During the brief period of my life when I trick-or-treated, my options were limited. My parents took me to Newberry's Five-and-Dime store where there were Ben Cooper and Collegeville costumes to pick from. I rejected as tacky the generic ones — pirate, hobo, devil, etc. — and opted for the ones of licensed and known cartoon characters. I remember one year I picked out a great Bugs Bunny costume because Bugs was one of my favorites. I'd still like to be him if I ever grow up.
We got it home and I made the mistake of not trying it on before late in the afternoon of Halloween. When it came time to costume up for a party and subsequent door-to-door candy hustling, we found that the costume was misprinted and mis-made some way that rendered it unwearable. I was somewhat upset. My father grabbed it up and said "I'll take it back and get you another." He drove up to Newberry's but found that the display had pretty much been picked clean.
There were no more Bugs Bunny costumes. In fact, the only outfit in my size that was of a name character was Buzzy the Crow. Even friends my age who watched cartoons weren't sure who that was. So that year, I extorted little Snickers bars from neighbors dressed (with no small amount of embarrassment) as Buzzy the Crow. No wonder I learned to not like Halloween.
Last evening, I chanced to browse through a place called the Halloween Club near me and discovered a much, much wider selection of costumes than I had when my age was in single digits. Back then, we didn't have costumes of characters from situation comedies. If we had, I would have insisted on going as Sgt. Bilko or Rob Petrie. I would have preferred going as Bilko because he would not only have talked my neighbors out of all their candy but probably their wide-screen televisions as well. Here's a photo I took…
