Vintage Halloween Costumes

Bruce Zalkin remembers the exact moment; it was in 1968, just before Halloween. The four-year-old didn’t know what costume he wanted to wear for his first venture into the art of trick-or-treating. His mother had dragged him to a nearby Woolworth’s, and the boy scanned the aisles in search of his Halloween Holy Grail. Secret Squirrel? No. Tarzan? No. Quick Draw McGraw, Space Ghost, GI Joe? No, no, no! But then he saw it, the perfect costume, nestled in a box. It was a superhero, yes, but not just any superhero. This particular caped avenger happened to be the star of young Mr. Zalkin’s favorite cartoon, a cartoon he had already become an aficionado of at the tender age of four. And so, Mr. Zalkin spent his first Halloween dressed in the garb of a heroic mutt–a canine crime fighter with “speed of lightning” and “roar of thunder”…Underdog!

Yes, Underdog was the first costume Bruce Zalkin ever owned. Thirty years later, Mr. Zalkin proudly displays his Underdog costume, the same costume he wore three decades earlier. And joining it just so happens to be 1500 other costumes in what is certainly one of the largest Halloween costume collections in the world.

Bruce Zalkin is more than just an avid devotee of Halloween wardrobe; he loves each costume that he owns, getting extremely animated the more he talks about them. “Asteroids is an awesome costume,” he says, pointing to the outfit modeled after the popular video game of the 1980s. “What other costume can you find that has a mask that’s nothing more than a big rock?”

And what about the Rosey the Robot costume, the one that’s beside his Halloween version of Rocky the Flying Squirrel? “Rosey’s one of the first outfits I ever bought,” he states. “Look at her. Not only was she a relatively minor character on ‘The Jetsons’–their robot maid–but the costume’s quite hard to find. Really obscure. And obviously very cool to look at.”

Most of the costumes come from two companies, the royal masters of Halloween wear: Ben Cooper and Collegeville. Ben Cooper was the McDonalds’s of Halloween costumes, their name branding all the most popular outfits: “Star Wars”, Hanna-Barbera, Disney. Collegeville certainly came in a close second (call them the Burger King of collectible costumes), with such great characters as the Visible Man and the “Electric Company’s” Easy Reader, the latter being the only Halloween costume modeled after a character portrayed by Morgan Freeman. Halco, Bland Charnas, Super Star and Kusan also ventured into the Halloween business and their costumes were certainly more audacious, more bizarre than the ones created by Ben Cooper or Collegeville. For proof, check out the frightening transparent masks of Halco’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” outfits, the stone-faced U.S. Astronauts by Bland Charnas, the Village People’s Leatherman by Super Star and Kusan’s gender-bending David Cassidy costume.

Zalkin, the President of Marz Productions, Inc., had bought and sold toys and collectibles for years, but he never purchased any of them for himself. Still, he wanted to find something to collect, “something undervalued in the marketplace.” That’s when he remembered the excitement he felt when he discovered that Underdog costume at age four–and in an instant a proverbial light bulb switched on above his head. Halloween costumes! he thought. I’ll collect Halloween costumes! And soon he began gobbling them up like a Pac-Man in hot pursuit of a fugitive Blinky.

What ultimately makes Halloween costumes potentially more valuable than board games or even lunch boxes is that Halloween costumes were designed for a single night usage only. After October 31, they would be tossed away like candy wrappers. Rarely, if ever, would a child trick-or-treat wearing the same outfit he or she wore the year before. Board games, on the other hand, would sit in the family closets for years; most often, their fate landed in the hands of overzealous moms putting on a garage sale. As for lunch boxes, they were carried around all year long by kids who refused to eat food from brown paper sacks. The memory factor runs off the scale with lunch boxes, yes, but most are not that hard to find in at least good condition. That is not the case with vintage Halloween costumes. Venture to a toy show and you will certainly find some classic costume–mostly common ones like The Smurfs or Bugs Bunny–but there will not be an influx of them. They are far more challenging, and far more enjoyable, to hunt down. Snaring a good one–say, “Dr. Kildare” or Drak for “The Groovie Goolies”–becomes a sweet sensation.

Six months into his quest, Zalkin scored collectible gold. He bought tow of the rarest costumes he would ever own–The Joker and The Riddler Disguise Kits by Pressman from 1966. At the time, they were the most expensive outfits he purchased at $200.00 each. That became quite a profitable coup. These days, these two costumes are so rare that their current price is estimated anywhere between $1,500.00 and $2,000.00 apiece.

Roaming Mr. Zalkin’s mammoth collection is not only like walking through a history of Halloween in the last half of the 20th Century; it’s also like chopping an imaginary machete through the jungles of pop culture. In this exciting journey, an amazing array of characters appear–Little Orphan Annie in the 1940s, Winky Dink in the 1950s, the Jolly Green Giant in the 1960s, John Travolta in the 1970s, Pee Wee Herman in the 1980s, and that bizarre 1990s family for Duracell batteries, the Puttermans. Zalkin appropriately looks at Halloween costumes as being a road map through pop culture history.

Some of the finest costumes come from the 1940s and 1950s. Radio and the funny papers made their own stars, like the aforementioned Little Orphan Annie, but the advent of television in the 1950s opened the door for this new kind of culture to find a permanent nest in seemingly every living room. Pop culture became America’s main culture, and Halloween costumes reflect this.

