What Pumpkin Treat Are You?

You Are Pumpkin Pie

You are old fashioned and traditional. You prefer the old classics to newfangled traditions. You believe that some of the best things in life have been forgotten. Luckily, you still remember them. You are nostalgic for a simpler era, even possibly a time before you were born. You love old movies, music, and fashions. You find the past to be a rich and interesting time.

What Pumpkin Treat Are You?

The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Another trip to the Gilroy Salvation Army store today led me to this display. Actually, it's been there for several weeks, but I was never able to  take a picture of the Christmas tree in the Halloween disply until today.  Every time I tried before, I was unable to aim the camera at the display.  Pardon the blurriness, but that's the best I could do after trying today, and I've ot have to ry anymore.  It was very high above me and not easy to aim the camera at, another reason the photo is so blurry.  I would often miss the display and capture the stuff on the shelf below or (even on the floor!) by mistake. 

Anyway, in this display of mostly Halloween items is a spiral Christmas tree.   The spiral-shaped tree is covered in green felt.  Perhaps this little tree arrived around the same time as the Halloween items and was just thrown is a a holiday item?  Was this maybe just a "holiday" display?  The bouquet to the left of the Christmas tree looks like either a Thanksgiving decoration or a general fall or harvest decoration. 

Old School Costumes

I have some recollections of those old store-bought costumes consisting of a plastic mask (with a rubber bad to hold them on your head) and a plastic smock with a picture of the character and a logo related to the character, but I cannot for the life of me ever recall wearing one of these things! And they were around for so many years.  I guess my mom was good at making my costumes, of which I most remember a clown made from red polka dot fabric; Pebbles, with a dress made from a burlap sack adorned with cut-out drawings of dinosaurs on felt; and Miss Piggy with a sewn mask and pink dress.   The smock and mask costumes were made by Collegeville, Ben Cooper and the lesser-known Halco. 

This link  says there were Smurfs and Strawberry Shortcake costumes made this way. I was so into those characters back in the day that I can't believe I missed those costumes!  Then again, I probably never looked for these things. 

These things came in window boxes through which you could only see the mask.  The smock, as I recall, looked like  vinyl hospital gown.   This blogger recently found one of these masks, of Pee Wee Herman.  I remember a girl--yes, a girl!--at my high school going as Pee Wee Herman, on Halloween in 1986.  But she made it herself, I'm assuming, since it wasn't one of these mask- and smock combos.

Most were based on popular characters, which is true of the store-bought costumes of today. But some of these old-style were quite questionable and were based on characters or objects that did not seem like someone or something that a kid would insert into the phrase "I want to be ___ for Halloween."  Did anyone ever even have a Pulsar action figure, let alone want to wear the costume?  And just who were these characters pictured below?

Another interesting picture I found from the same photo collection from which I found the above photo:

 I believe that one of the masks pictured is Apricot from the old Strawberry Shortcake line from the 80s.  

View the worst such costumes according to this link.  

I have to bet that even back in the day no kid would want to go as Baretta.  I mean, were kids under 10 even allowed to watch that show?  Chuck Barris?  As Popular as "The Gong Show" was, I certainly cannot imagine a kid wanting to be Chuck Barris.  He doesn't sound like  a celebrity who would inspire a Halloween costume.   And I definitely agree about the "Father Murphy" one. I'm sure I never saw any of the kids at school wearing that one.   And did anyone ever want to be a video game or toy for Halloween?  Today you see costumes based on foods, beverage containers and inanitimate objects, but how common was this in the 80s? The most  I remember seeing one girl in high school as  a bunch of grapes and three fellow students in 1987 as California Cooler jugs--remember those? But I cannot remember any of my fellow fourth-graders as  a Rubik's Cube or the Asteroids game (those were popular around the time I was in fourth grade, 1980-81).  Somehow the idea of making a Rubik's Cube from a box occurred to someone more recently. This, I believe, is  a much better way to represent this toy, if someone should so desire.  That Rubik mask is just too silly, let alone the image on the smock.   

And here a some based on real people.  What? No Michael Jackson? Hard to believe, given his 70s and 80s popularity. On the other hand,  Farrah Fawcett  was represented.  Would be scary to see this today. 

 

Can you imagine this idea today, with SpongeBob or Hannah Montana?  And God help us, the Oxi Clean guy with the OxiClean logo on the smock? And just what random what-were-they-thinking type characters could they out on these things today? 

Watch this clip from Youtube of an old commercial from Woolworth/Woolco advertising these retro costumes.  And this one as well.

