Trick-or-Treat: A Nostalgic Journey into 80s and 90s Halloween
The evolution of Halloween then vs now
Dear Reader— This post is an excerpt of my work-in-progress book dedicated to fellow nostalgists like me. It’s my love letter to Generation X. Please make sure you are subscribed to my newsletter to receive updates and future excerpts. Here are links to additional excerpts I have shared:
As the crisp autumn air settles in and leaves begin to turn, those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s can't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for the Halloweens of our youth. It was a time of tremendous excitement, creativity, and just a hint of spookiness that made October 31st the most anticipated day of the year.
I realize it’s not October yet. But it’s almost October and someone has to be the first to usher in the excitement of Halloween.
I’m not sure about you, but my parents hated Halloween. They called it Satan’s holiday. Maybe this was a typical thing in Christian households, because you know, 80s Christian is the most hardcore Christian. But for us kids it was a blast, and I tried to keep it simple with Dracula fangs and some cheap face paint that ate through my skin. We just wanted to fit in, and my sisters and I did whatever we could to enjoy the holiday without alarming our parents. Were your parents like this or did they let you enjoy Halloween without making you feel like you were going to go to hell?
The Costumes
One of the most thrilling aspects of Halloween was choosing the perfect costume. In the 80s and early 90s, popular choices often reflected the pop culture of the time. We eagerly donned plastic masks and vinyl suits to transform into our favorite characters. He-Man, She-Ra, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Ghostbusters were costumes I remember seeing for years throughout the two decades. For girls, Madonna-inspired looks with lace gloves and teased hair were a hit, while boys often opted for Universal Monster costumes. Central to these memories are the iconic Ben Cooper costumes and masks, which defined Halloween for an entire generation.
Ben Cooper, Inc., founded in 1937, became synonymous with Halloween for generations of kids, especially from the 1950s through the 1980s. Their simple yet effective costumes—typically a plastic mask paired with a vinyl smock—were the definitive costumes of our childhood.
What’s your favorite Ben Cooper Halloween costume from the past?
The appeal of Ben Cooper costumes lay in their affordability and accessibility. We could easily transform into our favorite characters—from superheroes like Spider-Man and Batman to characters like Barbie and Disney princesses. The masks featured vibrant colors and exaggerated features, making them instantly recognizable.
While these costumes might seem cheesy or even slightly creepy by today's standards, they were the epitome of Halloween cool for every child. The slight discomfort of wearing a plastic mask that pressed against your face was a small price to pay for the thrill of becoming your favorite character for a night.
Ben Cooper costumes are highly collectible today, with many enthusiasts seeking out vintage designs. The company produced an assortment of characters, including classic horror icons and popular figures from television and film. Each costume often came in various box designs, adding to their collectability.
Despite their simplistic design, Ben Cooper masks have a certain nostalgic charm that resonates with those who wore them. They evoke memories of trick-or-treating in noisy plastic costumes while carrying pillowcases, garbage bags, or McDonald's pails for candy collection. For me, I’ll never forget the smelly plastic of the mask!
As we rolled into the 90s, our tastes shifted towards more DIY costumes. Armed with face paint, cardboard, and a healthy dose of imagination, we got really creative. Some of us became Nintendo game cartridges while others concocted amalgamations of various monsters. After the movie Scream was released, Ghostface masks were everywhere! The rise of grunge culture also influenced costume choices, with many of us opting for flannel shirts and ripped jeans to emulate our favorite rock stars.
McDonald's Halloween Pails: The OG Trick-or-Treat Flexing
No discussion of 80s and 90s Halloween would be complete without mentioning the McDonald's Halloween pails. First introduced to the general public in 1986, these plastic buckets came in three designs: a white ghost named "McBoo," an orange pumpkin called "McPunk'n," and a green witch dubbed "McGoblin". Each year, we eagerly anticipated the return of these pails, which served not only as trick-or-treat buckets but also as collectibles.
By the way, every kid had to have one of these pails. I certainly did, so I made sure I was on my best behavior and also made sure that my parents didn’t know it was tied to Halloween. I remember saying they were Happy Meal buckets. We never really fooled them. Oh, the lies we told for the love of Halloween!
