a character from a movie, not wear a poster for the movie on my chest! What the fuck is wrong with you?????
More evidence that in the 70s, they just didn't care.
I'm amazed at all of the costume choices on the page with the The Deep costume. The Deepis a weird enough choice, but The Incredible Melting Man, really?
My mom made a lot of my costumes and for the most part they were pretty good. One standout example of "not working out," as JPX put it, was the robot costume I asked for. The mask was super uncomfortable and had to be abandoned, and my boxy torso kept me from seeing steps and I had to be carefully guided off of every porch.
Later at my request she made me brown cape w/ hood thing that I wore for several Halloweens in a row. I asked for giant pockets on the inside so I didn't have to carry a bag. I'd just get a creepy mask each year and throw the hood over it; it was the perfect horror/sci fi costume piece.
Man, what happened to that thing? I wish I still had it.
The mask on the Asteroids costume is simultaneously cracking me up and grossing me out. Looks like Jason got a horrible skin disease... on his mask.
I keep checking back for comments and every time I'm enraged anew by that E.T. costume.
"Okay, here's your mask, to make you look like E.T.... and here's your outfit, to remind people what E.T. looks like..." Gah!
I had a Paul Stanley costume that I would kill a man for today.
I think the most pathetic of pictures you posed has to be Hutch, the John Oates of Starsky and Hutch.
Two years ago Mags wanted to be Tinkerbell. Every costume had a picture of Tinkerbell on it and it infuriated me!! Just as Octo mentioned - what's the point of the costume if you're a walking advertisement for the thing you are dressing up as?!?
One costume that I do remember Mom making for me was a teddy-bear costume. It had a hood with ears and everything. (On a side note, damn, I wish I could sew!!) The costume was great because it kept me really warm.
I'm actually surprised you don't have that brown cape, Octo. I remember being rather envious of that, mostly because of the pockets.
Hilarious post, JPX.
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