Thread: The best Halloween stuff when you were a kid

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I'm 52 and have fond memories of Halloween in the 60's. Trick or treating in the Ben Cooper or Collegeville costumes that came in the cardboard box with the cellophane window in front. Those hard plastic masks with the elastic string.
Trick or treating has changed a lot since then, but from the standpoint of the things you see here on this forum, in terms of props/decor/etc..what was the best thing you can remember as far as a prop or decorations at a house you visited as a kid on Halloween night?
Most houses we went to had a simple jack o lantern or some paper cut outs on the windows/doors.
If a house had a sheet ghost with a flood light on it we thought that was just awesome. One house in a neighboring subdivision had a guy dressed as a scarecrow on the front porch. On the lap of the figure was a plastic pumpkin filled with smarties, and a sign taped to it "Take only one."
There was actually a live person under all the straw and overalls and when you went to take candy, he'd just move a bit and scare the crap out of you. Seems amateur by many of our standards, and a lot of you go to almost Disney extremes for your haunts, but what was your biggest thrill as a kid?

Great idea for a thread!

I was TOTing during the end of the 70's, the 80's and shamelessly as a teen at the start of the 90's.

I remember my mom always hung 2 dancers (those accordian legs paper figures) on our front door, one scarecrow and one skeleton. The skelley was scary so we said it was my older sister's, and the scarecrow tamer so it was 'mine'.
Paper cut outs were standard on our windows and all the neighbors', anything beyond that was really exciting.
Any adult that would dress up and scare us was so scary, we loved it!

We had those lame plastic costumes, but as soon as I was old enough, I started putting together mine from stuff around the house, so home made costumes were MUCH COOLER LOOKING than store bought. Think robed/hooded reaper with broom handle/tin foil scythe vs. plastic garfield! It would be harder to beat the store bought variety nowadays.

I can't wait to hear about others' memories!

Plastic costumes here too, lol! Inevtitably, the little elastic string would break. I too loved the houses that were a little scary, usually just someone jumping out at you. My goal has always been to be that house. TOTing, there was a house around the corner that always gave out bags of freshly popped popcorn. (I guess it was safer to take food from strangers back then!) You could smell the popcorn popping all the way down the block. We just had a cardboard scarecrow for decoration at my house, but I would get SO excited the day my mom hung it up! And I LOVED taking my pumpkin out back and sitting at the picnic table carving it. No patterns back then, just triangle eyes and noses

I TOTed in the '70s and looked forward to "The scary house" on the corner all year long. It was always live action just inside their doorway, and tame by our standards, but as soon as I bought my own house I knew I wanted to be the scariest house on my block too. The other thing I really remember was my Jack o Lantern candy holder. That thing was huge compared to what kids use today. I was one of those weird kids who could make the candy last for months....eventually the container itself smelled like candy all the time. Once in a while I'd get it down just to get a wiff off it.

Been a member here for some time, lurk mostly. I just had to respond to this though. My fondest memory , I was probably 4 or 5, my mother dressed me as the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. She wrapped me with Aluminum Foil, and then colored my face with silver mascara.

Good times..

I was early 80's.

We had the same jointed paper decoratons that I'm guessing a lot of you had. There was one house that had the lights and creepy music.

As for costumes, we never got the store-bought ones. We had the same ones that were passed down through my 3 sisters.... First you were the devil. Then you were a hobo. Then you were a clown. By then you were old enough to make your own.

We were always one of he big houses for TOT's because my mom would make candy airplanes. It was a roll of Smarties for the body, a stick of Big Red for the wings, and two Life Savers for the wheels. Then it all was held together with a rubber band.

We lived on a dead end street, and there was a ton of kids.... all of which we knew. It was, without a doubt, the best day of the year.

TOT'd in the 70's, and yeah, the classic one JOL & some paper decorations were always the main decor. Seeing a pumpkin out on a stoop was the first sign Halloween was on its way. It seemed everyone waited until the last two weeks of October to decorate, because it always seemed to take too long to get here.

I knew once I saw those first pumpkins on the steps, it would be time to think about my costume & would get my traditional orange pumpkin TOT pail down, and leave it on my desk until Halloween.

It was a thrill to go with my mom to our Ben Franklin's (a 5 n' 10 store downtown) and look all the costumes all line up in their boxes (this was when they packaged them with the poly costume & hard plastic mold mask in a square box with the clear plastic cover). Once we got within two weeks of The Day, I'd ask almost everyday, "when can we get my costume?!" My mom was sooo patient! But the thrilling day would come, and every costume would be considered carefully, and finally, choice in hand, we'd take it up to the cashier. I swear it wasn't more than $5. Then we'd bring it home & hang it up.

The waiting was so hard! I knew when mom brought home the Halloween candy a couple of days before, it was close. But time seemed to go so slow for those few days before the holiday. Finally, the day of, we'd get to have our Halloween party at school, which included a parade around the outside of school. (Sadly, they've stopped doing that at my kids' school, so only the older one got to participate in one.) Then we'd all race home and put on our costumes - but we couldn't TOT until after dinner (dusk if you can believe it). We'd grab our pails (or pillowcases in later years after we were allowed off block (amazingly they let us roam wherever we wanted)) and head out, hitting any & every house possible. We'd come home at least once to dump off candy before going back out; I think our curfew was 9pm. And the mountain of candy we'd have after - it would last until Xmas.

Sorry that was so long. Hmmm, I guess my favorite things from when I were a kid were my TOT pail & the classic costumes, because they remind me of how much fun we had TOTing as a kid.

Great post We'en! Sums up the anticipation a lot of us felt as kids!

Well, I was ToTing in the late 80s through a good bit of the 90s. When I was younger my costumes were usually handmade by my mother. I do remember my first ever costume when I was three. I was a vampire, Bela Lugosi flavor, with a handmade cape and plastic fangs way too big for my mouth. That's actually probably the earliest clear memory I have! Which might explain why I love Halloween so much. In later years I was Batman a couple of times, I believe a Ninja Turtle once, a vampire a couple more times, and even Jason once (I remember being super pumped that my sister's boyfriend let me use his real hockey mask). When I was a bit older, I remember saving up my allowance for weeks so I could buy really impressive masks to wear. The first one I bought I actually still have, a werewolf mask that's beat to hell now, but I could never throw it out.

My sister was a Jaycee, so when I was around 10 or so I started working in their annual Haunted House. I was just a gopher when they were setting it up, but they let me act in the house, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. The first year I played a victim before the first room, which, looking back, was actually kind of a big job since I had to set the mood for the whole House. Then I moved on to other roles, like a witch (which I guess the idea was I had been burned at the stake, so they covered my face with this really gnarly burn makeup), or what was probably my favorite when they had me in this hallway splattered with glow-in-the-dark paint and had me completely covered in a black suit splattered with the same paint, so the guests couldn't see me until I started moving.


As far as home decorating, we didn't do much. A Jack O' Lantern, obviously, and some spider webs maybe. When I officially stopped ToTing at about 13 I took over decorating and started to do things a little more elaborate.

Well, that went on for a while, huh?

70 and 80's tot here.The carved jol was everywhere.Candy apples were always made.The plastic costume that never made it thru the night I would always split the butt-What can I say I have always had a big butt lol.I always even loved the smell of the costumes.
Trading our candy when we got home.I always wanted the sugar daddy suckers.