Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Happy Halloween!

Sorry for the lack o' content for the last week, but work's been beating me with a stick. Anyhoo, it's Halloween-time here at Phoning It In Industries and it's time for the kids to dress up. Looking at my 5 year-old's very nice Spider-man costume, I harkened back to the awful costumes we were forced to wear in the 1970's. Fortunately, I had a copy of Marvel Premiere #45 handy to share my memories with you all, check that out:

(click to embiggen)


Man, that Hulk costume is weak. Anyway, have a happy and safe Holloween!

3 comments:

x-man75 said...

My favorite part of the whole thing is the ponchos! Did kids really run around the streets dressing up in nothing more than ponchos with a picture of Spider-Man on it! I could hear the parents saying, "Alright kids, go put on your ponchos, it's time to go trick or treating!"

Plus, the real kicker is that they make sure to let you know that all the costumes are "flame retarded"! Whew, at least I know the kids won't suddenly burst into flames! That's a real relief!

Jason said...

x-man75: Well let me tell you, if you wanted to dress up as a super-hero, or a Star Wars character (or really, anyone cool) in the 70's, your options were severely limited. Usually a "costume" consisted of a plastic poncho with a picture of the character you were supposed to "be" on it and a mask, held to your face with the flimsiest piece of elastic 1970's science could produce (usually this broke within minutes of purchase). Also, since the mouth-hole in the mask was barely big enough to fit a quarter through, my mom would not allow me to wear it for longer than it takes to take a picture in it. And you can bet your bottom dollar that she made me wear a coat over the whole ensemble.

So yeah, my C-3PO costume when I was four sucked. In my Mother's defense, she sewed me a boss Chewbacca costume the next year, I have to find a picture of that.

x-man75 said...

Man, you had me rolling with your description of the masks! I can tell you, in the 80's, the masks weren't much better! Those damn elastic straps would literally snap as I would try to put them on(I had a huge head as a kid!). I hated those masks! My mom would wind up stapling the elastic strap back on my mask about 5 times during Halloween!

It's funny that they'd put a little mouth hole to breath through, but none of these "costume" designers had enough sense to add, oh, I don't know, NOSE HOLES!

It's really funny looking at that ad and then looking at the killer costumes they have out now. I think I was born about a decade to early!