The 2022 Costume Prize Goes to...Oscar Myers

I don’t often post about costumes. It isn’t because I dislike the topic. In fact, I love it. But, I rarely find any costumes worth talking about. That all changed yesterday. As an avid member of the subreddit dedicated to Halloween, I get to see a lot of costumes and decor, but this one wins for 2022.

Poster Beautiful_Ad8439 wrote:

“He came up with wanting to be a hot dog but also Michael Myers and we are a HUGE pun family, so I made a funny and said wouldn't it be hilarious to be Oscar Myer? And the kid was sold and we laughed our assess off and now he feels like the coolest kid on Halloween, so that is a win for all of us alone!”

I shared this pic with others who inevitably said that this looks like it would make a much better movie than Halloween Ends. I couldn’t agree more.

Here Come the Carantoñas!

De Carmenventurav - Trabajo propio, CC BY-SA 4.0

In Acehuche, Spain, there’s yet another remnant of pagan culture much like the Krampus legends of Austria. Much like Krampus, the Carantoñas were co-opted by the Catholic church and are now a part of the festival celebrating the town’s patron saint, St. Sebastian, on January 2oth.

One big difference is that this is a daytime festival held every January 20th, so it has nothing to do with the Christmas season, but the similarities are striking. Men in the town dress up in homemade Carantoñas costumes and parade through the streets, much like the townsfolk at Austrian Krampuslaufs.

I expect there are similar vestiges all over Europe - leftovers of a time when the Catholic church was working hard to push pagan traditions aside. Most of those practices continued in some form or another but it’s only since the internet has become truly global in reach that we’re learning about many of them.

Slut Costumes

While I kinda, sorta think I understand why some women like using Halloween as an opportunity to slut it up without any permanent repercussions, there need to be limits. Wanna dress as a slut on Halloween? Be my guest. I just think you’ll be more successful at attracting slut aficionados if you leave the licensed characters out of it. I’ve chosen five of my favorite examples.

First of all, I can’t believe there’s actually a Slut Mr. Rogers costume, complete with puppets. Let that sink in. This is real and you can buy it. Who’s buying this thing? Female pedophiles? Is there even such a thing? Nothing could be a bigger turnoff than this beloved PBS icon who was also a minister.

Next is Slut Charlie Brown. I don’t think this is licensed (I believe it’s called Sexy Charlie) but it shouldn’t exist either way. Has there ever been a character who is less sexually attractive than Charlie Brown? Honestly, if I saw a woman wearing this, I’d grab my peanuts and run the other way!

How about Slut Leatherface? You know, the developmentally disabled killer from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre who cuts off people’s faces to wear around the house later? Now that’s sexy! Holy fuck.

Maybe you’d prefer Slut Edward Scissorhands (AKA Miss Scissorhands). Do I need to explain how definitely unsexy a woman with scissors for hands is?

Finally, there’s Slut Freddy Krueger. A demonic child molester in female form minus the burn scars. I mean, I think the sweater dress is actually clever, but at the risk of repeating my diatribe against Miss Scissorhands, I don’t need me no women with knives for fingers.

There are many (MANY) more of these, but I think you get the point. Wanna dress as a slut? Try Slut Cop. Slut Witch is also a good choice. Hell, Hocus Pocus sold more corsets than Fredericks of Hollywood ever hoped to. Just stop trying to adapt every single character into a slut version. Unless you want to try Slut Mandalorian. I might be into that.

Larry LeGaspi

You’ve probably never heard of Larry LeGaspi but I’m pretty sure you’ve seen his work. I had never heard of him either until today when I ran across an online mention of the man and the inspired work he did in the 1970s. You see, LeGaspi designed costumes - crazy, futuristic costumes. He did so for Labelle, Parliament Funkadelic, and most famously for Kiss.

I have no idea why this man didn’t get any notoriety from his work. If he’d been doing this stuff today, he’d have become a YouTube influencer and Twitter king. In the 70s, he was invisible. I grew up on Kiss and Parliament and I never knew they had the same designer, though it’s quite obvious in retrospect.

There’s a good Wikipedia article about the man here if you’re interested. The photo above is from the only book about him, Legaspi: Larry Legaspi, the 70s, and the Future of Fashion by Rick Owens.