Halloween on the Small Screen
Television played a significant role in building Halloween excitement. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" became an annual tradition for our families, and still is for many GenX kids. Other Halloween specials like "Garfield's Halloween Adventure" and "The Halloween Tree" also became yearly favorites. I still put these on for my kids every year. I really look forward to these and they seem to always put me in the spirit of the holidays.
As cable TV programs expanded in the 90s, channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network introduced their own Halloween programming blocks. Who could forget NICK or Treat "Halloweenie" or Cartoon Network's "Halloween Eve"?
School Parties Were Our Daytime Halloween Fix
For many of us, Halloween celebrations began at school. Classrooms were transformed with orange and black streamers, paper jack-o'-lanterns, and spooky window clings. The highlight was often the class party, where we paraded in our costumes and indulged in cupcakes decorated with plastic spider rings and candy corn.
These parties usually featured games like bobbing for apples and pin the nose on the pumpkin. Some schools even organized haunted houses in their gymnasiums, staffed by enthusiastic parent volunteers and a few of the funner teachers!
Home Decorations Were A Must
It blows my mind how intricate Halloween decorations are today compared to when we were growing up. Halloween decorations in the 80s and 90s tended to be more modest compared to today's elaborate displays. Our homes featured carved pumpkins on the porch, perhaps accompanied by a grinning skeleton or a stuffed scarecrow. In the 90s, inflatable decorations began to appear, with giant pumpkins and ghosts becoming increasingly common.
Inside, we might hang paper skeletons or strings of pumpkin lights. Bowls of candy corn were staples on coffee tables across America.
One of the most memorable decorations for me were the blow mold plastic ghosts, witches, and pumpkins. They were cool and sometimes even creepy.
The Great Candy Scare of The 80s
While Halloween was largely a time of joy and excitement, it wasn't without its anxieties. The 80s and 90s saw the peak of parental concerns about tampered Halloween candy. Stories of razor blades in apples and poisoned treats circulated widely, leading our parents to meticulously inspect our candy hauls… which was pretty irritating!
This fear led to the rise of "trunk-or-treat" events and Halloween parties at community centers, offering a perceived safer alternative to traditional trick-or-treating. However, for us, the thrill of going door-to-door in the neighborhood remained an irreplaceable part of the Halloween experience.
I can vividly remember being told by teachers to watch out for apples with razor blades in them. Maybe this was a Detroit thing? I’ve even heard stories of poisoned candy. If I brought any candy home from school, my parents were combing through it. These are the same people that would let me play outside until dark, never really checking on me.
Devil’s Night
In Detroit during the 1980s, Halloween eve became infamously known as "Devil's Night," a period marked by widespread arson and destructive behavior that reached alarming levels. This phenomenon was unique to Detroit in its scale and intensity, drawing national and even international attention.
The night of October 30th saw a dramatic spike in intentionally set fires across the city, particularly targeting abandoned buildings and homes. I remember on Halloween Eve my dad would gather us all together for a prayer in our home and he would tell us not to be afraid of anything. I also recall he said he might need to wake me up to help him put out any fires that could affect our home. I remember one Halloween Eve in the early 80s where our front porch lit up in flames and we rushed out to put out the fire. I learned from my father that someone had thrown a glass bottle with t-shirt fuse full of gasoline onto our porch. When I got older I learned it was called a Molotov cocktail. One of our neighbor’s homes was burned to the ground one year.
In 1984, the situation reached its peak, with firefighters responding to a staggering 810 fires over a three-day period around Halloween. This was a massive increase from the typical 50 to 60 fires Detroit would normally experience in a 24-hour period. The city was engulfed in an eerie, smoky haze on Halloween morning, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere.
The roots of this destructive tradition can be traced back to earlier, more harmless pranks, but it escalated dramatically in the 1980s. Several factors contributed to this escalation, including rising unemployment, an increasing number of abandoned properties, and a general sense of urban decay. Also, there were a lot of assholes that just wanted to partake in the destructive activities of the night. The situation became so notorious that it attracted "fire buffs" from other states and even countries, who came to witness the blazes firsthand. The city's authorities struggled to contain the problem, leading to the implementation of curfews, increased police and fire department patrols, and eventually, community-led initiatives to combat the destruction. (See resources below)
Trick-or-Treating Was The Main Event
As twilight fell on October 31st, neighborhoods came alive with the sounds of excited children. Armed with plastic pumpkins, pillowcases, garbage bags, or those coveted McDonald's pails, we set out to collect as much candy as possible. The air was filled with the rustling of leaves, the chorus of "trick or treat," and the occasional gun shot in the air from a particularly enthusiastic neighbor's house. This was common in Detroit. In fact, it was common on every holiday in Detroit.
