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10/17/2006: My Best Halloween Costume Ever.

It’s raining. I stayed home from work today, “sick,” and aside from catching up on zzzz, did some mindless web browsing that somehow landed me on Amazon. After lamenting the end of Amazon’s long partnership with Toys ‘R’ Us, I found myself checking my Amazon account information, which makes little sense since I haven’t ordered anything from there in months. Interestingly enough, they’ve got this section that lets you review every order you’ve ever placed with them, and I found myself trying to connect the dots of my itemized orders from as far back as early 2000. Lots of fun. I found all of these Christmas presents purchased for nieces and nephews, not to mention several attempts on my behalf to rape the system and cash in on Amazon’s clearance sales. Twenty Emperor Palpatine figures, scored for 99 cents each! A dozen Furby Babies…5 bucks each!

There were also remnants of obsessions (mostly) past. I don’t know what intentions I had for Charmander earrings, nor do I remember ever receiving them, but there they were, all pewter and now forever “out of stock.” Give it a shot if you’ve spent the better part of the Internet age ordering from Amazon; this section is a nice trip down Remembering Things Street.

Tonight’s Halloween Countdown entry details the story of my greatest Halloween costume. It’s a tale I’ve mentioned in small bits during previous articles, but this is the whole disjointed shebang.

That article seems very conducive to a blog survey about your best Halloween costume, but I think we’ve done that like sixty times already. So just use the comments space to talk about your past Halloween costume stories in general. Best, worst, mild, whatever.

My best halloween costume was homemade (obviously). I took an old TV box, wrapped it in christmas wrapping paper, and stuck a smaller box lid with a bow on it atop my head. The larger box I adorned with a tag that said “From: God To: Women”, and this I wore over my torso with the aid of some really nifty homemade suspenders. Top it all off with a Hawaiian shirt and I was, (dum dum DUM) God’s gift to women. I thought for sure I’d win the Halloween costume at work.

I lost to a guy who bought a $30 generic pirate costume from Halloween USA. Keep in mind this was pre-Pirates of the Carribean. Where’s the justice?

My WORST halloween costume was when I was in first grade (?). I had a serious hardon for the Beetlejuice franchise for some reason, and strangely enough we could not find a Beetlejuice costume in any department store/Seventh Heaven we ventured in. So, fed up with my constant whining, my dear sweet parents bought a black and white striped “prisoners outfit” and tossed away the plastic ankle ball. Then, because they were cheap bastards with no attention to detail, they purchased me a black afro wig to go with the ensemble. After hearing me bitch that Beetlejuice’s hair was “yellow” not “black”, we settled on spraying the afro wig with yellow temporary hair coloring. The result: I looked like a gender confused clown who just happened to cross over to the wrong side of the law. Did I care? Hell no. I was Beetlejuice, dammit!

I think every kid of the 80s and early 90s is contractually obligated to have a plastic-bag and half-mask costume. Mine was Oscar the Grouch.

My best Halloween costume ever was/is some army surplus gear, helmet, gloves etc. So I’m a soldier. Add a flesh-coloured alien mask and I’m a soldier from Roswell.

My greatest costume as a kid was as the Headless Man. Wearing a skullcap with nailpolish for blood, I had one of my father’s shirts buttons with the collar around the top of my head. One of the shirt’s arms was stuffed with newspaper, and under the arm was a mask with a balloon in it, IE my head. I used my non-sleeved arm to help carry things and such by sticking it through a button hole in the front. I won a costume contest with it.

Man, I should go scan my old Halloween pictures. My folks took one of me every year.

I, too, miss the days when Toys ‘R’ Us had like 6-8 solid aisles of action figures and castles/caves to house those action figures. Those things were great for the imagination.

Hard to say what my best Halloween costume was, because I don’t really like to count ones that just involved a store-bought mask. One of the weirdest ones was my Junior year of high school. I had a plastic rabbit mask from the local 5&10, torn up santa pants, and a blood soaked wife beater. It was pretty frightening, and if I hadn’t been with my gf at the time I probably wouldn’t have gotten any candy. Or been arrested or something, I dunno.

Hey has anyone heard the new Manson cover of “This is Halloween?” I know it sounds sketchy, but it’s actually really good. Plus it’ll be a mini-pump for NMBC 3D this upcoming weekend. Click my name and it should dl in a zip.

I never had any cool costumes, because my mother never wanted to drop any money on anything fancy. This kind of ruined Halloween itself for me, and I stopped dressing up for Halloween by the age of ten. I still love the season, but the 31st does nothing for me.

Viva la Ralph! My plastic half-bag, half-mask costume was Swamp Thing. Yes, I actually WANTED to be Swamp Thing. Not even Swamp Thing wants to be Swamp Thing. …I was a weird kid.

When I was 5 or 6 and my sister was 2ish, my mom made us costumes of Belle from Beauty and the Beast (it came out that year, I think). They were the same thing, in different sizes, meant to be her golden dress. It was pretty awesome. Mine had pink roses, and hers had purple, because something had to be different.

Sis refused to take hers off for ages, until it basically fell apart. As soon as she was big enough for it, she did the same to mine. She did that with lots of clothes.

Matt!! My best bud in 2nd or 3rd grade wore that exact costume. Except he actually got the Alf Mask. Man that was a sweet costume. I remember by the end of the night, he was soaked though - sucka was hot as an oven! Sometimes Oklahoma fall is warm, and it was a lil toasty that year.

