Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Happy Halloween!

DeLuca Bakery ad from October 8, 1963 Journal

Here's hoping you enjoy a safe and Happy Halloween.

Over the years, I've devoted many posts to Halloween, mainly with store ads featuring their selection of Halloween costumes for sale. Here's one (below) that I've never posted before; it's for Kresge's (later renamed K-Mart) and ran in the Lorain Journal on October 22, 1953. Note the complete lack of licensed characters. 

1953
Within a few years, things changed – namely, TV. Check out this sampling of Kresge/Kmart ads through the decades.
1956
1958
1966
1970
1972
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One of the rituals that I do around Halloween is to peruse my dog-eared copy of The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales by Maria Leach. The book – with its creepy illustrations by Kurt Werth – scared me when I first read it at Masson Elementary School, and more than 50 years later, it still scares me. Read all about it, and enjoy some stories from it, on this 2010 post.


1 comment:

-Alan D Hopewell said...

I read that too; I had my own copy, courtesy of Arrow Books, and it scared the willies outta me, along with STRANGLY ENOUGH! and THE RAINBOW BOOK OF AMERICAN FOLK TALES AND LEGENDS, which books Charleston had in their library.
DeLuca's Bakery...say it with me, now...