Lucille Ball was the queen of television, and “I Love Lucy” quickly emerged as the Gold Standard of 1950s situation comedies. In fact, twice as many people watched the episode where Little Ricky was born than watched Eisenhower’s inauguration the following day. So it seems inevitable that a costume was modeled after the great redheaded celebrity. Other favorites of the day immortalized for Halloween apparel include Charlie Weaver, Red Skelton and Laurel & Hardy. Sadly, no costume was ever modeled after TV’s king, Milton Berle, but then again it could be safe to say that Berle’s signature laugh–getter-cross-dressing–was not considered vogue for the general public to emulate in the conservative Fifties.

TV also boosted the cartoon characters of the day, and Halloween costumes represent this, too. The network executives realized early on the children were home from schools on Saturdays, so they programmed Saturday morning strictly for the kiddies. Hanna-Barbera became a major player at the time with Huckleberry Hound, that blue canine who would unmercifully croon “My Darling Clementine” at the drop of a straw hat. MGM’s Tom and Jerry, Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Warner Brothers’ Tweetie Bird and even little known cartoon characters like Buzzy the Crow (from Paramount’s “Harvey Cartoons”) made numerous appearances on Halloween shelves in the 1950s. Puppets like Kukla and Ollie were enshrined in Halloween vestries, but their live-action compatriot, Fran, was not.

As grand as the 1950s were, the 1960s were really the decade where the most memorable costumes emerged. Morticia Addams, the black-clad matriarch of the Addams Family abode, resembles a death-robbed Vampira. There’s Coil Man from “The Impossibles”, the genie Shazzan (a costume that actually lights up), Bird Man and Bingo from “The Banana Splits”. There are costumes modeled after toys—Barbie, GI Joe, Captain Action and even Slinky. TV shows spawned a great number of classic costumes–Barnabas Collins from “Dark Shadows”, a bearded Goliath from “Land of the Giants” and a dolphin mask for “Flipper”. There’s a Soupy Sales costume topped with black peach-fuzz for the children’s enjoyment. Or how about the Fab Four? Yes, all four Beatles–John, Paul, George and Ringo–were re-created for trick-or-treating, complete with amazing moptops and matching pinstriped suits. If the Beatles weren’t your pop culture group of choice, then how about the Monkees? Strangely enough, the Monkees costumes came in two varieties–pants for the boys, mini-dress for the girls. That’s right, there’s a Micky Dolenz costume that comes with its very own skirt!

The 1960s started out seemingly quiet. John F. Kennedy was elected President, and Motown just began its soulful reign on the pop charts. A Kennedy costume, as well as one of First Lady Jackie, was released during this time period, Camelot’s heyday. But everything abruptly, and tragically, changed with Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. The 1960s-a decade of turbulence and change–would become the most horrifying, most exciting, and perhaps most important decade of the 20th Century.

The Vietnam War split the country, and the hippies pushed their peace-love-and-flowers message throughout the streets of America. Interestingly, Halloween costumes depicted this great divide. A Green Beret costume was perfect for the Hawks, while groovy Hippie costume, with psychedelic glasses and daises in the hair, was for children who wanted to tune in, turn on and understand all the lyrics to “White Rabbit”. Halloween-induced psychedelia hit its pinnacle with the “Yellow Submarine” Blue Meanie costume-a surrealistic smorgasbord splashed with vibrant colors; it looks like a Peter Max painting sprung to life. And Sid and Marty Kroft’s H.R. Pufnstuf, a multi-colored dragon that’s an obvious relic from the Age of Stoning, makes for what might be the finest costume of all, aesthetically speaking.

Halloween costumes grew increasingly slicker in the 1970s. There are the typical Hanna-Barbera outfits–Josie and the Pussy Cats, Hong Kong Phooey and Scooby Doo. You’ll also find such 1970s notables as the Bionic Woman, Bruce the Shark from “Jaws”, Mr. Kotter, Chuck Barris from “The Gong Show”, various monkey-faced citizens from “The Planet of the Apes”, a “Saturday Night Live” Conehead and even members of the rock band Kiss (with real hair). The 1980s carried on this tradition of slick character outfits, with E. T., the Smurfs, He-Man, Strawberry Shortcake and the cute equestrians from “My Little Pony” as representatives.

The 1990s, Halloween costumes no longer came in their individual boxes with a window of protective cellophane. They were simply hung from a coat hanger or stuffed in a sealed plastic bag. And that’s precisely where Mr. Zalkin stops his collection. “I collect only costumes that come in a box,” Mr. Zalkin states. “Which means I collect costumes up to the early 1990s. There’s got to be a cut-off point for collecting, and that happens to be mine.”

Halloween costume accumulation hasn’t really entered the mainstream yet, though costumes are being mentioned in various periodicals about specific collections–from TV memorabilia to the Smurfs to the Beatles. But costumes in and of themselves have not entered the markets of mass collecting that other vintage wares, like lunch boxes, have. But Mr. Zalkin believes that will change. “As soon as people see how cool vintage costumes are, ” he states, “they will find the same joy in this that I have.”