My best and worst Halloween costume are one and the same. I made myself a Princess Leia slave bikini last year (you can see a picture of it by clicking my name). Unfortunately, I am not a very gifted craftsman, and the thing promptly fell apart within an hour of putting it on. Pretty much every single strap snapped, and even things that were double glued/knotted/bonded by cosmic forces managed to break.
Quite a disapointment after the hours I’d spent on it. And I ended up having to throw together another costume, Rogue in X-Men: Evolution attire.

I think I’ve exhausted my Halloween costume stories in a recent post. Last year I sewed something that the pattern called “Josephine,” apparently Josephine Bonaparte, because that’s what you do when you get old.

And Denise is right, there is no other word to describe this article than “sweet.” Y’old softie.

Mara, my kid sister did that to her dress-up clothes when she was little, too. She had an orange, white, and purple dress-up dress that came from my sister’s best friend she used to LIVE in.

We never had plastic costumes. My mother was and is an excellent seamstress, so we always had imaginative, or at least well-made, Halloween get-ups. When we were butterflies, we had thick cardboard, hand-painted wings, and floral “pixie” skirt. When we were brides, we wore a simple white skirt with one of Mom’s real Victorian blouses and a hand-made veil. Little Red Riding Hood got to borrow Mom’s gorgeous red hand-knit cape (I hope she still has that…). Pirates wore their own flowing white or yellow shirts, tight jeans or 80s stirrups, boots borrowed from Mom, a “sword” made of cardboard covered in aluminum, and Grandma’s chunky jewelry. I loved my navy blue cordory vest from my cowgirl costume so much, I still have it to this day.

Matt, mine and my little brother’s elementary schools both had short Halloween “parades.” Ours made slightly more sense, since the school’s on one of Cape May’s main streets and would attract tourists in town for the cool weather along with parents. My brother’s was less-well attended; his school was on a highway just off the bridge between West Cape May and North Cape May, more-or-less in the middle of nowhere.

My mom was an awesome seamstress, too, and my siblings and I always had kickass costumes. We still have most of them, too. I think my favorite was when my sister and I went as Rainbow Brite and Twink… Ah, here we go, my sister has it in her Flikr account.

FYI, to those of you who have Music Choice channels (I think only those with digital cable get them), the ‘Sounds of the Seasons” channel is now playing Halloween music for 24 hours a day until November first, when they then switch over to Christmas music (YES!).

Of course, I think pretty much anyone will agree that Halloween music has nothing on Christmas songs, but it’s still neat to flip on the TV at 2 AM and hear the likes of “Monster Mash” and the theme from “Halloween”.

My parents hated Halloween, so they had the philosophy that, if you didn’t have it lying around the house, you didn’t need to be dressing up. My worst costume was the year I went as the Pink Panther (first grade, I think) and it basically consisted of a pink sweatsuit and a tail made from a black sock pinned to my butt. I looked like a chunky Pink Panther with a rotting tail. It was embarrassing, to say the least. And I had to sit in school all day looking like that. I faked sick to go home early.

My babysitter and her teenaged daughter were always really excited about dressing me up, though, so one year I got to be a black cat (leotard, tights and an ear/tail/bowtie set with drawn-on whiskers and pink nose), another year a jazz dancer (a different black leotard, tights, dance shoes and a really cool, cheap sparkly bowler hat), and a hobo (old flannel shirt, baggy, torn up and patched jeans, old too-big-for-me shoes and a bandana with dirt make-up all over my face). The hobo is probably my least favorite of those, but I was so little at the time I didn’t know what I was. My dad took a picture of me holding a glowstick in that costume and won $500 in a photography contest! I wish I would have know this was going to be the topic, I would have scanned that picture. :

Hmm… I remember winning a few school Halloween contests way back when. I’m sure the certificates are still in the bin of all my crazy old school stuff in the garage amongst some glitter and macaroni art. I don’t think it was so much that my costumes were amazing… I was typically little fairy princesses and stuff… as much as it was that I was just an ungodly adorable little girl.

If I remember correctly, my first Halloween costume was the She-Ra mask and plastic smock.

Oh! She-Ra was the first costume I ever remember wearing! Again, blue leotard, white tights, red bath towel, red cowboy boots. Yeah, my parents and their bad creativity.

My best costume was when I went as a horror movie. I was about eleven. I painted my face in zombie make-up and took a cardboard box cut a hole in it and stuck it over my head. I also had old TV rabbit ears and channel knobs attached to it. I got a lot of compliments for that one. The only drawback was, that I had limited vision, and I kept getting the antennas stuck in people’s porch displays when I went trick-or-treating. Nothing really topped that one until I went as Joan of Arc when I was like twenty. I made my own armor out of cardboard.

I remember once my dad used dark and light green paint and a cardboard pizza box to fashion me a radical turtle shell for a Raphel costume.

I’ve watched the first three seasons of Alf on DVD in the last couple months, and wow, that show was actually damn enjoyable, or at least addicting. It kind of makes you want your own punchline quibbing, food eating, lazy alien.

It wasn’t mine (I never was a big fan of dressing up for haloween) but right after the Anthrax attacks on the USA happened, someone came to our company’s haloween party dressed up as an envelope. He would blow handfuls of powdered sugar on people.

figured this would be the best place to ask this question. Why was there never The Last Starfighter 2? I researched this before asking such a question only to be horrified to find insead of a well deserved sequal they made an off broadway musical. No shit. I kind of feel like an elephant who had his leg cut off only to find out they made it into a waste basket. Matt or anyone else, could you help me out?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter_%28the_musical%29

Even though I’ve always loved Halloween, I didn’t really dress up a whole lot. I did the homemade black cat, witch, and stuff, but I never really got to go “all out” for a costume when I was little.

