Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Halloween Costumes

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Halloween costumes are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Halloween costumes known for being spooky and famous too. Nobody thinks much about them so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Halloween costumes are secretly incredibly freakening. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Me! It's me. What is your relationship to or opinion of Halloween costumes? My first Halloween I was a pumpkin. I was a little baby pumpkin. How young? Were you one of those babies in a pumpkin outfit? I was one of those babies.

Ah, it's such a good baby costume. I was one of those babies that you swaddle them and you put them just in a pumpkin. Like not a real pumpkin. Because so many babies are a little pumpkin in my heart, you know? So when they're dressed as a pumpkin it's extra good. Halloween costume number two. I was a cow. Oh, that's fantastic. I had that look like a cow and my mom glued some yellow yarn on it so it looked like I was eating hay. That's really good, man. Halloween costume number three.

I was a Tinkerbell. I had a bag full of glitter. I threw glitter everywhere. It went everywhere. It got everywhere. Yeah. I know you could riff this list, but I'm curious legitimately how many costumes in a row you could probably remember. Okay, after that was a bat. After that was a cat. No, those words just rhyme. You're just saying words that rhyme. No, I'm not. I'm actually not. I remember. I was about one year and then a cat the next

year. Cool. Okay, that's when I stopped remembering. That's pretty good. Either photos are my own memory. The earliest one I can remember is my mom homemade is basically like a sandwich board thing, but it was a costume of being Thomas the Tank Engine. And then other Thomas the Tank Engine characters, like the front and the back on me. It was great. Made me really happy. That tracks. Yeah. Yeah. That's very good.

Yeah. Because you can be a train who thinks and has adventures. Honk honk. Toot toot. You're a train. And did you advertise on the back of the sandwich board, just like, the end is nigh for you, because you're on train tracks. Beep beep, honk honk, get out of the way. Yes, sandwich boards are very apocalypse guy coded. So yeah, I was very lighthearted with that. I love the fun, sort of creative costumes that parents do for their kids.

Like I saw one recently that was a Chobani flip cup. It was yogurt. Like the kids, because like kids just want stuff sometimes. Like, and this kid wanted to be a Chobani. To be a Chobani. He wanted to be a Chobani. And the parent was like, OK, let's have this happen. And it's kind of similar, right?

Sandwich board-ish kind of set up, you know, Chobani logo printed out with like various sort of things taped to it to make it look like the mix-ins, you know, like sprinkles, big sprinkles that were pom-poms. Yeah. Boy, this is an exciting topic, you know? And shout out to Dacoupe Bear on the Discord for suggesting it. Also, there is a past episode about Halloween stores, which doesn't overlap that much. You don't need to have heard it. And we also won't

cover costumes and clothes for Dia de los Muertos and other traditions that people say are related to Halloween or are related to Halloween. There's a whole episode in just US and Canada style commercialized trick or treat Halloween costumes. Like we can do a whole episode just about that. So it's amazing. Got it.

It's the type of costumes from like the Simpsons where it's a radioactive man, but you've got the plastic mask, but then you've got a smock that has radioactive man on it. And Lisa's like, why would radioactive man wear a plastic smock that has radioactive man on it? Yeah, masks and smocks will even be a whole thing. Yeah. Like it's the other one I think of is Charlie Brown trying to make a ghost costume and it's too many holes. Like this sort of tradition is what we're talking about. Remind me in that, was he cutting out the ghost costume himself or was that like a parent made it for him but did too many holes?

If I remember right, he did a bad job himself. I see. It's sort of like when he tries to write with a fountain pen and his pen pal letter is a mess. Like he can't effectively cut two holes and he keeps going and then it's just covered in holes. He's incompetent, which is why no one likes him, including his dog. That's right.

A lack of respect for sure. Snoopy loves him and doesn't quite respect him. It's interesting. There's no respect there. Snoopy sees him as an idiot child who is a danger to himself and to others. Yeah. Folks, on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that's in a segment called...

I was working on the numbers late one night when my eyes beheld an eerie sight. From Alex his slab began to rise and suddenly to my surprise they did the stats. They did numbers and stats. The numbers stats. They were a mathematical smash. We did the stats. they caught on in a flush The safe post that's we did the surf pod starts Folks that that was a collaboration on the discord. Thank you to James Amaz, thank you to Hunter Pope, thank you to AAZK for all coming together

and workshopping that. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Missillian way I can bet as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpotatgmail.com. Give me more ones where I don't have to sing, but I can do like a drunk Vincent Price. All of culture said, you're fun, Vincent Price. Yeah, Olive Culture said, you're fun Vincent Price, and we're going to do you in all contexts for Halloween.

It's great. Oh, your whole personality and deal? Thank you. They just took it. Yes. The first number this week is $700 million US dollars. The most expensive costume in the world. I feel like later we'll talk about a candidate sort of for that.

But I think I know who it is. I think I know who it is. Supermodel? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The 700 million US dollars, that's a retail industry estimate. So it could be exaggerated, but it's kind

of the best we've got. Retail industry estimate for 2023 American Halloween spending on pet costumes. For animal pets. Yeah, like you dress up your pet. I see. That's amazing. It is very interesting. I remember when we used to work in an office building, we had like an animal Halloween costume contest, which was very cute. Oh, I forgot. And that's such a good memory.

Why did I forget that? Yeah, that's great. Ma'am. My dog, if I tried to dress her up in a little costume, would bite every single one of my fingers clean off my hands. So I don't do it. The most I got was a little bow tie. Oh, on her?

On Cookie? Yeah. That makes sense. And I can be like, she's Bill Nye. I don't know. We attempted one year to put a little lion hat on our cat Watson, who's kind of orangey. And it's great except it fully covered his actual real life

ears. So he obviously was not pleased with it. He'd just shake it off. I was like, you're right. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm a cat. This is like my most important sense. My most important sensory organ. Yeah. I think we like sort of rested it on him, got one fast picture and then gave it away and never tried again. We were like, that's the deal. Perfect. That's all you need. Yep, that's it.