I couldn’t wait to get some of my favorite candies, such as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Baby Ruth, Milky Way, M&Ms, Butterfinger, 100 Grand, Kit Kats, Almond Joy, Mounds, and candy corn. In the 90s, new additions like Gushers and Fruit by the Foot added some variety to the typical chocolate-heavy hauls.
What was your favorite Halloween candy?
Do you remember how fun it was to dump the candy on the table and start sorting it and trading up if a friend got something better? I remember some negotiations and trades got pretty heated! Living room floors across America were covered in piles of sweets as children categorized their loot. It was a time honored tradition to maximize our favorite treats.
Halloween Music and Movies
Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was a staple at every Halloween dance, while "The Monster Mash" remained a perennial favorite. Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man's Party was one that I loved, and Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” was another.
Movie marathons were another crucial part of the Halloween experience. Classics like "Hocus Pocus," "The Addams Family," and "Beetlejuice" were in heavy rotation. For those seeking more thrills, slasher flicks like "Halloween" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" provided plenty of scares.
I think one of the best things to happen to me in the early 90s was when my father somehow got his hands on a cable descrambler, also known as the “black box.” This thing changed my life. I could watch all the pay channels like HBO, Skinemax… ahem, Cinemax, Showtime, and so many more! That meant I could watch horror movies that would never air on standard cable television. It was a game-changer.
Halloween Evolved
As we got older we found other ways to celebrate Halloween. We left trick-or-treating to the kids as we moved on to Halloween parties at home with friends.
In the late 90s I started my collegiate career and Halloween evolved into more of an adult holiday celebration. I was at San Diego State and I remember rooming with two dudes in a three bedroom apartment overlooking the Aztec Center (Viejas Arena). We threw parties like “Pajama Jammy Jam” and “A Night in Compton.” Crazy, ridiculous stuff. But everyone used to look forward to our Halloween party, where costumes were required. We used to give out prizes for the most creative, scariest, or hottest costumes.
I also remember we attempted to convert the apartment complex into a haunted house. Incredible times for sure.
I’m sure a good part of how I feel about Halloween today compared to the past is nostalgia driven, but I strongly believe Halloween felt raw and real in the past. There were so many unknowns. I feel like today we have everything buttoned up. We know exactly where we are taking our kids, and if we’re going to a community or church event, we sort of already know where the candy came from!
Halloween has definitely lost its edge. The holiday has become more sanitized and controlled, and I admit I’m guilty of this too sometimes, that we’ve prioritized safety over spontaneity. Maybe it’s not a bad thing.
Costumes are often meticulously planned, purchased from stores or online, rather than thrown together with a mix of creativity and resourcefulness. While there’s still joy in dressing up and collecting candy, the thrill of late-night escapades has been replaced by structured activities and heightened parental oversight. My oldest kid doesn’t really watch horror marathons like I used to. However, as of the day I’m writing this, we talked about doing a Halloween movie marathon this year for sure. I’m thinking the first three Halloween films and a dose of Friday The 13th.
For many of us, this shift feels like a loss of the authentic spirit that once made Halloween a time for adventure and mischief—a night where anything could happen.
But hey, one thing’s for sure, and that’s not having to worry about Molotov cocktails being thrown on our front porch!
Thank you for reading. I hope this kickstarts your Halloween excitement!
I have this memory of bobbing for apples at a classmate's Halloween party maybe 30 years ago and I'm like "did that really happen?" I also remember getting homemade candy apples at least a time or two while trick or treating. I can't even IMAGINE these things happening in the present day. "Raw and real" truly is the best way to describe 80s and 90s Halloweens haha.
My last Ben Cooper costume was Luke Skywalker in X wing flight suit, still my favorite. I did manage to pick up in early 2000s a regular Luke costume still in the box at a flea market. Thanks for the walk down nostalgia lane👍🏻