Sunday, November 27, 2016

Halloween is never over...

It's awesome that Facebook has some cool groups you can follow that are posting Halloween stuff year round. You can stumble across some cool stuff, like this guy's web site where he posts some great pics.

If I ever do a 2nd volume of Halloween: The Greatest Holiday of All(believe me, I've been thinking about it), I might ask if I can include a pic of this poster of his:

You can see it and more here:
http://www.happyholidays.ca/2016/11/halloween-2016.html

And since this is mostly just a link to his site, I'm not going to post anything new other than this 1925 Hosiery ad that's pretty cool.


More to come, I promise!

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Another Halloween...Past

Man, it is such a bummer to see another one go by. Honestly, I think the last week of October I spend more time being angry at how fast it's all going than I do having fun.

So here's a couple of cool items from Halloweens past.

First up is this Texaco Sky Chief match box featuring a vintage witch and pumpkin. Not sure of the year.





Then a Fisher Bodies ad from 1925. Halloweens WAY past...


Finally we have two very cool Beistle die-cut figures with unfolding tissue-paper arms and legs. For some reason you always see these pictured together...

Perhaps they were sold together like these two, that are currently up on eBay here.





Monday, October 24, 2016

Pumpkin Trail 2016

Went out to what's become an annual tradition--the pumpkin trail. City does it every year--has kids carve pumpkins and lines a trail in the dark woods with them. This year I took my kid and wife for the first time.


 The first two are by my brother Mike. 



 This was my kid's favorite one. Shocking that he likes the Spider-man pumpkin.


Got a cool effect here by putting my light behind the pumpkin.

I'll have some more in the next post! Halloween approaches too fast!

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Ben Cooper Mask-a-Palooza

Been busy getting into the Halloween spirit--tonight's the pumpkin trail so should have some new pictures of that. It's pretty windy and cold, so who knows how it'll go?

So here's a bunch of awesome Ben Cooper masks to take you back to the good old days of those rubber-band mask bands catching in your hair, and the sweet smell of vinyl costume.

Here you go...from werewolves to martians to Colonel Sanders(why?) to robots to devils to Frankestein to Evil Knievel and more!














Sunday, October 16, 2016

Nightmare Costumes / Funny News Article About Halloween / Tylenol Scare / 1963 McDonald's Cup






First off, here's a place you can get some cool costumes, and they're running a big sale now. Not only on sale, but there's a coupon code you can use for additional percentages off.
http://www.buycostumes.com/c/themes/scary/nightmare-collection

Then we have this funny news article about "Chubby Americans", circa 2006:
Then we have this interesting article from 1983, the year after the Tylenol poisonings crippled the Halloween industry(and, as I detail in my book, brought about the end of the Ben Cooper costume company), this article came out about how the industry was trying to recuperate.
Finally we have this very cool 1963 McDonald's Halloween cup. Little before my time, but I definitely would have wanted one as a kid...









Friday, October 14, 2016

1940s Metal Candy Container / Vintage Pics / 1987 Midnight Hour TV Guide Ad


Here's a cool little metal candy container from the 1940's. Possibly US Metal Toy Mfg, which made a lot of the metal noisemakers and other metal items back then.



Then we have a couple of vintage pics--the first one is from 1952.


This little Dracula I'm not sure of but would guess the 1980's.

Finally we have this listing of TV shows that highlight the Halloween classic The Midnight Hour. This is from October of 1987. As Eddie Money said, "I Wanna Go Back..."