Hills & Kmart Halloween Ads – October 1970

From the October 23, 1970 Journal

Two department stores which are no longer in Lorain County – Hills and Kmart – ran the expected Halloween-themed ads in the Journal back in October 1970, featuring assortments of costumes, candy and other items.

The Hills ad (shown above) has pretty much the same layout as its 1969 ad (which I made fun of here) with exactly the same costumes. That blog post included the 1969 Kmart ad as well.

At least Kmart revised its ad entirely for 1970 (below). 

From October 21, 1970 Journal

Kmart had a varied collection of costumes designed to suit everyone’s tastes.

As you can see, there were the usual kiddie favorites: Bug Bunny, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and an assortment of generic characters (such as a bunny, a devil, a skeleton, a witch, a clown, a scarecrow, etc.). 

Too bad the Bugs Bunny mask didn’t match the lively rendering of the wascally wabbit on the pajama-like costume.

Casper fared a little better. 

Girls had the usual limited options: a public domain Cinderella, a princess, a fairy, a gypsy, etc. Kmart even offered the same terrible “The Spiderman” costume seen in the Gray Drug ad on yesterday’s post.

But to make things interesting, there were also costumes that reflected the tempo of the times. 

Man had just walked on the Moon the year before, so a “Man on the Moon” costume replaced the fictional Moon-dwelling Commander Matt Mason in the Kmart Lineup. 

(Perhaps these commercial “Man on the Moon” costumes, forced on trusting kids as an early age, planted the seeds of skepticism that later led to conspiracy theories expressing the belief that we never walked on Earth’s orbiting neighbor at all.) 

Yellow Submarine, the Beatles animated movie, had come out in 1968. Yet the psychedelic cartoon must have remained in the public consciousness enough to warrant the offering of a “Blue Meanie” trick or treat costume. 

The year 1970 had been a year of great unrest, with the country experiencing widespread protests not unlike what we’ve seen this year. For those pint-sized patriots that wanted to express their love of country, an “Uncle Sam” costume was just the ticket. 

Wholesome teenager Archie would be a good second choice for those kids happy with the status quo. Here’s a cute photo, courtesy of Flickr, with not only Archie, but also the Bingo costume from the Gray Drug ad from Wednesday’s blog post.

Lastly, the recession of 1969-1970 unfortunately may have made the hobo costume a timely choice.