I do remember getting my mom to make me a pirate chick outfit once in 9th or 10th grade, though. A friend of mine - her parents got dibs on the rec hall at their housing development, and she had a Halloween party. I loved my costume - red with white polka dotted skirt, black satin sash with fringe, a white “puffy” off the shoulder shirt, black fishnets and heels. I topped it off with big gold hoop earrings and a little more makeup than usual.

I went with another friend of mine, and we had our doubts that any of the guys that we wanted to show up, would — but lo and behold, they did. Lots of flirting, dancing, and spin the bottle were played. One guy was fascinated by my legs and couldn’t stop feeling them, had my first french kiss, and danced with the guy I had the biggest crush on, at the time. *sigh* Sad… I got more action back then, than I get now.

That’s a cool story and I’m surprised it took until now, your fourth or fifth Halloween marathon on this site, for you to type it up. If I had to choose between reviewing a stale piece of candy and writing up a tale such as that, well, there’d be no contest….

This year, find another copy of the mask (shouldn’t be hard, you’re Matt), get the woman to resew the body suit, cover it in talcum and go as Ralph’s ghost. His memory must be honored. “No problem! Ha!”

My best halloween costumer had have in the 1st or 2nd grade when i went as Mario (complete with tail and ears). I had the overals, hat, painted on mustache, everything. My little borther even went as Luigi. It was infact quite possibly the best costume ever. The only annoying part was that the tail made sitting kind of difficult.

Nice to see Ralph get his due after hearing so much about him. All of the old articles featured at the bottom are especially good too.
I’ve mentioned all my costumes in old threads…Goodwill prom dress + Karo syrup = Carrie was a favorite. I have to find something for the office party (we’re doing it the Friday before :/) that strikes that perfect balance of dressed up enough to be in costume but not so much that it looks like you’re trying too hard, which is difficult if not impossible.

My plastic half-bag, half-mask I had in elementary school was Robocop. Also, for some reason I could almost swear that I had a Snow White one too, but that doesnt make any sense. Last year’s Scorpion to my roommate’s Sub Zero was pretty cool too. This year I think I’m going with Ernest P. Worrell, so when kids come to trick or treat, they can have no idea who I am supposed to be.

Sadly when I was a little kid I always wore dimestore affairs. I was some weird stuff though, like the green M&M.

Great article. Definitely brought back memories of what it was like to be a kid as anything else on this site… very poignant. And I mean that. Hopefully I spelled it right as well.

Think I’ve only ever once dressed up for Halloween. Pathetic as it was, I went in a Scream mask like everyone else that year. Nearly suffocated in it, too. But! But! It wasn’t just the mask, no. I’d managed to get hold of a cape, a big rubber axe, annoying black claws, and two tubes of fake blood, one of which I still have to this day. So that was both my best and worst attempt.

However, there was another time years earlier, extraordinarily similar to Matt’s.. It was a generic ‘fancy dress’ deal, since we don’t really celebrate Halloween here. Rather innovatively, I grabbed a hat and a big ball of cotton wool and called myself a ‘train-driving hare’. Got to parade on stage and all. Only I screwed up and went back on stage after everyone else had climbed down, causing me lifelong embarassment, deep mental scarring and a fear of combining cotton wool with stages that lasts to this day.

I loved old school TRU, mostly because of the toys, but also because I shared the same name as it’s spokes person. I was in my local TRU a few weeks ago and I noticed they were rearranging the store. It look like they were going back to the old school aisle. I was excited.

My favorite costume would have to be…I think beetlejuice. My dad loved halloween and he always went all out getting us costumed upped.

Most of my costumes in elementary were super duper last minute. I was usually a ghost in a flowered sheet, or a hobo, or a “punk rocker”. When I was in sixth grade, my last year of trick-or-treating, me and my friends got to go out alone. We called our costume “weirdos”. Mostly we just made our hair all crazy and sprayed it with the colored hair spray. Then we wore bright obnoxious clothes and heavy make-up. Not the coolest costume ever, but we thought we were so mature around all the littler kids.

WARNING: SHAMELESS PLUG! Please visit my myspace profile and hear some creepy tunes!

My fav costume was being a bat. Homemade costume, my mom is a great seamstress. Added cat ears for that “Fruit bat look”. It was so neat i wore it two years in a row. I won a prize - a Scrabble game and a 25 dollar gift certificate for being a vampiress one year. Sure its a typical costume but my hairdresser did my hair/makeup/nails and my mother let me borrow her black velvet cape so I was dressed to impress.

My plastic costume? Moosel from the Wuzzles. I LOVED the wuzzles and demanded to be a wuzzle instead of wearing the bunny costume my mum made. I suck. The costume sucked. The mask sucked. but I was Moosel. why the hell anyone would wanna be a moose/fish is beyond me.

Thanks again for clearing up another mystery of my youth. Trips to Toys R Us were very rare when I was a kid. Being the oldest of four kids, I have the feeling that Mom would rather have had fully reenacted Civil War battles in our living room than take us out in public, especially to a toy store. I had to settle for the action figure aisle at K-Mart….
The few times that I got to Toys R Us, though, I remember the overwhelming sense of awe, the sights, the smells, the endless rows upon rows of toys. They had blue wire bins to hold all the toys because they wouldn’t fit on the shelves that extended from the floor to the ceiling (or at least it seemed to someone under 4 ft tall). And welcoming you to this glorious place were cartoon characters in the form of giraffes making it seem as though you had stepped into a saturday morning cartoon.
It was my nirvana.
After my largely toy free teen years, I went back to Toys R Us. Now I had my own money and countless hours to spend in what I remembered to be an inexhaustable toy experience.
Unfortunately, the sense of magic was gone. Like you said, between the electronic junk, the educational toys, and the little tiny shelves (none of which went above my head), the magic was not there.
I was convinced that I had embellished my childhood memories and that my adult brain could no longer equate Toys R Us to nirvana. Had I made it all up? Was I now too “mature” to enjoy it?
Thankfully, the answer is no. You have corroberated my memories that Toys R Us used to be way cooler!

