One of the shows I regularly watched in the 1990s was Family Matters. I remember watching the first Halloween themed episode aired in during the 1990-91 season and have rewatched it many time since. The main plot involves Laura and Urkel being held hostage during a bank robbery.
I'm now trying to remember if I dressed up then, because for a while I was out of the loop on Halloween in the 1990s. Hard to believe, given how much I get into it now. I also wonder where they could have gotten the costumes. I'm guessing at Kmart, Target or Walmart. I only remember one Spirit Halloween store open in the 1990s and it's said to have begun in the 1980s. Did Spirit once sell costumes in garment bags? I know I got at least one costume that decade at Kmart, and it did not come in a garment bag. And the Hunchback and Leatherface costumes for women? And Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane as a costume--that was a thing then? At least it wasn't this one:
Janet Jackson and a Ninja Turtle--definitely the early 1990s.
I cannot help wondering how this scenario would play out today. Only Rapunzel from Tangled seems to be available today. And there would mostly be "sexy-this-or-that" options. How would Rachel and Harriet have reacted to that, or even the Grandma? Eddie and Rodney might still be trying to terrorize the neighborhood with eggs, TP and soap. And they would likely buying costumes on Amazon or Spirit online.
Amazon and the Internet of course did not exist then. Which brings me to an episode of the little-remembered 90s sitcom Just the Ten of Us, a spinoff from the popular Growing Pains. This wasn't actually a Halloween episode, but one focused on a medieval-themed school dance. It aired during the previous TV season (1989-90), but also during the 1990 calendar year, supposedly taking place in February when the episode aired. If that was in fact the case, where could they possibly have been ordering costumes from in the off-season? See the episode below, with commentary:
Again, I'm trying to imagine the scenario would play out today. Today they would be ordering the outfits from Amazon, particularly in the off-season. And seeing them in the wrong sizes doesn't seem too far off to be hardening today. Makes me wonder why no current sitcom (As far as I know) has had an episode scenario like this, what with many people ordering things online. Has an order mix-up like this ever happened to any of you in real-life?
No comments:
Post a Comment