So that survey was 2023. Going to link two different NPR stories because in 2022, an NPR team covered the question of whether costuming is stressful for dogs specifically. And the answer was like vague and interesting. They talked to Candice Crony, who's a professor and the director of animal welfare science at Purdue University. She said there's been no direct scientific study of it as of 2022, but her general advice is that it's kind of like all dog clothes.

So for one thing, it should fit well and let them move well. But also if your pet never wears clothes outside of Halloween, that's probably relatively stressful. Yeah. But if they often wear jackets and raincoats and stuff, then that might be more okay. It might be all right. Yeah, my dog wears a thunder shirt,

which is sort of medicinal, I suppose, but she only wears it during thunder. She which is sort of medicinal, I suppose, but she only wears it during thunder. She doesn't necessarily like it, but it does seem to calm her down. So yeah, I just don't, I don't mess with that. But I feel like dogs, there's a lot of dogs who are cool with like clothing. I do like that one dog costume that's like the spider, where it's like, it's got all these jiggly legs.

You put it on a small dog. That's the best part about it is you put it on like a Chihuahua, but it kind of looks like a giant tarantula. And as it's walking around, all its legs are sort of jiggling convincingly. Yeah. And survey in 2023, they listed a top five most popular costumes for pets, like costume ideas, you know? Number one was, I started at the top, number one was a pumpkin. Dress your pet as a pumpkin.

Well, it's a, it's a similar sort of baby thing, right? Where it's like, you're just a little pumpkin. So you're going to be a pumpkin. Yeah. You know, there's nothing you can do or say about it. Just be a little gourd. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then number two, I feel like this is especially for long dogs. Number two is a hot dog. Like great. Really fun. Yeah. Really good. The long dog. It is, you just put the bread on because you don't even need to make the wiener part. It's just the bread part. Right. It's just the bun. The rest of the top five, number three is a bat, number four is a bumblebee, number five is a spider. So all that insects and arachnid stuff.

I'm surprised at the bat one. I'm trying to figure out how that would work. Because I was a little bat when I was a kid, but my mom sewed me wings so the fabric would go like under my arms. So I guess for a dog, you would just have like a sweater with like wings on the back. You know, yeah. But anatomically speaking, because bat wings are hands that have big, a lot of skin in it. So like if you just have four legs and then wings, to me, that doesn't feel bat.

That feels more like demon. I was just thinking the other year I saw a dog dressed as an angel and the wings were just sort of rigid and coming off a little thing on their back. I assume the bat costume is kind of like that for a dog. That would make sense, yeah. But it is a chimera. It is a weird combination of animal parts for sure. Right.

That number five costume was a spider. Speaking of spiders, the next number is 1963. Okay. The year 1963. The year we invented spiders. Sort of, it's the year when Marvel Comics partnered with a costume company to license a Spider-Man Halloween

costume. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. The web slinger himself. Yeah, and this is kind of a pop culture and Halloween landmark because the source here is an amazing piece for Slate.com by Charles Moss. He says, a Spider-Man Halloween costume was the first licensed Marvel product. Whoa, seriously. I would have thought the Hulk hands came first.

Oh, that's a really fun idea. The Spider-Man costume is a product partly of Spider-Man being a little of an accident. He was introduced in a comic called Amazing Fantasy, issue number 15. It wasn't even a Spider-Man number one or something. And they licensed a costume shortly after trademarking the Spider-Man character at all, like just creating a general intellectual property of Spider-Man. What made them feel like that was where the money was? So it's a really weird thing. This is maybe one of the most amazing cases of parallel thinking in pop culture history. Marvel creates the Spider-Man character in 1962 and a full eight years earlier, a Halloween costume company called Ben Cooper Incorporated

had made a costume eight years earlier. The costume was named Spider-Man. And it's an original idea where it's like a yellow outfit covered in black spider webs with a spider crawling on it. And so conceptually, like it's a man made of spiders, sort of. That makes a lot of sense actually. Like when you say Spider-Man and it's a man just made out of spiders, I get

it. It's very Halloween. I think that's a lot more direct than you get bit by a spider. It like gives you spider DNA somehow and then you shoot spider webs out of your wrists. Yeah, out of his wrists. Which really should be more a gland located near your anus, but who's really counting, I guess? That's true.

We all know the silk comes out of the back of a spider. And then Marvel Comics was like, we're not doing that. It doesn't come out of the anus, it comes out of the spinnerets, but that is located on the posterior of the spider. Cool. Okay. And you're exactly right. I feel like the costume company's concept of a spider man is the first idea you would

have. A man made of spiders is exciting and very Halloween. I'm thinking kind of like Jeff Goldblum in the fly, like half spider, half man in a gross way. Yeah. DC Comics made Batman, right? And then later they thought of a guy named Man Bat, who is that the fly kind of thing where it's a guy who's half bat and like a monster.

Is that really innovative though to go like, well, we have a bat man. No, it's very lazy. What about a man bat? They definitely wanted to go to lunch. It's like, well, we have mermaids. What about made mers? But is fish head Lady Bottom? Yeah.

And we're pretty sure that the Spider-Man Marvel character was total parallel thinking. There's debate about who should get the most credit out of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, but we think the Spider-Man idea came from inside the building. They didn't steal it from the Halloween costume. Yeah, because they were coming up with all sorts of blank men. Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Iron Man. Yeah, Aquaman, Cat Boys. No, that later. That was later. No, that makes sense. I don't think they stole it from this kind of costume company,

especially because the concept is just very different. And the odd thing is part of why Ben Cooper quickly licensed a costume of it is that they retrofitted their man-made-of-spiders design to be a Marvel Spider-Man costume. Instead of a yellow webface costume, they made a red and blue webface costume. It kind of just worked out neatly. And also Marvel partly sold it to them because they just didn't know how big Marvel Comics or Halloween costumes could be as a business. Right.

