Woolworth Halloween Ad – October 23, 1969

Each Halloween, I post vintage newspaper ads showing what costumes the various chain stores were offering that year. It’s a nice snapshot of popular culture at that time.

The Woolworth ad above ran in the Lorain Journal back on October 23, 1969.

Here’s a color version of the ad.

It’s a real grab bag of TV-centric costumes, that’s for sure. The most dominant one in the ad is the genie called Shazzan, which I don’t remember watching at all. 

The Lite Up Shazzan Mask
(Courtesy Worthpoint)

(I’m not surprised I don’t recall that cartoon. By the late 1960s, my parents concocted all sorts of things for my siblings and me to do on Saturday mornings to keep us away from the TV set. This included bowling in a league at Shoreway Lanes in Sheffield Lake, as well as taking art lessons from Paul Henschke at St. Mary High School.)

Elsewhere in the ad, you can see a Flying Nun costume. Now that was a show that we watched, er, religiously.

Courtesy Etsy

I wonder if Sally Field got a kickback for the use of her image on the Sister Bertrille mask?

For wholesome youngsters, there was perennial favorite Archie. I like how Jughead is identified as merely, ‘Jug.’ And why is Archie’s slick-haired, arch-rival Reggie smiling?

For me, the oddest costume on the page is the one at the bottom identified as ‘Giant Man.’ Although he looked like a caveman, he has on what looks like a doctor’s surgical garb, with little people hanging from his pocket.

It turns out that he is designated as being a character tied in with the show Land of the Giants – a giant professor. He doesn’t seem to be a regular character on the series.

The Ben Cooper company must have changed its mind at the last minute as to the design of the costume. Perhaps the decision was made to promote the show more obviously, because the only costume I could find online was the one below, with the tie clasp inscribed with LAND OF THE GIANTS.

That tie looks very Hanna-Barbera-ish to me. By the way, it looks like the eye holes are deliberately low so that the mask makes the wearer taller and more like a giant.

Another version of the same mask (below) gives the giant a row of upper teeth and a more unkempt hairdo. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s really the Jack in the Beanstalk giant retrofitted for the Land of the Giants TV series.

Finally, the ad includes the usual off-model superhero costumes, including an unreasonable facsimile of Spider-Man and a strangely masked Superman.

I guess what I glean from this Woolworth ad it that the costume manufacturers were trying harder than ever to appeal to TV-watching kids. There are very few generic costumes. 

But in my family’s case, we hardly watched any of the shows or cartoons on which the costumes were based, and didn’t clamor to buy them. Thus we probably wore an old mask from our stash of them from previous Halloweens. We had all the classics: Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Fred Flintstone, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Casper, Bugs Bunny, etc.