The Halloween Aisle

We didn't have a Spirit Halloween store near us when I was a kid.

At Halloween time, we had a few other options. We didn't have Walmart, but we had K-Mart. Then there was our local mall. There the Hallmark store usually had, in addition to its holiday greeting cards, a section of Halloween costumes and items close to the front of the store. I vaguely remember picking up a free Halloween costume catalog from Sears in the mid-1980s, though I don't recall ever buying anything Halloween-related there. Another mall staple, Spencer's Gifts, sold Halloween masks years before the company bought out the Spirit Halloween chain in 1999.

Although I remember Toys 'R Us primarily for its selection of magic tricks and kits—such as the Magic World of Blackstone Beginner's Magic Set—the store carried enough Halloween merchandise to publish its own annual costume catalog. And because I watched reruns of That's Incredible during the 80s, I also associated the store with the haunted Toys 'R Us in Sunnyvale, California.

For costumes, candy, decorations, and other Halloween paraphernalia, I mainly depended on the holiday aisle of our nearest drugstore, Sav-on Drugs. The selection was limited, though I didn't think so at the time. It was where I went when I needed a pot of green makeup, a cassette tape of sound effects, or a bag of candy corn.

One cassette tape that I'm pretty sure I bought at Sav-on was titled "Horror Sounds of the Night." I used the tape as the soundtrack for numerous homemade radio shows and videos over the years, including my own "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" movie. My tape copy was defective, as much of it had a screechy sound that was obviously not intentional. Here is someone else's good transfer of the tape on YouTube:

Another fun find from the mid-1980s was the Create-A-Face Complete Makeup Kit, which included six colors of makeup paint, a tube of vampire blood, glow-in-the-dark monster fangs, "icky teeth," an eyepatch, face adhesive, various "special effect pieces" like bullet holes and a stitched wound, and a waxy "blend" that supposedly helped hide the edge of the effect pieces (it didn't). Though the kit looks pretty underwhelming in hindsight, it seemed like the stuff of professionals when I was a kid.

There are no more Sav-on Drug stores as I remember them (most became CVS Pharmacies). So yesterday I stopped by the Halloween aisle at my local Walgreens to buy some candy to give out (in one week!) and to see what other things they had on the pegboard racks.

The costume selection was a bit sad. Space was severely limited by the Christmas merchandise, already taking up half the aisle. And there were no audio offerings. Unfortunately, the days of sound effects albums and cheesy cover versions of "Monster Mash" on CDs are long gone.

There were, however, glow sticks, several packages of grease and cream makeup, fake fangs, and tubes of vampire blood—all similar to the kinds sold when I was a kid. These would do just fine for any kid planning a homemade monster movie.

At the very least, there was a decent selection of candy. And this store had some pretty good discounts. (After all the markdowns I came away with several bags for $15.) For some things, you can still depend on the Halloween aisle.

Thoughts for October 2022

With October here and the promise of another Halloween, I decided to revisit this 13-year-old blog after a long hiatus. Family and work priorities prevent me from giving the site much attention during the year, but the site deserves to remain active. This week I checked old posts and, when possible, updated video links to replace dead ones. I hope to add new posts in the coming weeks.

I originally created Ghosts of Halloweens Past as a way to celebrate my childhood memories of the holiday, by sharing Halloween shows and programs that I remembered from those decades—along with fun and interesting videos that I discovered in more recent years of scouring the Internet.

But it occurred to me that despite its good intentions, this blog is by its very nature somewhat antithetical to my childhood experiences of Halloween. Having been born in the mid-1970s, I grew up in a time when holiday entertainment was more communal. Halloween specials were typically shown only once a year, and network TV stations advertised them accordingly. Catching the annual airing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, for example, was a much-anticipated event. As my sister pointed out to me in a recent conversation, part of what made these programs special was knowing that all your friends were watching them at the same moment. And even though we could pop a videotape into the VCR and record the program for later viewing, or eventually purchase an official VHS or DVD of it, a recording never did justice to the actual broadcast, because the communal event had passed. Watching the program whenever we desired meant that the shared experience rarely extended beyond the walls of our living room.

Today such experiences are even more individualized and fragmented. Halloween fans now have the choice of innumerable sites offering holiday fare—Ghosts of Halloweens Past being one of the humbler ones. Meanwhile, it's not yet clear whether It's the Great Pumpkin will be shown on PBS Kids or any other cable TV station this year.

On the flip side, sites like YouTube allow us the privilege of discovering obscure shows—sometimes including commercials from the original broadcasts—which never benefitted from repeat airings or commercial releases. Communal or not, such sites make it possible to re-experience programs that otherwise might have only existed as a strange memory—such as the "haunted Toys-R-Us" episode of That's Incredible from 1978, or The Search for Houdini, probably the most unusual Halloween program aired in 1987.

Thankfully, TV entertainment is only one part of a holiday that is still very much a communal event, at least in my neighborhood. Costumed children and their families will be seen along the sidewalks, and walking up to houses they otherwise never visit, and speaking to people with whom they otherwise never chat. And despite the potential for glorifying darkness and evil on Halloween night, in my experience the holiday can still bring out the best in humanity.

Here's to a wonderful Halloween 2022!

Toys R Us Halloween Catalog

1980s Toys R Us Halloween Commercials

Commercial from 1980:


Commercial from around 1985:

That's Incredible: Haunted Toys 'R Us (1978)

This segment from That's Incredible! investigates the story of a haunted Toys 'R Us in Sunnyvale, California. Apparently, the toy store was built on the property where a man died after a wood-chopping accident, and psychic Sylvia Brown claims that this man's spirit is haunting the store. A séance is staged in the toy store for That's Incredible! As Brown attempts to make contact with the spirit, a photographer captures some interesting images.