Yeah, I mean I guess like were people spending a lot of money on Halloween costumes yet? Because I know Halloween's been around a good amount of time in America, but it was often the Charlie Brown Ghost situation where you get a sheet and you toss it on you and you get some holes cut out at you and you get a bunch of rocks because the adults in this Charlie Brown universe are really mean. That's right. And we'll get to it later, but by the 1960s, people were buying some pop culture costumes. And we'll talk about why in a takeaway later. Yeah.

Sweet. And then the next number here, back to the present day, the number is 10. All right. Because in 2023, Heidi Klum teamed up with 10 performers from Cirque du Soleil to execute a peacock costume. Oh, Heidi. Heidi, listen. It's amazing. Listen to me, Heidi. She's definitely an odd bird. Her Halloween costumes, though,

I do really respect it. One time she was just earthworm. A giant worm. A giant worm. She had prosthetics on her face that kind of melded in to the rest of her costume. And she was just big worm. And she's like in her classic Heidi Klum fashion like, Oh, you know, I just thought I would be a giant worm, you know. I do respect these, because she's not just like, I'm going to be a hot earthworm, just like, I'm going to be a giant abomination.

Isn't it chic? Yeah, it's very the later books of the Dune franchise, like a creepy humanoid worm thing. But yeah, I did see, I'm actually aware of this. I did see this incredible peac worm thing. But yeah, I did see, I'm actually aware of this. I did see this incredible peacock thing. I love this story for a bunch of reasons. One is, yes, it is made out of a bunch of people. So like even, so like you'd think like, okay, they make up the tail, I get it, I get it.

No, it is Heidi Klum as like the head and neck. A man she's standing on, like he's a chair, is the feet. And then a number of other acrobats in the back are the tail. There's a number of other limbs that are going around that I'm not sure what is happening there. It is fantastic. Like they, it's great. Exactly right. My absolute

favorite part of the story, Alex, is though what her husband was dressed as. Do you know this? No. Her husband, like she's like, okay, so I'm a beautiful peacock. Husband, dear, you are egg. And he was just egg. He was just big egg Which was just him wearing a big egg and his face was painted I missed egg white and so her husband was just big egg She's like Bjork, but the Bjork of fashion. I do appreciate how Insane she is Yeah, she's really committed to this like she loves Halloween right a whole lot Really loves Halloween. Maybe not her husband that much because she's like oh

I'm a peacock made out of a myriad of people forming together our bodies where we do not know where peacock ends and human begins You are egg. You would be egg He's like well, that's okay. How many acrobats do I get she's like no acrobats upset You're egg. You will be egg. He's like, well that's okay, how many acrobats do I get? She's like, no acrobats upside down. None. No, you're not acrobat here. You're egg, just to be egg. What's my motivation?

Egg. Yeah, it's gonna be really heavy and you're on your own. Yeah. Yeah, and they like, when they presented it on the red carpet of the nightclub the acrobats formed a shape and then she climbed through them and up on top of them and It's just wild. She might be the leader of costumes Yeah, she's standing on this man like he is a chair and you know, yeah, which they're trained for. It's fine

related to celebrities the next number is 118 days. Is that how long it took for them to make that egg costume for her husband? Yeah, he was trapped in a laboratory for most of the year. Right. Her family's on the beach. She's like, go into the chamber. You have to prepare. Yeah.

You need to learn what it is like to be egg. So 118 days, that's the length of the 2023 labor strike by the SAG-AFTRA union of film and TV actors in Hollywood. Good for them. 118 day strike. How does this Halloween? The weirdest effect of it on the actors is that the strike included Halloween.

It was from mid July until early November. And they couldn't perform in films or TV, but also they were required to not promote their Hollywood projects. Like a lot of actors who had things come out during the strike just didn't do any press. And then the New York Times reported on this as it happened, in the run up to Halloween, SAG-AFTRA leadership warned their members to not wear Halloween costumes involving intellectual property from major studio productions.

And they said members should quote, celebrate Halloween this year while also staying in solidarity. I get it. You know, it seems kind of like a weird technicality, but I'm following the logic. And it got mixed responses from members. On Twitter, actor Ryan Reynolds posted quote, I look forward to screaming scab at my eight-year-old all night. She's not in the union, but she needs to learn.

Another union actor named John Rocha said that he felt like it was foolish and not letting actors blow off steam to handle this difficult labor action. But other actors complied or even celebrated it and said it wasn't hard to pick something generic or public domain and the labor action is more important than Instagram posting your Halloween costume from Alien or Batman or whatever. Either way with this push, it spoke to how much or little we let pop culture influence our Halloween costumes, especially because next number here is 1.36 billion US dollars with a B. That's a lot of dollars.

Yeah, 1.36 billion was the worldwide box office gross of the Barbie movie as of early September 2023. Yeah. And so not only with it easily being the top movie of the whole year, it was timed in a way where it became the top Halloween costume of 2023. I paid $12 into that, however many billion you said it was. Me too. 1.36 billion. We have a Google results indicating Barbie was the top costume. They do an annual fright geist survey from Google Trends

based on like searches. Barbie was number one. The rest of the top five were number two princess, so not pop culture so much. Just princess. I see. Just generic princess. Yeah. And then number three, Spider-Man. Still a massive costume. Spider-Man just, God, everyone loves the red spandex and shooting webs out of your hands. It's just fun. And then number four, Witch. Number five, Fairy. So both relatively public domain.