my best costume, though not really my favorite, would be from seventh grade (circa 1996) when i went as a baked potato. i wore a gray sweatsuit, then wrapped myself in aluminum foil. i had a piece of cardboard on my front that had cotton stuffing and little pieces of green paper on it(sour cream and chives) and a sign on my back that said “idaho baked”….sweet jesus, i was an odd child.

i still dress up every year, but now my costumes usually consist of a homemade super short poofy skirt and some kind of funky t-shirt, like a teen witch who worked at a video store or a kinda-of-skanky pirate. i think this year i’m going to be the tooth fairy…which basically means a short pink skirt, a t-shirt with a picture of a tooth on it, some wings and a tooth wand…

My best costume as a kid would have to be the Queen Of Hearts in 7th grade. It was this big foofy dress from Spencer’s, with gaudy heart print fabric and puff sleeves. I wanted to wear it after Halloween, but I had no use for it.

Now, my best costume as an adult…well, it’s a toss up. In 2002, my then-boyfriend and I were a deviant Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Naughty Wolf. He worked at a porn store at the time, so it was his idea. I put Jack Daniels and condoms in my basket, and led him around downtown on a leash while whacking him with a mini-riding crop. We got SO many reactions from the crowd. Some Japanese tourists actually took video of us.

If you click on my username, you can see my second-best costume ever: Girl Scout on a really bad trail hike!

I think my first smock-type costume was a smurf, and not like Smurfette, just the generic smurf. My mom was never fond of those as they tended to rip too easily and the masks were uncomfortable.

I can’t think of a single year, between the ages of one and twenty-two where I didn’t get dressed up and go trick-or-treating (or beer-or-treating when I was in college). I don’t seem to recall a single really great costume though. My mom wasn’t real big on sewing, and after the age of twelve she really didn’t have much to say about our costume choices. I dressed up as a nun a bunch of times, as I bought the really good nun suit with the full habit, figuring it was something I’d get a lot of use out of. I dunno, there was maybe the year I was Pat Bennetar that was pretty cool — spiked out black wig, long black shirt with a red V-belt, short shorts over black leggings and black Adidas sambas. And Screw Me Dead Red lipstick and tons of eye make-up.

Great story. The boyscout stuff really hit home for me–that was my boyscout experience in a nutshell. It was fun until they made me do stuff, and then I dropped out.

My favorite costume as a kid was my Karate Kid costume. My crafty mom made me the black and white head band, and also sewed me some kind of flimsy white dojo outfit. I felt like I could totally kick any other first grader’s butt.

My favorite “adult” costume is my King Hippo one. Lazily thrown together(in my younger, more ambitious days, I would have shaved my head or at least bought a skull cap), but it was a lot of fun. The shorts were really loose in the waist, so as to easily fall down when somebody punches me in the stomach.

Though my Donatello get-up in Halloween of 1990 was pretty amazing my best costume by far was my Pepsi can ensemble for Halloween of 91′. This was no thrown together tin-foil piece of shite either but a insanely well constructed vision of artistic greatnessâ€”we used a professional photographic enlarger to detail the graphics on the corrugated cardboard/posterboard frame (thanks Dad!).

This was also the year of the legendary “Halloween Blizzard” (if you are from the Twin Cities you know of what I speak). The day started normal enough but by 6PM it was 28 degrees out with 2 ft drifts of snow everywhere! No crap!

Needless to say we had to put a giant plastic baggie over my costume to keep the Pepsi graphics from running. The most exhilirating part of the evening was when I slipped and rolled down a giant hill on someone’s front lawnâ€”just like Chief Wiggum in that Duff suit!

By the end of the night the crew I was with gave up the “Trick or Treat!” phrase in favor of “Merry Christmas!”. We thought we were so damn funny for that.

I had this fascination for a vampire mask when i was in sixth grade. We had already played the shit out of “Nightmare”, and i remember ALWAYS being Elizabeth Bathory. When “Atmosphere” came out, and Elizabeth Bathory ended up being the most inhuman and goddamned COOL looking one, I was even more fascinated with my initial decision to pick a girl in a game.

The mask was this very demonic-looking vampire thing. With a huge gaping maw of teeth, little awful red eyes, barely a nose, and huge ears. And it was bald. I would have vivid fantasies of a full latex body suit that made all of me have similar deathly, slimy skin, and little useless arm-wings. How I would jump out of trees and scare the SHIT out of my friends. I would look up into the moon and bask in it.

Anyhow, I settled on some shitty skull mask. I wore a jester’s cap (bought from Great Escape, baby), and an old grim-reaper cloak, and I was “The Jester of Hell”. Way lamer than a monstrous demonic vampire get-up that would make me more inhuman than that girl in that R.L. Stine book, but I got hosed down with shaving cream and windex all night anyway.

If it wasn’t for Pizza Kruger, I had a idea for a quick costume that consisted of a Reaper costume, the second Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Disk thing (The one with the arcane symbols on it), a creepy mask, and a few dozen Ace of Spades playing cards. But Freddy wouldn’t be denied this year.

michael, I LOVED “Atmosphere: The Harbingers!” I was always Gevaudin, the Werewolf because I’m pretty much obsessed with werewolves. I finally found one on eBay for $20 and I try to trick my friends into playing it with me all the time. Have you played the new one that came out, like, three years ago??

