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Being bionic

Cowboy and army man are nice but being Steve Austin is the bomb. This set likely comes from Berwick, a UK company that specialised in role play items for kids and made fun stuff like a Tom Baker Doctor Who and Captain Britain costumes for kids.

Costume of the Week: Ultra-Man

As much as I’d like to say I own this killer Collegeville Ultraman suit, I don’t. Fortunately for me, Corey volunteered some shots of his collection to the blog including the two variations of this classic suit, more after the jump. Above is the first version suit and smock, I don’t know why they chose […]

Costume of the Week: Ark 2

It couldn’t get more obscure or joyous for me. Growing up, I LOVED Filmation’s post apocalyptic series “Ark 2“ with a passion. So i nearly did a spit take when I discovered this Halloween costume on the ebay. I would have fought tooth and nail for it but I was lucky enough to snag it […]

Halloween in the UK

Lovin’ this selection of Party masks I found in a UK toy catalog, I’m assuming those are the Ben Cooper Universal Monsters masks being sold as a set without smocks, the things you learn!

1978 Berwick Toys Catalog

Most North Americans have probably never heard of UK based Berwick toys before but that should change because they created a lot of fun and inspired toys  for the English market. Berwick’s main items seem to be role play such as their line of play suits and games. 1978 saw the introduction of a toy called […]

1987 Imagineering Halloween Catalog Featuring Elvira

The one thing that was a constant for children of the 70s and 80s was as soon as the seasonal aisle of your local drugstore was done with back to school, it became filled with gory fun items in anticipation of Halloween. There were items such as fake fangs and vampire blood that we all […]

Unexpected Halloween costume collection

I honestly never set out in this life to collect Halloween costumes, I blame working on this site because now I’ve got a bunch of these things littering my house and I thought I’d share. It all began with the Ben Cooper Frankenstein above, which I bought two years ago yesterday at a toy show […]

Halloween Costumes: Best Selection in Town!

Love, love, love this ad from ’79, all the faves are here, Mork, Remco KISS your face, Imagineering’s “The Face” but the big standout on this piece would be the “Incredible Melting Man” makeup kit by Imagineering. Based on the movie of the same name (which is also a great episode of Mystery Science Theatre […]

1979 Collegeville means KISS (and some Cylons)

Awww yeah, we wrap up our month of Halloween with our third dip into the “Collegeville barrel” with this grooving catalog from 1979.’79 saw some great new additions to Collegeville as they scored some major licenses most important at the time would be KISS, the rock band that wore Halloween costumes 24/7. For the space […]

1978 Collegeville Halloween Costume Catalog

With it being October, I tend to get a little nuts with the Halloween costumes especially my favourite company Collegeville.1978 was a fun year for Collegeville, sure they didn’t have Star Wars but did Ben Cooper have the Hardy Boys? Not a chance. The 1978 Collegeville catalog is exploding with characters and creations that made […]