And then number six was Wednesday Addams. Yeah, there's a show. Yeah, and the show came out November 2022. So it had enough staying power that it made Wednesday the top Halloween costume 11 months later. I think I did a Wednesday costume at some point. This was ages ago, though, so predates the Netflix show. Yeah, and it's also building on the earlier movies and comics

and having TV show and everything. And the other interesting number from Fright Geist is 22. 22 was the ranking for a costume of Taylor Swift's. And that was the highest rank for a costume based on a real individual. Yeah. I remember once I tried to dress as David Bowie, but I was a college student on both a time and money budget. So I tried to draw a lightning bolt down my face in red lipstick. It smeared everywhere. So it just looked like I was trying to play a car accident victim or something. It didn't really work.

I think I had a lazier college costume, which is I was Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guy to the Galaxy. Oh yeah, bathrobe. Exactly. I owned a bathrobe and I owned probably a maximum of two towels. So I just grabbed one of the towels. You know, you have your towel, like a checkers guy. And nobody knew what I was. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, I'm Arthur Dent. And they're like, I don't read. What do you mean? At least one person told me, you just want to be cozy, right? And I was like, yeah, I'm cozy and lazy. That's correct. Yeah. I think that's great. I love Halloween costumes that are like my pajamas. I'm a sleepy little guy. I just want to go to Shreep. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna hit the hay pretty soon and high. It's late, I ate a

popcorn ball that may or may not have had weed in it, so I'm going to bed. But yeah, and those are our numbers. We have then a couple of amazing takeaways about a lot of the Halloween costume topics we discussed. First one is takeaway number one. Costumes are one of the newest components in the vague history and timeline of Halloween. Oh. So can I guess, this is truly a guess. I didn't like research this or anything.

Yeah. Trick or treat may have come from an earlier thing where it's like you'd go around and either do some minor act of vandalism or receive an apple. And then like the jack-o-lanterns, bet, were old and maybe wearing a weird mask or something. That's my guess. Basically we had pranking before we had the idea of give people candy to not prank you. Right. Okay.

And then there were separate developments of harvest festival stuff like Jack-o-lanterns bonfires pranks, and then a separate trend of costume parties. And then also as a third thing kind of a candy industry gets going and clomps on to all that. When did we kind of start celebrating All Hallows Eve in the US? Because it's more of a US holiday, I thought, or maybe it's also US and Britain. Commercialized US Halloween gets going in the start of the 1900s, and it's also US and Britain. Commercialized US Halloween gets going in the start of the 1900s. And it's actually somewhat vague what traditions piled into that. Alhazif is one of them. And people can find lots of bloggy internet sites that will say,

Halloween is exclusively from Soin or Samhain. I found multiple pronunciations. Samhain or Sowin or Sammon was a Gaelic festival that proceeded to become a Christian event called All Souls Day. It was usually around November 1st and there are several, especially European, pagan and then Christian festivals that we attribute as, that's where Halloween came from. And that's only sort of true. It's more of a one of several things that went into a pot to give us US Halloween. Okay.

But we started doing that in the early 1900s and partly also stole from stuff like Dia de los Muertos and there's not like one traditional route. There's not like one thing. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Even though some of the internet will tell you that. They'll be like, it's definitely Druids and that's not really the thing. It's always them Druids. No, but I think that's similar to modern Christmas, right? Because there's a lot of different traditions and it's not all from Christianity. It's not all from sort of pagan rituals. It seems to be from a variety of different cultural

events that have been stitched together into something that maximizes our fun that we have. Yeah, it's a good parallel. Yeah, because Christmas is like German tan and bombs and Irish and Scottish Yule and a Greek bishop named St. Nicholas. And it's a lot of different thrown together. Yep. I almost put it in the numbers. In 2023, there was a New Jersey school system that both tried to include Christmas stuff in its winter concert and then also block Halloween stuff on Christian grounds.

Guys, come on. And they ended up having to withdraw the blocking of Halloween and say, no, it's really a secular holiday. And then also kept the Christmas songs in the Winter Carnival because nobody's actually doing a war on Christmas. But there is a Christian war on Halloween in some quarters. Oh, it's happening. It's happening, Alex. I'm waging a war on Christmas.

But it's to steal all the presents. Like a Grinch. I also like the idea of a war on Christmas in extremely Catholic Italy. Like, good luck. Oh boy. They'll love it. Man. There are, and it's funny because like, yeah, there's Christmas, but there are so many saints. My God. There's like a parade outside. I'm like, all right, which saint is it this time? So yeah, this like amalgamation of all sorts of different traditions. It helps lead to a US style Halloween. And one key source here is a book.

It's called, Death Makes a Holiday, A Cultural History of Halloween. It's by nonfiction writer and movie historian, David J. Skoll. And he says that there's virtually no records of people dressing in costumes for Halloween before the 1900s. And we actually have a lot of records of costume parties and costumed festivals for different parts of the year in Europe and the US. There were carnivals and parades in the run up to Christian Lent, which you still see in places like New Orleans. And then there were a couple costumey events around Christmas time. There was a holiday before Christmas day called Saturnalia, a holiday after Christmas day called Twelfth Night.

They both involved costumes and hijinks. Skals says also in England, they built up Guy Fawkes Day. So November 5th, there'd be costuming and bonfires and mischief. And that's in the neighborhood of October 31st. So that was an influence on the very English United States. Can I tell you a quick couple of interesting Italian holidays that kind of seem similar? One is, this is actually after Christmas. It's done in Naples and maybe other parts of Southern Italy, but these kids will go around on motorcycles and steal Christmas trees. I mean, it's after Christmas, so they're stealing them them, but they like, they'll go into like a business. I saw it. I saw this happen and I looked it up, like what is going on?

And I looked it up and found this out. But they went into a store, pulled out the tree. I think they'd already taken all the ornaments off because they're expecting this. They know these little, little rapscallions are going to go around. They steal it. They're like, go, go, go. I mean, andiamo, andiamo. And take the tree to their neighborhood,

and they build a bonfire out of the old Christmas trees. And it's a competition to see which neighborhood has the biggest bonfire. Thus the theft. Because it's like, OK, we can use all our own trees, or we can steal them. And so, yeah, it's just a con. It's like capture the flag or something.