My favorite semi-homemade costume was when I went as the Riddler from Batman Forever. My parents bought the hat, staff, and spraypainted my hair orange. We then took some green sweatpants and shirt and put question marks all over them using black duct tape.

Worst was Freddy Krugger. We got some fake skin and blood that kept falling off. We then took old workout gloves and made knives using cardboard. We had an old fedora and I wored a red sweater with blue sweatpants. I looked more like someone with a really bad sunburn then Freddy.

Other then those, we usually just bought my costumes. I’ve been Dracula, Jason, a California Raison, and some cartoon bear( plastic mask and smock) from the Getalong Gang I believe. I don’t even remember watching that show.

BEST costume = a Beetlejuice costume my mom made that I wore for, like, 3 consecutive Halloweens…

Worst costume…a self made Papa Shango/dead voodoo guy made from old sweat pants and tore up rags. I at least had a cool staff with a rubber skull on it!

My wife and I love dressing up at Halloween. The most original idea we’ve been was a Mom and Fetus (umbilically attached), it got a lot of reaction.

My best Halloween costume was the big-assed Ghostbusters outfit I made back when I was a sophomore in high school. The proton pack I wore lit up and everything. I had two friends come with me, one made a slightly less-impressive proton pack, and the third guy wore a slime blower (which looked good but nobody knew what it was). We garnered much the same reaction from people that night that you got as Ralph, Matt, except it was from grown-ups, which kind of surprised me.

I don’t think it was my best costume, but my favorite was always the grim reaper. The last year I went trick-or-treating I had a growth spurt, so I was a tall lanky and boney guy. It fit the costume well. I never actually got a scythe to carry though.

The worst one was my Frankensteins Monster costume, it was actually a cool costume, but I looked nothing like Frankie. I looked like a zombie that hadn’t been dead very long. I remember being disappointed because I had originally wanted to go as Herman Munster.

Best costume? A tube of CREST toothpaste- it was a rental though, so I don’t feel it really counts- I didn’t make it or anything.

Once I went as a bunch of grapes- wore brown clothing and taped purple balloons all over myself- what a pain in the ass that costume was!

I haven’t been anything good in years, really. Last year I ran out of time and had NOTHING to wear, so I wore my martial arts uniform from Korea (I took Hapkido) along with a funky purple witch hat.

My 2 girlfriends and I dressed as angels once, using white sheets and wings, then we dressed a guy as a pimp and called him ‘Charlie’…

Gadget Hey the bottom left of the princess liea pic. You got busted! Hehe you have a ton of sex toys right there. Awesome pic though. The rainbow brite pic is awesome too in a different way.

My grandma probably sewed her heart out on my aunt’s and uncle’s costumes because we had one nicely done tweety bird costume and that was pretty much it. It came with a huge head and it was packed with stryofome peanuts that I promptly took that off while wearing it. My elementary school had a halloween carnival where you played games for tickets inside of the various classrooms and then redeemed them in the cafeteria. I went for several years it was fun. You were supposed to donate a bag of candy (plus the price of admission, and the candy was supposed to be given to a teacher a week or two before) and at the door you got an orange trick or treat bag filled with candy. It was basically if you planned on coming then you brought a bag unless you were really poor lol. I remember I saw a simpsons keychain and I HAD to have it, I went back with enough tickets and it was gone, my sister got one for her keychain collection so I begged it off of her. There was this cakewalk where you walked around a masking tape cobweb circle until the music stops and the winner got one of those round store bought cakes. I think you could only do that a couple of times and it was expensive. They didn’t want the same person getting two cakes. They were halloween themed but also german chocolate and others. The teachers hosted the games like carnies it was actually fun. In my tweety bird outfit (which I hated wearing every year because it lacked creativity, so one year i wore sneakers with the outfit and called myself “rockin’ robin” lol I think i was the only one that “got it”

I also had a football player outfit, I had a jersey t-shirt (I believe for the giants, it was blue and orange) that I stuffed the shoulders with another shirt that I kept on pushing under the shirt, I was hoping people didn’t see it. I remember this god awful hick that was like “look maw! A football player!!” and “maw” was not as amused. Ha I think he was giving out fun sized butterfingers. I wore some navy blue mascara underneath my eyes, two lines, like football players, well kinda. I was probably 10, and my older sister was walking me around. a couple of people felt sorry for her and gave her a piece too (she would stand on the end of the walkway) I said “well she’s not trick or treating! She’s just walking me!” i felt it was unfair (which my opinions will change after I have to walk kiddies around) but they felt sorry for her like she was the starving kitty on the doorstep.

I also went as bartman, weird al yankovic, and probably others that I don’t remember. My grandma made the purple mask, we couldn’t think of a way to have spiky hair, we thought of cardboard but that wasn’t right. So I just had it over my normal hair. I took the mask off quickly because I was quickly being made fun of, this was in 7th grade I think. I was always being made fun of. I had some orangish yellow sweatpants, with blue shorts over that, and a light blue t-shirt. Also some bart like shoecovers. I fuckin loved the simpsons and I still do. Weird al I had some keds type of shoes that I made a checker grid on with a marker, I took an old burnette curly wig, I borrowed a hawaiian shirt, and I wore some black tightish jeans. A stoner kid (that rarely showed up to school let alone learn anything) ripped off my hair, I quickly took it back and put it back on. I got tons of “who are you supposed to be?” well if you havta ask you don’t know! I guess that is quite common with weird al costumes. This was 9th grade, a little too old to dress up and go to school. I went as bartman and weird al with friends. Wait I think I just went as a skateboarder (t-shirt, with long sleeved plaid designed shirt with hood, baggy pants, sneakers, bam skater) because I didn’t want people bothering me that much about it. I got braces so I had to give away a lot of my candy, but I traded some too. Tootsie rolls, gum, gummy candies, etc. I could eat milky way, peanut butter cups, anything not too gummy/chewy.

