Halloween Bats

 

Ben Cooper was born in New York’s lower east side in 1906. He founded a theatrical costume business in 1927. When the Great Depression hit, the theater was one of the first casualties. Ben switched his focus from the stage to Halloween. He obtained a license to produce costumes based on Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Snow White. By the late 1940s, Ben Cooper, Inc. was the one of the largest children’s Halloween costume manufacturers in the U.S. Their costumes were plastic masks with eye holes paired with thin fabric sacks with neck and arm holes. The sacks were silk-screen printed with Halloween figures like skeletons, or television characters like Superman and Davy Crockett. They were inexpensive, one-size-fits-all, and sold literally everywhere. The company took a hit in 1982, when the Tylenol tampering murders all but cancelled Halloween. In 1989 Ben Cooper’s Georgia facility burned to the ground, and their insurance companies refused payment. Ben Cooper, Inc. was dissolved in 1992.