That's amazing. Exactly. I think it's fun. I've told other Italians about how I think it's fun. They're like, they're just training these kids to be criminals. Ah, well, yeah. So it's, I guess, controversial.

And there's another Italian holiday, which is actually on my birthday. Similar actually to Dia de Los Muertos. You go to a graveyard, you're bringing flowers or cookies or something, right? And you're sort of honoring the dead, but it's not necessarily a sad day. It's actually basically Dia de Los Muertos, but Italian. Anyways. That makes sense. I'm in Italy, so I'm learning how to steal trees.

And Europe broadly influenced Dia de los Muertos. Like, this is all kind of a set of things touching on each other. We're just a big old bunch of people mashing our cultures together, and I think it's great. Like, as soon as it's December 27th or so, we should start stealing Christmas trees. That's great, because we're done.

We did it. Yeah. We did it. I don't think it start stealing Christmas trees. That's great. Cause we're done. We did it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. We did it. I don't think it's disrespectful at all. It's fun. It seems helpful to me. Like, you know.

Yeah, I get it. It's a chore in New York city actually. Although they were very organized. It was such an organized break-in that I do understand the concern of like, we're training these children how to basically like ransack a store, but it's just Christmas trees. They'll grow up to be Danny Ocean from the Ocean franchise. Oh no.

Danny Ocean. Danny Ocean 11. So like carving up gourds like pumpkins is from some of the old harvest festivals. Bonfires are from tons of harvest festivals and pranks are just sort of a it's getting darker earlier kind of thing in a lot of cultures. But see, I have all this costuming happens separately from late October. OK, so we just kind of smushed them together at some point. How did that happen?

Yeah, so the other key smush element is New York City. And specifically around the 1880s or so, there's adult men's clubs in New York City where adults dress in costumes and hold parades that they call fantasticals. But they did this to celebrate Thanksgiving. Sorry, fantasticals. Good job, fellas. It's very musical theater. It's a little bit Marvel Comics, too, but anyway. Yeah, that's fun. Man, I miss the times when men weren't afraid to be men

and dress up and celebrate fantasticals and wear cravats. Right, this even is a little bit influenced by masquerade balls, you know, like masking. Like it's all tights and dancing, yeah. All right, so we had fantasticals. So men, I guess ladies didn't get to dress up as anything because we were too busy like churning butter or something. Yeah, Skal's book also says that Anne Innovator in this was Queen Victoria and that she started

throwing lavish costume balls when she was queen. So 1800s, like after the beginning of the 1800s. That's surprising to me because like Victoria, I thought her whole deal was nobody gets to have fun. Yeah, that's both true and overstated. The Victorian era was like buttoned up and lascivious and it's a good time. I think we talked about it with the Fig Leaf, Fig's episode. People can check it out. Oh yeah, that's right. Basically New York City and the rest of the Eastern United States proceeds to invent Halloween. Sweet.

One factor is paper products companies looking for an extra angle. In 1912, a paper product maker in Framingham, Massachusetts started offering a free booklet with instructions for turning their products into simple costumes for costume parties. Not necessarily Halloween even, just like people throw costume parties three or four times a year and here's stuff you can make. So what do you mean by like turning their products into costumes? Like either masks or a very simple smack kind of thing. I see so they would be like... They made like crepe paper and stuff you know you can turn it into I see what we would consider a very rudimentary Halloween costume. Well you know I find those sort of charming I love those old pictures of kids and like

what would what would it be like 40s or 50s with a bunch of like weird paper rabbit heads and you're like, it's a cult. It's a candy cult. Because also the other companies getting out and this is candy companies, apparently children, especially in the Irish neighborhoods of New York City, really ramped up their fall pranking and tied it in somewhat to All Hallows Eve and All Souls Day. It's like a tree grows in Brooklyn. Exactly. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith documents this in the 1910s, that kids are seeking candy and wearing costumes around the very beginning of doing

that. But she documents it being a Thanksgiving thing. Kids start developing a lot of the parts of Halloween, but around Thanksgiving. And there's also these fantasticals dancing and costuming at Thanksgiving. And then in 1924, Macy's department store organized a New York City Thanksgiving Day parade, partly to steal the fantasticals thing. They were like, oh, this is a thing people do for fun. We can commercialize it and promote Macy's department store. I see. The New York City amalgamation of a lot of dancing in costumes and pranks and also candy

companies saying, you can use candy to bribe kids to not do this to you. Like apparently in 1920 a Portland, Oregon candy company started producing jelly beans that were labeled as like a solution to kids pranking you. Like you can give them a treat instead of their tricks. That was marketing, right? Like not tongue in cheek, I'm guessing. It's sort of like most phenomena that kids do. It's fine and some people are worried, and that's how the pranks were. It was broadly fine and some people were like, no, this is training them to be Danny Ocean and bad.

It's like the same thing, yes. The kids stealing trees and naples. So like, what were generally the nature of the pranks? Was it like, I will burn down your home unless you fill me full of sugar? Or was it stuff like, I put bananas in your mailbox? It was kind of all of it and sometimes it went too far, which kind of fits Halloween costumes and pranks to this day. Like some people do it weird and bad

and some people do it fun. Yeah. Yeah, don't egg people's houses. Don't toilet paper people's houses. It's a waste of toilet paper. I do feel like the trauma of the pandemic when we all ran out of toilet paper should like teach children like,

toilet paper is actually very useful and wasting it is like really bad. We could do a toilet paper episode sometime. Anyway. We should. We really should. Why haven't we? It would be really good.