I feel bad because my cousin is 13 and he hasn’t gone trick or treating ever and I wanted to take him, hopefully he’ll go with friends and so I don’t have to make it my personal responsiblity to. Hopefully he feels he isn’t too old!! augh! I am just hoping my little buddy can go this year so he won’t be bitter like us and say he never went and boo hoo.

Check out this awesome Halloween costume: I was Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak (I am a large dude, so that’s what made it awesome)! And my girlfriend at the time was Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo.

It was the year 2000. While watching The Golden Girls, as I often do, it dawned upon me how great that costume choice would be. I scored a blonde wig that is similar enough to one of Bea Arthur’s hundreds of hair styles, and I spraypainted it grey. It took many trips to thrift stores in order to find sassy old lady clothes and accessories that would be right up Bea’s alley (and fit me). Among the clothing was a big black and white sweater with tassles, a white blouse with large collar for underneath, weird black pants, a huge beige purse, a huge pearl necklace, and huge dangly earrings. Of course, I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater/blouse combo to just below the elbows, just like Bea. My makeup was done quite nicely and I can do a believable Bea Arthur voice if I talk deep enough. I was a 6′4″ burly old lady from 1986, just like Bea Arthur!

I wore this costume to a large collegian Halloween party with my former girlfriend as a convincing Sophia Petrillo. Then, on Halloween Day, I wore this costume to work. One customer actually kind of guessed who I was.

And what do I have in store for this year? None other than The Shockmaster. I’ve got my Storm Trooper helmet all covered with glitter, a black trenchcoat thing with sleeves cut off, and stonewashed jeans, all ready to go (no cowboy boots, though…I can’t find those). I will be falling through walls, losing my helmet, and challenging people to fights all night! Ha ha ha ha ha.

holy shit that’s fuckin long, well I hope that my post is amusing to everybody.

Bea Arthur! HA! I love the show Maude, I would love for them to show it on Tv land (they used to) The Golden girls is one of my guilty pleasures (I am embarrassed to watch it in front of some people) that is such a funny show!

kingklash I didn’t have one, I guess I could of made one out of cardboard or got one at goodwill. But that would of been way too heavy. I am against acessories with halloween costumes, you don’t want to lug it around all night.

I wanna dress up as Weird Al, but I don’t have long enough hair, and finding a wig like his current do is a total bitch to find.

And I, too loved old school Toys R Us. Back when they started changing over, there were 2 really close to my house. One changed over about a full year or so before the other one did, so I was able to compare the two. I loved the old one better. Nothing like getting your little slip for a video game and then going to that hole in the wall next to the registers for the Video Game Troll to get the game for you and give it to you like you were going to the bank. I think it’s a weird coincidence that the video game section was still where the holes in the walls were.

And I was in Target again today, and guess what I saw? THE 2006 JONES SODA HOLDAY PACK!! There’s 2 of em again this year and they’re both at target!

The regular one contains Turkey & Gravy again, but also adds Sweet Potatoes, Peach Cobbler, Pea, and Antacid?! (complete with sippy cup) :O

The 2nd one though seems more normal, as it’s known as the “Dessert Pack” and does NOT have Turkey & Gravy. It has: Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Blueberry Pie, and 2 other pies I can’t remember right now.

I would have loved to have seen some old photo’s of the Ralph Costume. I bet your mom still has them.

My best costume was the “movie theater floor” idea I got from MST3K. It just wore maroon sweats with candy crappers taped to them, and a popcorn bucket on my head. I also tried the “Jiffy Pop” costume once, but it didn’t work as well…mostly because it felt like my head was inside an over.

I went one year as Dolly Parton. Keep in mind I am 6 foot 4 and weigh around 220 lbs. Some guy at the Halloween party came up to me (gaotee and all) and asked where my boyfriend was and why I wasn’t wearing a costume. When I replied that I was Dolly Parton, he sighed stating “you mean those aren’t real” and proceeded to ask me to show him because he didn’t believe me. I proceeded to whip out the balloons I was using and took off my wig
the guy seriously walked out of the house and stayed in the yard for the rest of the night. I do not know of many 6 foot 4 225 lb. big chested women with gotees, but if I saw one, I sure wouldn’t try to pick her up.

I forgot to mention this, but I was in Best Buy yesterday, as per usual, and I saw that Bully had shipped and had a nice display.

That was a great article. I think everyone has a Halloween costume that stands out from the rest. I can only remember my mom dressing me as The Phantom of the Opera and sending me off to school. In retrospect I am suprised I survived that day. I should have been beaten with a sack of oranges.

One time when I was young and naive, I was in a last minute rush to get a costume. I found some fangs and I got myself a Dracula cape. One would assume this would be a no-brainer, easy win costume.

As the big day neared, I realized that I didn’t have any white facepaint, and couldn’t find it ANYWHERE. Somehow I thought that black facepaint would be ok and noone would notice, I would just be a VERY creepy vampire.

Yes, thats right, I went trick or treating as a black vampire, straight out of Blackula. Living in southern Ohio in a 100% white neighborhood, the costume was greeted by laughs and cheers. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the implications that my costume implied.

I also got my candy stolen that years and I chased down the older kid and kicked her ass into a gully and got my candy back. Ahh, memories.

The Toys R Us in York,PA has never changed over to the modern look. It’s 1985 inside and out.
Matt,this was easily your best article ever.

