Vintage Halloween Costumes

There were three major halloween costume makers: Ben Cooper, Halco and Collegeville.

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. In the Seventies, the Ben Cooper Co. was in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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.