This just reinforces my personal view that the late 70s were the pinnacle of pop culture, especially in New York City. There was a cultural free-for-all that embraced the odd and offered opportunities to new artists as diverse as Kiss, Talking Heads, The Ramones, and the whole crowd of acts that jammed audiences into Max’s Kansas City and CBGB every night.

Halloween was never the same after Kiss. In the 70s, Collegeville made kids costumes out of the four band members and costume pieces of their makeup-era looks have always been available in one form or another ever since. I even made up my brother and three of his friends as Kiss in the 80s long after the makeup had come off the real band members. To this day, Kiss is a go-to group costume every year. There are tons of great pics out there, just take a look.

Mos Eisley Police Department

I joined the 501st Legion as a sandtrooper in 2006. Since it was my first costume, I’ll always think of the Mos Eisley Police Department detachment as my 501st home. IMHO, there are no better members in the 501st than the mighty MEPD.

There are those in any organization who behave like trolls, but they’re exceptionally rare in the MEPD. Perhaps it’s the fact that we always get asked why our armor is so dirty. Or maybe it’s the fact that we have to go the extra mile and haul around those heavy backpacks.

The process is a bit more streamlined now that you can purchase completed costumes from reputable vendors. When I got involved, the armor makers were all underground due to licensing constraints. In those days, George still owned Lucasfilm and he liked the 501st, so we had a gentleman’s agreement with him - the armor makers could sell their wares as long as they did so quietly so as not to piss off any of LFL’s licensees. Things have changed a lot since Disney took the reins.

I particularly enjoyed building things myself instead of buying them all finished and ready to go. Anyone can buy a costume, but not everyone could become a 501st member back in the day. It took a great deal of effort to construct your own costume even if the parts were available to buy. Back then, everyone was still on the lookout for particular source items, but now pretty much all the mysteries have been solved.

I had tons of fun trooping events as a sandtrooper but at the end of the day, I have to admit that I enjoyed researching and building the costume more than wearing it, even if wearing it made you a celebrity for the day.

Denim Boba Fett

photo © Thomas Raven

It was Halloween 1979, before The Empire Strikes Back was even released, and I decided to try my hand at making a homemade Boba Fett costume out of junk I had lying around. Mind you, I had only seen the real costume in a couple of pics and at an event promoting TESB (more on that in a later post). I believe this ridiculous costume was based on the Kenner pre-release figure and the way the character looked in the equally ridiculous Star Wars Holiday Special.

Let’s just state the obvious - Boba wasn’t exactly a denim guy. Unfortunately, that was all I had to work with, so I gave it my best shot. The top is a Navy jacket that I’m wearing backwards. I cut out some clear plastic sheets to make the armor and glued it onto the jacket.

I wish I had a better pic of the jet pack. For some reason, it’s all black. I have no idea why. Probably because all I had was black paint. It and the gauntlets were entirely fabricated from cardboard and soda bottles along with whatever leftover model kit parts I had. There was little to no attempt at accuracy here.

The real travesty is the “helmet”. The front half was constructed on top of a cheap vaccuformed skull mask and I could hardly see out of it at all because the visor was clear plastic that I colored on the reverse side with permanent markers. It’s amazing that I didn’t asphyxiate from the marker fumes.

Looking back on it now, it’s a little embarrassing. I had no idea what it really looked like until these pics were developed. Still, I have to admire the ingenuity and the fact that I even tried to make such a difficult costume from scratch. Let’s just say I had a long way to go.

Cantina Alien Costume

photo © Thomas Raven

This may be my favorite costume from my childhood and it’s not even me wearing it. It’s my brother. I don’t even think this was done on Halloween, but was one of our many forays into creating creatures just for the camera. This one never had a name but he was inspired by a mask kit I bought.

His name was Megathor and he was one of three vacuform mask kits produced by Pressman to capitalize on Star Wars mania. You can see in the Fangoria ad below that one of the others looks an awful lot like Darth Vader. I bought that one too, but that’s a tale for another post.

image © Fangoria magazine

These were only $8 each because they came as raw vacuformed pulls of colored plastic with some glue. It was up to you to put them together. I did so without making a tremendous mess of it, but then what? Well, make a cantina creature costume, that’s what!