Yeah. Maybe people are concerned I don't want to talk about poop, but I would talk about poop. It's great. Let's talk about toilet paper in one episode and then poop in another episode. It might be too fast actually. Guys, if you guys have an appetite for poop, if you guys have an appetite for a poop episode,

come on over to my show Creature Feature where I don't share the same sort of like table manners as Alex. And also, I edit this show, we could do another phrasing on if you have an appetite for poop. We're not going to. Moving forward. Yeah. And so there's no one inventor or cultural landmark, but just the Macy's taking over some Thanksgiving costuming, kids doing pranks, candy as a solution to it. That all sort of aes around the 1930s into, hey, there's a less famous fall holiday around October 31st. What if we do this combination then? There's a brief pause because of sugar rationing in World War II. And then also that

pushes this all of a sudden. Immediately after sugar rationing ends, candy makers promote the idea of candy Halloween events. And that's the broad set of things that generated US Halloween. Yeah, like that makes a lot of sense. Like if you don't have access to candy for a few years and then it's like candy's back on the menu boys, that's got to be exciting. Yeah, and so costuming is kind of a late breaking addition of this. It was one of the last steps was, hey, this thing that some men in New York City are doing at Thanksgiving and that we do at other holidays, let's wear costumes for the fall harvest other parts. That was sort of one of the last steps. Okay. I mean, that makes sense. Again, so many holidays are really just like, yes, some of

them are deeply, deeply religious. I understand that, but a lot of holidays are really just like, yes, some of them are deeply, deeply religious. I understand that. But a lot of holidays and stuff is like, we just want a little bit of fun. We want to dress as Shrek and eat a bunch of nerds ropes. Yeah, and folks, that's a ton of numbers and a takeaway. We are going to come back with another takeaway about a costume danger and a last takeaway about why pop culture costumes are a thing at all. This episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating is brought to you by Wild Grain.

This fall, treat yourself and your loved ones to fresh baked from frozen sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries, as well as limited-time seasonal items like apple, cider, donuts from Wild Grain. Wild Grain's boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their classic variety box, they recently launched a new gluten-free box and a plant-based box that is 100% vegan. Best of all, they take the hassle out of baking since all items bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less

with no mess, no cleanup. And that's really my favorite part because everybody loves a new loaf of bread straight out of their oven. But usually you have to be covered in heaps of flour and tired and a lot of wrist pain from the kneading and so on. A wild grain loaf pops out of the oven as absolutely beautiful piping hot sourdough

bread that you simply take out of your wild grain package and put in the oven. It's truly astounding. It feels like a little oven magic trick. So are you ready to bring all your favorite carbs right to your doorstep? For a limited time, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off the first box, plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com slash sifpod to start your subscription. That's wildgrain.com slash sifpod, or you can use promo code sifpod at checkout. Promo code, SIFPOD at checkout.

Ego some John Hodgman. At Ego some Janet Varney. And we're the hosts of E Pluribus Motto, a podcast dedicated to exploring the mottos of every state in the union. Every episode, we will spotlight one state and discuss its official symbols. The motto, flowers, birds, beverages, songs, and even official state muffins.

Plus we'll hear from guests whose lives have been inspired by the state's iconography and from residents who call that state home. Bring some snacks, a map, and your travel journal because this podcast is a virtual journey like no other. Au de nostrum e pluribus motto quae lipa talia luni de maximum fun. And for the Latin challenged among you and us, listen to e pluribus motto every other Monday on Maximum Fun. Since 2017, Maximum Film has had the same slogan. The podcast that's not just a bunch of straight white guys.

Ooh, we've learned something over the years. Some people out there really do not like that slogan. Listen, we love straight white guys. Well, some of them. But if there's one thing we can't change, it's who we are. I'm Ify, a comedian who was on strike last year in two different unions. I'm Dreya, I've been a producer and film festival programmer for decades. And I'm Alonzo, a film critic who literally wrote the book on queer Hollywood. You can listen to us talk movies and the movie biz every week on Maximum Film.

We may not be straight white guys, but we love movies and we know what we're talking about. Listen to Maximum Film on Maximum Fun or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we are back and we have another takeaway about the roots of Halloween costumes. But before that, there's a thing for right now. It's a big thing to think about, which is takeaway number two. Halloween costumes weirdly highlight the lack of pedestrian safety in the United States. Oh, this is really interesting.

Okay. Yeah, I have a lot of strong opinions about this, but do go on, Alex. It's relatively quick because it's straightforward. Halloween is the biggest night of the year for a year round US problem. Key source here is an amazing piece for Vox.com in 2022 by Muiz Oktar. And again, US style Halloween, it only really takes off after World War II. A lot of it originated in New York City, which is far more walkable than the rest of the country. For those reasons and more, the United States is not laid out for trick-or-treating. It's not a laid out for a lot of things.

Right. And then the additional problem is that a lot of Halloween costumes, ghouls, Batman, it's a lot of dark fabric you're hiding. They're spooky. And spooky is like, you know, shadowy and hiding inside, you know, dark alleys and stuff. So yeah, a lot of black, a lot of, you know, dark colors that are, you know, not so visible. Exactly. And so pedestrians under the age of 18 in the US are three times more likely to be killed by a car on Halloween than any other day of the year. And a 2019 study in

JAMA Pediatrics found that children ages four through eight, that's 10 times more likely. Can we just ban cars that day? Like, my God. I'm serious. I'm not even joking. I think, I really hate cars. I've driven, I have my driver's license. I drive a car all the time. I actually have no problem with people like enjoying cars as like a hobby, right? Like I really like classic cars and so on. It's nuts that kids can't walk around for one night to get their candy and misuse toilet paper and not worry about these cars. It seems like they should just shut down a lot of roads

on Halloween and be like, all right, cars aren't going through here. Yes, we'll keep main roads open, but if there's a residential area, your car's not, sorry, cars aren't going, or like some sort of like very, very low speed limit. Yeah, and the good news specific to Halloween is that we are doing a lot short of that suggestion

from Katie to rectify this. That suggestion from Katie is a great idea. A lot of times parents accompany kids. That's true. A lot of times parents accompany kids and any group can make sure at least one element is brightly colored and highly visible. You can still dress as Batman. You just need a bag or a friend or something that's easy to see.

