Halloween Revisited -- Wacky Memories

It's the weekend and you know what that means? That's right! Repeats!  It's time for another Halloween Revisited post.  This one is from 2017.

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These days for Halloween treats, people favor handing out pre-packaged candies; the treat you receive from one house indistinguishable from the next.  When I Trick or Treated as a kid, I might receive a candy bar at one house, a comic book at another, and wax Wowe-e Whistles, money, popcorn balls or apples at others. One of my earliest Trick or Treating memories when I was around 7 involved what I thought was an odd treat at the time, but in hindsight was pretty cool and appropriate. I received this Wacky Packages sticker.

Cat Nap(kin)

Today we have a napkin to go with our paper plate.  Another purchase from the same sale, this napkin predates the plate by at least 20 years.  While the witch interpretation is cuter than scary, the style of art dates it to no later than the 1950's.  I love the Jack O' Lantern and demonic cat. It leaps into the scene seemingly bowling our little witch over.

AI -- Now that's Scary

 One of my posts this season set off a flurry (okay a few comments) about the use of AI.

As I said, I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I mostly hate AI imagery and I don't like AI being used as a competent substitute for skilled workers because in its current state, it's not.  It does have its place and I've used it for humorous purposes as well as a lead when researching things.  But I don't stop at the AI overview like many people do.

Where I work, our managers actually encourage us to use AI and when I'm shown some "answer" to a complex question by a person who simply Googled it and relied on AI, I push back and explain how AI works, how anything on the internet can influence the answers and that you have to check sources.

One of my blog posts has proven my point.  A friend of mine, after reading that blog post about my memories of Bigfoot mania in 1977, Googled, looking for why there may have been an increase in attention in Bigfoot in the St. Louis area in 1977.  He found this:

Peck Ghost Die cut

This Ghost die cut from Peck raises the question, do ghosts have teeth?

Did the ghost not brush and floss when it was alive? Is this the ghost of a Meth user? How does the ghost eat caramel apples?  So many questions.

House Monster Mask

I love coming across vintage latex masks at sales (or anywhere).  They remind me of my childhood, looking through bins of them at our local Ben Franklin dimestore.  Plus, any that have survived this long are fairly rare as the latex tends to degenerate quickly over time (see my Creepy Crispy Critter post from 2019).

I found this one at a sale this summer.

I didn't recognize it and had to reach out to a Facebook group I belong to.  It was identified as the "Demon Sandy" character from the 1985 movie "House".  I've never seen the movie (I plan on rectifying that this season), but apparently it is a doppelganger for the main character's (played by William Katt, believe it or not) ex-wife.

The mask itself is in fairly supple condition with only a few hard edges.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a Cryptid, Not a Flotation Device!

I found these "Monster Feet" at an estate sale this summer.  It reminded me of the Bigfoot scare/mania of the 1970's when Bigfoot seemingly waited around every tree in every forest around me.

Boos on Booze

 I was scanning this season's decorations around my home and came across this tray. Surely, I thought, surely I've posted this tray before.  I hadn't.

I found this tray several years ago at an estate sale for $5.  I loved the design and artwork.  Two martini-drinking ghosts? Why not?  Those owls have seen things.