I can look at that costume pic and tell you pretty much where each piece came from. The mask you already know. The blaster was a light gun toy. The human hand is my brother’s but the lizard hand was from a Star Trek playset called Mission to Gamma VI (the glove was supposed to be a living plant that you could use to capture Enterprise crew members). The cape was just a leftover piece of black fabric. The dark brown vest and yellow belt were from my brother’s Bilbo Baggins costume (a school assignment). The brown suit with fur cuffs was something my mother made for a previous Halloween. I wanted a full on fur suit for a Planet of the Apes or Chewbacca costume and that was the result. Faux fur doesn’t come cheap! But once we had something, my brother and I would use it for many other purposes down the line. That’s when costume pieces like these really shined.

It was this spirit of costume making that led me to join the 501st Legion years later and also led me to quit. Once more and more costumes were off the shelf purchases, it just wasn’t as much fun. I enjoy making something out of nothing, even if it’s not perfect in the end.

Star Wars' Willrow Hood Costume

photo © Thomas Raven

Not my greatest costume, but perhaps my bravest. This was an easy costume to assemble, especially considering that it isn’t accurate in any way, shape or form. The most difficult part was shaving off my beard.

In case you don’t know, Willrow Hood is a background extra seen in Cloud City during The Empire Strikes Back. He runs past Lando Calrissian carrying a Hamilton Beach 4-quart capacity ice cream maker, model number 68330. This has prompted many Star Wars fan to refer to him only as the ice cream maker guy, but he was eventually given a name and even an action figure thanks to one of the Fan’s Choice polls.

It’s now a tradition that there be an official “Running of the Hoods” event at every Star Wars Celebration. Dozens of people dressed as Willrow run a lap around the con together to escape the wrath of the Empire. If you want an accurate Willrow Hood costume, not many can be found at this event, but I can help you get closer than I got.

First, the jumpsuit isn’t the generic orange suit I’m wearing above but the same military orange flight suit used for the rebel pilot costumes in the OT. It even has the same sleeve communicator detail and the code cylinders in shoulder pockets. He looks like he’s wearing the same boots, too. Add the Hamilton Beach ice cream maker if you can find one, and you’re done.

Evil Teeth

When I was a kid, one of the Halloween items that got played with year round were my plastic vampire fangs. While you can now order sets of 72 knockoffs for a mere $6.49 (that’s less than 10¢ each), back in the day I could only get one set and hope they lasted. And last they did.

Mine were made by Imagineering, a company in Phoenix, AZ that specialized in the most wondrous monster makeup products for kids in the 60s and 70s. Yes, the Disney Imagineers used a similar name and I’m not sure which one came first, but that fact certainly makes it difficult to find much info on the company. There are lots of mentions about an Imagineering documentary on Vimeo, but it’s no longer available.

Imagineering was started by Larry Liff. He designed the very first plastic vampire teeth, though his savvy marketing department called them Evil Teeth so as not to pigeonhole them into vampire-only sales. They were originally released in the mid-60s and continued to receive packaging re-vamps (YES!) throughout the 70s. They originally sold for 29¢ to 49¢. An unopened package can now fetch $40-$100 on Ebay depending on the time of year and the condition of the packaging. Not bad for an item that was deemed a throwaway at the time.

Gordon Viges was responsible for the company’s packaging art. Everything was hand-drawn and hand-lettered and really contributed to the hipster vibe of the whole affair. If you’d like to check out some of the products and their packaging, there’s a gallery here at the Tick Tock Toys site.

It cannot be stated strongly enough just how much items like this represented Halloween to me. Yes, they were ridiculous. No, they didn’t fit quite right. Yes, they hurt to wear. No, you couldn’t talk with them in. Yes, they were nasty when covered with spit. I didn’t care about any of that. What I cared about was being a freaking vampiriffic vampire! These teeth along with a tube of Imagineering Vampire Blood were some of the tools that helped make that happen.

You can keep your fancy dental molds and film-quality tooth appliances. I’ll stick with these Evil Teeth…even if they don’t fit so well these days.

Pet Costumes

I know this will be controversial for some of you, but you need to read it.

Your pets do not want to wear Halloween costumes.

Please don’t force this upon them. They don’t understand it and costume pieces make them feel like they’re being assaulted. I mean, just look at that cat in that image above. Her ears are back and she’s crouched in an avoidance posture. How anyone could put their beloved animal through this, even for a photo shoot, is beyond me.

Look, dress up however you want, but please leave the animals out of it. They aren’t dress up dolls for your amusement. They’re sentient beings with their own drives and desires that don’t include wearing a cute outfit. instead, get them some cool Halloween toys that everyone can enjoy!