Reflective Tape Man, the safest costume you can wear. Kind of, yeah. Like if your parents wears one of those yellow vests, you can be whatever you want and just stay near him. Right. Batman and his sidekick. Glow in the dark, please don't run over my child, lady. Like we retire the character of Robin and it's like

Canary or Macaw or just a brighter bird. Robin is actually, he's got the green and the red and the yellow. He's pretty bright. Just make him, oh, if you make him Lego, Lego Robin, right? He's got the like glittery shiny outfit. Like that'd work. Yeah. 1960s Robin, very bright. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And it's even good that the main main Halloween color is like safety orange, you know? Great, cool. Yes, pumpkins, that's right.

The real problem is not even so much Halloween. It's that it turns out the US is just not safe for pedestrians. Year round, the number one cause of childhood fatalities in the US is guns, but number two is motor vehicles. And so Halloween just makes it obvious. And then the rest of the year, it's also going on and with the kids just living their life. Yeah. And also just car design too. We need to limit the size of non-commercial vehicles, in my opinion. Have you seen those images of newer trucks where you see a child next to a truck and

you just see it's impossible. It would be impossible to see that kid unless they're 20 feet away. Yeah. So you're saying there's at most one problem with the Cybertruck. That's interesting. That's cool. Oh yeah, that's weird. I didn't write a video about that or anything.

It's so good. I'm going to link the episode of Somewhere News. Katie, you're right. I'm going to talk about Cybertruck. And I'll link, I wrote a 1-900 hot dog column about a very dumb children's book promoting the Cybertruck. It's a bad vehicle. We don't like.

There's a, are you, Alex, are you serious? There's a children's book promoting it or is this like a joke? It's called The Ugly Truckling and it's about the concept that cyber trucks are too demonized for their shape by people who are like body shaming it. Wait, no, is this a real book?

Yeah, it's real. Alex, it's a serious book, who wrote it? Unfortunately, a a dumb STEM educator who also might be a Scientologist. We're not sure. But yeah. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. So we have a lot to link. That's incredible. Okay, I got to check that out. I didn't know you did that. That's amazing. Totally different costume topic. And kind of a little more costume history.

The end of the main episode is takeaway number three. Two companies built up the US Halloween costume industry and they came at it from very hilarious weird origins. Okay. Both of them didn't really seem to be planning on being Halloween costume companies. What were they planning on being? Like haute couture? I can't say that. Haute couture? One of them started out in mostly vaudeville and European style masquerquerades and the other was a flag company. Okay, so like Venetian masks and then a flag company? Okay. Yeah, we'll talk about each of them. And the first one that came up with the Spider-Man

story, it's called Ben Cooper Incorporated. Okay. They did that first Spider-Man costume all around. The company's just named Ben Cooper Incorporated? Yeah, and I couldn't find a reason that a company founded by the brothers Ben Cooper and Nat Cooper is called Ben Cooper. I don't know why Nat is not in the name. Aw, Nat's the younger brother. Yeah, and Key Source here is an amazing piece for Thrillist.com by Charles Moss, who

also wrote for Slade about something else here. He says that Ben Cooper, Inc. basically invented plastic or vinyl mask with two eye holes and a string around the back for Halloween. Man, did he invent how they smell as well? Because they have a very distinctive smell. It's the material, yeah. Ben Cooper Incorporated invents that and basically invents pop culture costumes and breaking trends costumes because they start out in the 1920s making masquerade ball masks and making props for vaudeville, which was on its last legs but still going.

And so they're in New York City to do this. In the late 1930s, they break into Halloween costumes with one world changing deal. They score a licensing deal to make costumes of the Snow White character from the relatively new entertainment company run by Walt Disney. And this changes Halloween completely. Yeah. Was it just Snow White or were there other ones? Was it like, because I thought maybe they had some dwarf masks as well or was it just Snow White?

They start there and immediately do everything else. Okay. They're so ahead of the game. They make this deal in 1937. And that's technically the premiere date of Snow White, but other than a Hollywood premiere, it isn't in theaters till 1938. They make a bet on this will be huge before people are seeing it. And this is sort of what The Simpsons references to, right?

Because you have a mask of a character, like a Hanna-Barbera character, Batman, Marvel. You sent me a photo that has a Rubik's cube, which is insane. That it's like my face is a Rubik's cube with like eye holes and like it looks like a silly little mouth. The like Simpsons joke where it's like the mask and then you have the smock with a little little character on the smock as well. It's a Ben Cooper joke. Yeah. That was the two things they did. Yeah. They did like the plastic masks and then the smock that has like another picture of the character just in case you missed the mask as well.

And that was a huge hit and it becomes Ben Cooper's business. As soon as the 1960s, they hold about 70% of the US Halloween costume market share. They invented and dominate it. Their business model is to make a licensing deal as early as possible in a pop culture thing, mostly because they needed eight to ten months to set up production lines and logistics for each new costume. So they're just like jumping on things before they're even out yet. And they make them cheap. The mask or smock type garment sells for less than three dollars in 1950s money, which is around 12 bucks today. It's cheap.

I have now zoomed in on this picture that you sent me and there's a wild one. Looks like maybe garbage pail kid. That used to be sort of a thing and it's like a baby covered in spiders. And then there's a man with a noose around his neck and he's making like a face. Yeah, they just did everything. And it's that very mid-century thing of like, your entire costume could just be this mask and then you're in person clothes. You know, it's very idyllic to me. And then there's a Batman like classic sort of thirties Batman. And then there's man with a bat over his eyes, which I find interesting.