What Halloween Treat Are You?

Well, this time I agree with the results!

You Are Candy Corn

Your Halloween personality is whimsical, colorful, and creative. You see Halloween as a time to get your creative juices flowing. Each year, Halloween can't start soon enough for you. You tend to go all out for Halloween. You decorate like crazy and always dress up.

What Halloween Treat Are You?

What Should You Be For Halloween?

I hate say it yet again, but thes result are almost always nothing I would ever consider!!!

Your Halloween Costume Should Be A Girl Scout

Eerily, that fits somehow!

What Should You Be For Halloween?

Blogthings: Cheaper Than a Therapist

Scary or Silly?

Something I remembered related to Halloween from my college days:

We were decorating the lounge in our dorm for Halloween during my last year of college (1996-97, when I was just getting into the Internet).  We had a Pepsi vending machine in the lounge, and some guys took some orange construction paper and  wrote some silly names that they taped onto the buttons for each of the sodas on the machine.  It went like this:

• Pepsi--Pepto
• Diet Pepsi--Die Pepsi
• Slice*--Sliced
• Mug Root Beer--Bug Root Beer
• Iced Tea--Iced Blood
• Dr Pepper--Dr. Kevorkian
• Mountain Dew--Mountain Doom

(*this was back when Slice was available in the lemon-lime flavor)

Does this sound scary or just silly?  

Halloween Items in Thrift Stores

OK, so the countdown begins today, though I already have some early Halloween-related entries from July and August (see my archives widget).

After reading this blogpost from last year I was compelled to look for unusual items in 

the Halloween section of different thrift stores and to see just how depressing the selection was and what unusual items were thrown in with the Halloween stuff.  Read this entry of mine from August.  This store was one of the first I visited that Halloween items out as early as June.  Other thrift stores began having their out later, mostly toward the end of September.  

One I visit frequently is the Salvation Army Store in Gilroy, California. It's near where I work and I often go after I get off.  One day I saw this rather funny display of  one of those "Computer for Dummies" books placed on a table with Halloween stuff, which oddly included one or two of those purple felt-covered cowgirl hats from the Dollar Tree.  The selection in this area also seemed to mainly include those large plastic pumpkin-shaped treat holders for gathering candy, and those large plastic bowls for storing candy as you wait for kids to knock on the door and beg. I'm sure that placing the computer guidebook among the Halloween stuff was just done by one of those customers who don't like or don't try to put  things back where they found them, but it was rather funny to see!

 

Also at the same store was this display of party supplies and unused mini makeup kits.  Hardly, IMHO, seems like thrift store display; looks more like a messed-up display at a party store.  And some of the items in this display look like ones I used to see sold at Dollar Tree when I was employed there, including the witch makeup kits and a flashlight with a skull head on top. 

The Goodwill store in my hometown Hollister, California has a rather scary display with a larger monster in the store.  I wonder how many kids have been scared by this thing?  

A display of halloween lights and other decorations was strangely cluttered with fake hair extensions and some odd items with the "High School Musical" logo-I'm not sure what those were and why they were among the Halloween crap--just one of those odd things that gets thrown in with Halloween 

stuff.   Several racks of used costumes, used Target brand costumes (most with the Target tag still on and showing the original price--a $39.99 costume being sold for only $5.99 at Goodwill!) used clothing that could be passed off as a cheap costume were around the store.  On one rack  hung a French maid costume with the apron missing, not unusual since used costumes tend to be missing essential pieces, sometimes to the point that you don't know what the costume is supposed to be.  

And  I to laugh at the DKNY tank top placed on the rack alongside the French maid costume.  

And the blue and white dress (In the photo below) looks like it could be passed off as a cheap Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz" costume. And just what is that supposed costume to the right of the blue dress?  

A trip to the Gilroy Goodwill store led me to several headless mannequins displaying costumes put together from thrift-store clothing and accessories. These were in the front windows of the store.

 Inside the store were racks of used costumes (similar to those at the Hollister store) as well as more than one display of Target brand pet costumes.  Everything from bumblebees to pumpkins for pets was available.  

This is as many  thrift stores as I have been to as of yet.  I'm hoping to get to a few others before the month is over.   I want to get to the thrift store called Savers, the nearest of which to me is in Salinas, California.  Those of you in Canada and the Pacific Northwest know this chain as Value Village (also called Village des Valeurs in the French-speaking area of Canada).  They always have plenty of Halloween items both new and used.