How Ben Cooper Built a Halloween Empire
These mass-produced costumes were not only able to keep up with the most popular characters of the time, but they were affordable. Cooper sold their sought-after costumes for $3 (around $12 today). The costumes were nothing more than plastic masks and (essentially) plastic or cheap fabric bags with logos and pictures printed on them, but kids didn’t’ care.
They still got to disguise themselves as whatever they wanted. This isn’t to say the scary, death-related costumes went away. There was no shortage of ghosts, movie monsters, demons, devils, skeletons and other spooky souls. And these, too, became mass-market costuming realm.