Right. And they pretty much invent the pop culture costume. That Spider-Man story we said before, that's why they were on the ball like, oh, Marvel, you just invented a Spider-Man. We'll make a costume. Great. That makes sense. Yeah.

And they were also one of the first Star Wars things you could get. There's a very famous Kenner company toy deal with Star Wars. And one of my sources said that Kenner was so behind on how big Star Wars got that at Christmas some people were buying like a coupon for a future action figure from Kenner. But Ben Cooper was ahead of that. They were telling their factory to make Darth Vader masks when none of the employees knew what Darth Vader was. They were like, I don't know, this is the mold we got. I wonder what this will be.

It's pretty smart too, right? Because that's such an iconic thing, right? You're not just doing like, here's Luke's face because he's the protagonist. It's like no you got to do the villain because he's got the most distinctive face and the cool thing about a mask for a face looks like how it would look like if you're a kid wearing masks so it feels more real like I am Darth Vader because I have a mask just like Darth Vader. Yeah anyone can look like Darth Vader. Anyone can look like Darth Vader. Ben Cooper blows up from this. They only really start to decline in recent decades when people want a more upscale costume. Otherwise, they're huge and we're a real leader. The other leader has an even funnier origin to me because Collegeville Manufacturing is a company that follows Ben Cooper's lead and they also end up battling them for some of the Universal Studios monster

movie IP and making some headway that way. So Ben Cooper had competitors as soon as they came up with their idea. But Collegeville Manufacturing started out as a flag company that was the side hustle of a dentist. What? Like a dentist said, I think I can make extra money founding a flag company, but still being a dentist day to day. Okay.

How did he make that little connection? The main source here is the libraries of Ursinus College, which is near Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Nobody has exactly why this was his side hustle idea, but all we know is in 1909, dentist Samuel Cornish just learns that there is a burgeoning market for flags, especially American flags. It's almost like somebody deciding to start an Etsy store to make stickers today. Like, oh, I just heard on TikTok there's a sticker business, you know? I mean, I guess I like to crochet, so if you're a dentist, you might like to start a flag

empire. He sets up a tiny Collegeville flag company in one room of a building in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, still is a full-time dentist for the next 15 years. He doesn't actively mainly be a flag factory owner until 1924. But it's because it very slowly grew to the point that over 15 years of incremental tiny growth in making American flags, he said, okay, I guess I should focus on this. I see. So he hedged his bets in case we lived in a future where everyone was really patriotic, but nobody had teeth.

Wow, that is true. Both his businesses are filling a definite eternal need, unless there's no longer a United States and society. It's like, look, we don't know. I mean, the thing is, my guy, if there's no longer a United States because of nuclear war, I don't know if people are going to need a dentist. Right. We'll be breaking teeth in the wastelands. Yeah. Teeth will be currency for sure. Right. Yeah, that and bottle caps look and fall out. Yeah. And so two accidents spark the conversion of Collegeville Flag Company into a costume company. One is just the calendar of US holidays. In the 1930s, their business notices that their main busy season is May and the holiday that we now call Memorial Day. And so they said,

oh, hey, like Halloween's the opposite end of the year. We could do like other stuff then. And the other thing is one very specific order. According to the Norristown Times Herald newspaper, one of the main Collegeville flag vendors asked for like a special order of masquerade ball costumes and specifically the clown-ish type, you know? The Collegeville flag company says, this is a very important client, how do we make them clown costumes really fast? So then they took scraps and remnants of discarded American flags and turned them into red, white and blue clown costumes. That is incredible.

I love how many flag codes that has to break. That's wonderful. It's a very funny day at the flag factory. Yeah. God bless America. They did that and then that was in the back of their minds when Halloween really gets going and they say we're pivoting from Collegeville flag company to Collegeville manufacturing company and there is a Halloween story in Collegeville Pennsylvania to this day with origins in the company. Apparently it doesn't really have heating or AC and has very rudimentary plumbing because it's that old. And this is one of the two companies that

kind of founded the holiday. It sounds terrible. Yeah. And they don't spend a lot of time in the building, I don't think. But Okay. I'm just like one of these poor poor people sewing, shredding American flags so they can sew all these clown costumes while sweating heavily and having backed up toilets. That sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, I think it was an average American factory in the 1920s.

So that's how it is. Okay, all right. Well, yeah. Usa, Usa, Usa. Usa, Usa, usa, usa. Usa, usa. And happy Halloween. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week.

Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, costumes are one of the newest components in the vague history of Halloween. Takeaway number two, Halloween costumes highlight the lack of pedestrian safety in the United States. Takeaway number three, two companies built the US Halloween costume industry and came at it from hilarious and accidental origins.

And then so many numbers about costumes for pets, the most popular costumes, the parallel invention of Spider-Man costumes, and more. Those are the takeaways, and I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaxBumFund.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is about the most obscure and US government-based issue of a

racist Halloween costume. There's a million stories of those in general, this one's surprisingly relevant to the Bush administration. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include an amazing book, it's called Death Makes a Holiday, a Cultural

History of Halloween, that is by nonfiction writer and movie historian David J. Skal, also citing work from J. Storr-Dailey, written by Lynn Brown, also leaned on the digital collections of Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, and then tons of journalism from the New York Times, NPR, Vox.com, Variety, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca, I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoat people, and others.

Also KD taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.

This week's pick is episode 101. That's about the topic of stainless steel. And this is a fun fact that I also made a recent TikTok about on an Instagram reel video about Margaret Atwood recently used a flamethrower to attack a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, but it was for charity because it's an unburnable copy bound with the stainless steel used by the aerospace industry. That is also a tiny fragment of that episode, so I highly recommend it. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken, Unhaven by the BUDOS Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to The Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then