Wow, you people post a lot. I have never posted here before, but I’ve been religiously following this site for years ‘n’ years.
Most of my Halloween costumes in previous years have been “slutty something-or-other,” (i.e., slutty angel, slutty vampire, etc.) Am I allowed to say slutty here?
Anyway, I wanted to be Elvira this year but couldn’t find a costume, and was too lazy to put one together myself. So I settled for Cher. I’m being Cher.

And I have to disagree with you, Kid Nicky … I think Matt’s best article is easily the three-part Worst Witch review.

My best costume was a homemade Maleficent costume. The silky/satiny horns were the coolest part. I think Marilyn Manson ripped me off years later in his “Nobodies” video. (I hope the link to the picture works.)

Old E, it actually kind of is a slutty Cher. I’m being 70s Cher, when she had a Sonny (and I don’t, *tear*), I’m not being robotic-voiced candy-colored wig Cher of recent years. Anyway, I basically just went to a thrift store and saw a really retro-looking striped dress, and it reminded me of Cher. It is pretty tight and short, so I guess that’s slutty. Halloween is really just an excuse for me to dress slutty and get away with it … anyway, I have boots that go with it, and I also got a really long black wig (I think it was supposed to be for a witch or something), and some fake eyelashes, because Cher’s eyelashes were ridiculously long. I have already resigned myself to the fact that nobody is going to know who I am. But they’ll be able to see lots of leg!

Seeing lots of leg is always good. Unless you are hairy. Being slutty is also good. Again, unless you are hairy.

Bricker, I too had a costume experience like that, and I wish I could find a picture of it. When I was around 8 or so, I went as Steve Urkel for Halloween. Keep in mind that I was very much a skinny little white kid. We didn’t have any black face paint so we had to use this weird rusty red stuff, and I was pretty pissed; Urkel was black, not East Indian.

Looking back on it now I’m pretty embarrassed that I went one Halloween in blackface.

I think I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but my TRU is still using aisles. They’ve done away with a few of them (in the toddler/learning toy section), but otherwise, still aisles.

Hrm… I went as a member of DEVO last year. Complete with energy dome and whip.

My favorite costume evar would have to be… a lost boy. I built a large milk carton, put my head in it, and wrote “have you seen me” under where my face was.

Yeah, we did Halloween parades at my elementry school too except there were usually no parents there. Just the teachers. Kinda weird. Anyhow, we’d just walk in a giant circle around the play ground, go back inside, eat some sort of Halloween themed snack, and then back to regular class. Looking back on it 20 some odd years later it was a complete joke and waste of time, but back then it was one of the greatest school days of the year!

I’ve been keeping up with the entries and blog posts, but it’s hard to find time to keep up with all the comments. Sorry, dudes. I was also excited to see the Marc Summers entry. Awesome.

That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard. It had everything a story needs. I remember you touching on Ralph briefly in the past but this story expands it to amazing new heights!
I once went as some kind of horible wolf thing to one of those Halloween parades at skool. I wasn’t the best but, by god, neither was the WHORE dressed as a lady bug with cardboard wings and face paint who won! The next year I was a vampire. She won again as a stupid ass spider with pipe cleaner arms. WHAT THE HELL!??
Her mom was a librarian and no doubt sucked cock to ensure her little bitch of a daughter would win TWICE! FOR SHITTY COSTUMES!
I hate her for that and hope she’s dead now.

OK this article almosts scared me because Matt and I are roughly the same age and when I was in second grade I had my parents help me make an ALF costume for halloween that year. Matt’s costume was by far better than the hack job I put together but I am fairly certain we used the same rubber ALF mask. I wasn’t able to get my hands on a full on fur suit I had to settle for butchering one of those generic kid costume Lion deals. We cut the tail of it off entirely then cut the bushy tail end off and safety pinned it to the ass end of the lion suit to give me the cute little ALF tail. If I ever found any pics of me in that get up I would prolly have to say it was a crappy job but back in the day I was damned proud of it. The one thing I remember is going to my little town Fall Festival which also had a costume contest that year which my dad entered me and my alf costume into. Out of maybe 30 other kids I made it into the top 2 but in the final judging had to settle for Second Place I still have the stupid ribbon I won around here somewhere too. I think that I was seceretly very bitter at losing because I can remember the whole thing vividly EXCEPT I can’t for the fucking life of me remember what the kid that beat me wore let alone what made it better than mine. My only guess is my poor fragile childhood mind blocked it out….or its just decade of pot smoking clouding my memory either way the irony is me and matt got the same idea on what was likely the same exact year lol.

I think the following year I was on some kind of astronaut kick and so I went as a spaceman and the year after that was Batman but insteead getting one of those pseudo pajama batman costumes I decided to use my beloeved Playmates Batman Armor set with the plastic chest plate and cowl and the gauntlet that shot little plastic dart things. I wore that thing alot as a kid but using it for halloween let me walk around the neighborhood wearing it without feeling like a complete retard for a change

This is by far one of the best and most nostalgic posts I’ve ever read. It made me remember when all I wanted to be was Rainbow Brite and had my parents take me to at least 5 different stores looking for the best one until they finally just rented a super deluxe version.

The Halloween costume of the past that still stand out for me is a California Raisin. It actually kinda sucked to be walking around in that hot hot blanket-like outfit singing Motown songs all night.

This year I wanted to go as Hank Venture from The Venture Brothers. However I couldn’t find enough people to serve as other members of the Venture ensemble. Hank wouldn’t work on his own.

broomstickjockey, no, i haven’t. i kind’f remember seeing the commercials, though. do you still have “nightmare” or “atmosfear”? i THINK i still have “atmosfear” tucked away somewhere… i wanna pull out the tape and watch it

i remember my friends hyping up that part in “nightmare” where the guy make syou come way up close to the screen, and his face gets a skull graphic superimposed on it… they all said how scary it was, and my EXACT thought was “what the shit?”

