My mom always sewed my Halloween costumes when I was a kid, so I never got to wear one of the many licensed ones featured in the recently released documentary, "Halloween in a Box." I'm not really complaining but the plastic-masked ones you'd find at Woolworth did have a real charm to them. In any event, this film follows the history of these costumes and how its manufacturers had to work together to keep trick-or-treating alive after the Tylenol poisonings of the early eighties.
Before the days of elaborate Halloween costumes, there were costumes in a box. Remember them? We seemingly all wore these costumes as kids. Now hear the story behind these costumes and the history of the big three companies that made them, Ben Cooper Inc, Halco, and Collegeville. For years, these costumes were a beloved Halloween institution dating back in the 1930s. In 1982 at the height of their popularity, the first case of domestic terrorism, the Tylenol Scare shook the United States and threatened to cancel Halloween forever. In an effort to save the holiday, the costume giants, although rivals in business, were forced to come together and unify or trick or treating would become extinct.
Produced by HNN Productions and directed by Rob Caprilozzi, "Halloween in a Box" is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Google Play.
Here's its trailer:
