I love Halloween and it's actually my favourite holidays because it is the one day everyone gets to be a kid again. I have a lot of great memories from school Halloween parties to enjoying the trick or treating and the decorations. My favourite part is wearing a costume. Sometimes, I wish I could still wear one.

With that said, my favourite costume even to this day was the one I wore when I was four years old: I was a monarch butterfly. To this day, I have never worn a costume that brought me as much joy or was as elaborate as that one. What about all of you? What was the best costume you ever wore for Halloween and how old were you?

I never really had a particular favorite or a “best” costume, however, I would say that my most successful costume was Mr. Potato Head . . . I say “successful” because I ended up in that costume for three different Halloweens: two of which were not ncessarily by choice. The reason that costume went over so well was because it actually had removable parts, so I could make all sorts of wacky looks on the potato body of my coutume by moving the eyes, nose, mouth around.

Now, my most embarrassing costume was as a Teletubbie . . . specifically Laa-Laa, so I guess I was technically cross-dressing that Halloween, since Laa-Laa was a girl Teletubbie. In my defense, Teletubbies had just made their Trans-Atlantic debut in the U.S. earlier that year, and even though me and my peers were well above the target age bracket (we were 8-9 years old at the time), we were all strangely drawn to it, and because of that, I dressed as Laa-Laa for Halloween that year.

Another costume I remember from my childhood was the Tin Man from THE WIZARD OF OZ - while the costume wasn't actually made of tin, I did wear metalic face paint, and IIRC, I think I even attended a Halloween party or two in that costume. One year I wanted to dress as Bullwinkle, but the costume had been recalled due to it being flammable or something, I don't remember, but that was one of the years I ended up going as Mr. Potato Head again (again, not by choice, but it was a last-minute change in plans). I think I may have gone as Clopin from Disney's HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, I can't quite remember, but I was really obsessed with that movie when it came out, and he was my favorite character - I do remember my dad made me the collars of his costumes out of felt, but I ordinarily wore those around the house when I'd play act and re-enact his scenes from the movie for my parents. My last Halloween I went trick-or-treating when I was 12, I went as a pirate, but honestly, I didn't really put that much effort into the costume . . . I bought a really nifty pirate hat with a feather in it, and I got a plastic sword, but otherwise, I think I just wore a plain shirt with a tattered vest over it and jeans, that was it.

When I was eight or nine, I was a Cub Scout and saw instructions in Boy's Life magazine on how to make a suit of plate armor out of cardboard. I was into knights and King Arthur so I made it. Needed silver spray paint for the metal look. A gallon bucket of ice cream or fried chicken wss the helmet and oversized grey sweat suit was the chain mail. I also made a sword and a surcoat with the three crown crest of one version of king Arthur.
Like so many other things in my childhood it was a lot of effort for a lot of disappointment. The ostracized friendless kid doesn't suddenly become popular with the best Halloween costume except in TV shows. Plate Armor is very specially sized so I outgrew the armor as I grew into the once oversized sweat shirt.

I later used the cardboard sword making for a production of the Hobbit we did in eighth grade. Made about fifty swords in different styles for the Battle of the Five Armies scene. My mother could get me all the cardboard I wanted from Bamberger's gift boxes. People returned gifts with the boxes so the once used boxes piled up and she brought them home and I made all sorts of stuff.

My most memorable Halloween costume was probably the last ditch effort to celebrate Halloween in Los Angeles about fourteen years ago.

The night of Halloween, I had no costume and no ideas, so I hopped on a Metro to the 99cents Only Store on La Brea and Wilshire and purchased a whole ton of random garbage for ten dollars from tiki torches to a shower curtain with a palm tree print (that I thought, at the time, would make a decent cape), a kit of face paint or cheap make up, and some other Bozo equipment. The attempt to put together a creative costume while riding a city bus proved futile after exiting on San Vicente Boulevard and hearing someone shout out of a passing car, “What the Hell is THAT?!”

We don't really have Halloween. I always wanted to go trick or treating as a kid, but what can you do if in your country people think the only appropriate way to have any holiday remembering the dead is by going to the cemetery and quietly crying, grieving, etc. Of course as an adult you can always dress up as some slutty nurse and go to a dance club for Halloween, but generally and especially for kids this day is no fun allowed - compared to people in the US.

I love costume parties, once I hosted one with the theme of already deceased celebrities with some implication on how they died. I was dressed up as David Foster Wallace. I'm surprised no one came as David Carradine. It was fun.

I was a hunchbacked old lady carrying a baby on her back. My head was the baby's head. And I had a stuffed onesie for the baby's body. The lady's head was a mask with ping-pong balls in the eye slots. It was a real neat optical illusion. (And when I got tied of balancing the pillow forming then hump on my shoulder I can unpin the onesie and carry it around transfoeming it into a pretty good Wednesday Adams costume.) Can't remember my age at the time but I think I was somewhere between 15 and 16

https://pin.it/390a18F
(Not me but this is pretty much what it looked like. Instead of a bonnet, I had my hair braided and pinned into Leia buns.)


My worst memory about the costume as I lost the costume contest to a guy that painted himself blue and put on a diaper.



I think my second favorite was around the same time frame, but all I did was rip up some old clothes, put on yellow lip gloss, and left one shoe at home. Instant zombie costume.

Niccea wrote:


My worst memory about the costume as I lost the costume contest to a guy that painted himself blue and put on a diaper.

So the winner of the contest dressed up as a Smurf?

Cool idea with the Leia buns, it opens up so many potential costume ideas— Darth Vader or Padme carrying baby Luke and Leia; Luke Skywalker carrying adult sized Yoda; The Mandalorian carrying Grogu; Han Solo or Leia carrying baby Kylo Ren; or C3PO carrying R2D2.

My three year old found his favorite costume over the weekend.

RAWR!!