I have “Atmosfear.” I never heard of “Nightmare.” My parents had these Friday night “dates” with my best friends’ parents where they would all get together and played cards or something, so every effing Friday night Laura and Amy and I would sit in the dark in the living room with candles and play “Atmosfear.” I think our parents thought we were starting a coven or something. I was never afraid of the Gatekeeper and I loved the scary music and stormy background on the tape. Do you remember this… “Who’s turn is it next? Hands up! You could have two free turns ORRRRRR… you could point the finger at the maggot in the lead and send him to the NEAREST BLACK HOLE!” I STILL love that game and wish I had someone to play it with me who wouldn’t make fun of it. :p By the way, I found this link if you’re looking for some “Atmosfear” nostalgia.

Bravo, Ralph! I remember that feeling well–masked, allowed to be yourself, and having expectations of being thought of as the coolest person ever. Oh… when you believed it could be so…

Anyway, my proudest costume was when I was 6 years old: Zorro! (with painted on moustache of course; but the fake plastic sword is pretty much all you need in order to feel like the real thing–and the hat–and the dressy outfit–but I had it all!)

oh gosh! “nightmare” was the precursor to “atmosfear”…. same characters (though all were only n ames inscribed on tombstones), and same premise - i THINK. there was the video, and the gatekeeper.. though i remember him being way more involved in “nightmare” (i.e., he did a hell of a lot more than say “take a fate card!”). another awesome aspect was that he became progressively more old/rotted looking as time progressed.

was was the goal of atmosfear? i played it ONCE, and can’t recall. all i remember is elizabeth being so fucking COOL looking (yet finally realizing in the silly, illustrated instructions that her shredding mass of teeth was some kind’f metal facemask.. but, still, how goddamned cool.

“nightmare” involved something like writing down your worst fears on little pieces of paper, putting them in a pot, and whomever reaches the end first gets to pull one of them out of said pot, and try and guess whose fear it was. i guess they were seriously banking on not knowing what your friends’ handwriting looked like….

oopsie, i’ve been drinking a slight bit. sorry for any nonsensities. and honestly, i really truly can’t remember a quotable thing from him other than the “take a fate card” line. i’m sure there’s a million gems, though. it was nearly subliminal. i really need to bust out “atmosfear”. remember how COOL the dice were? not so much cool, but QUALITY. like they were made of ivory or something. if there ever were an x-e convention, i suggest some rousing rounds of cheesy horror, video-narrated board games.

there’s an offical australian site (i think it’s australian, i might be dumb and tipsy). http://www.atmosfear.com.au. they’ve apparently made numerous sequels to the game headlining the various characters… humm…

Yeah, I did some research on the rest of the games last night. I WANT THEM ALLLLL! But I like that the characters were a little more fleshed-out in “Atmosfear: The Harbingers.” The goal was the same in that as you described in “Nightmare,” the only difference maybe being that you only had the first ten minutes of the game to “become” a character by landing on their provence, or else you became a Soul Ranger. And, you’re right, you get back to the hub first and you roll either a one or some other certain number and you get to pick a fear out of the Well and if it’s not yours, you win. Not a bad plot, though a little confusing.

Another thing I liked about the Gatekeeper in “Atmosfear” was that he would giggle and make farting noises between ordering you to raise your hand and flip off your friends.

I bought my “Atmosfear” second hand from eBay, so I didn’t get the awesome dice.

Thanks for the links! I was so obsessed with the game when I was a kid that I actually researched all the characters. They all exist in legends and myths (except for Hellin, of course). I thought that was pretty effing cool!

Sorry for the repost, but michael’s right, we shoud SO have an X-E convention!

Does it make me pathetic that I almost started crying while reading this article?

The only other XE article that’s ever done that to me is the one on C-3PO cereal.

A friend of mine recently gave me an Alf costume… and since I’m only 4′11”, I can fit into it.

This thing’s so old I doubt that anyone will read it, but that’s okay. I actually was ALF for Halloween. I was older than Matt, but it was the same costume.

My family was stationed in Japan, so everything was on a delay. On my Halloween, ALF was cool, but maybe not as cool as he would have been a couple years ago. The process of getting the costume was pretty much the same, except I didn’t actually throw a tantrum. I just begged and begged and begged. And luckily, this ALF was a body suit and mask together, no need to worry about one part selling out before the others (althought I think there were separate masks on sale).

Here I should point out that, being on a military base on Japan, all the kids shop at the same ONE place, the Exchange. It sounds strange, but it’s true, it’s like, you have JC Pennies and nothing else.

I think I saw one kid wearing the same costume, but that was it. Overall, it was a success. I didn’t have the following or adulation that Matt had, but that’s probably because ALF just wasn’t as hip by the time it made it overseas to us (to help contextualize this, we knew about the Simpsons, but we weren’t able to see them. When I got back to the states, they were on season three and from my pen palls I think they got it on AFES - Armed Forces TV or whatever - the same year).

I actually did go trick or treating as ALF. It was warm and by the end of the night I was totally drenched in sweat. It was all fine as long as the costume kept me warm, but fearing that I would catch pneumonia, my mom made me take off the costume and do the last of my trick or treating in my regular clothes (my little sister was there too. I don’t know what she was, but she definitely wasn’t ALF!).

On the last house I begged for candy the person questioned my lack of costume. While shivering, drenched in sweat in the cool night breeze, my reply was something akin to “I was ALF but I got all sweaty and my mom was afraid I’d die of pneumonia so she made me take it off.”

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