Lost minute costumes

A few weeks ago my wife and I went to a party store to search for Halloween costumes. While in there we looked at many of the packaged costumes and I was reminded of the glory of what the copy writer for the packaging must compose due to licensing restrictions, especially for costumes that clearly are based on an actual person but where that person's name cannot legally be used.

A long curly-haired wig on a man with some round-framed sunglasses is "Radio DJ" because they can't call it "Howard Stern" (who's actually an on-air personality, but that is a distinction that wouldn't necessarily make the costume sell any better). That sort of thing.

However, the one that struck me as both the most inspired and most risible was a shoulder-length bowl-cut wig where on the photo it was paired with a shaggy mustache and round-framed sunglasses. This was in the "'60s" section (and why costumes can be decade-specific is a topic for another time), along with the tie-died paraphernalia. The picture on the package was a dead-ringer for the male half of a popular duo who had a variety program, the late Sonny Bono. Obviously they couldn't call it "Sonny Bono," but what did they turn that into? "Hippie singer" or something like that perhaps?

No, rather than try to adapt it based on his occupation they changed it to words that sounded somewhat like his name: "Silly Boy."

Whether that pertains to him being the butt of the jokes on the TV show he shared with then-wife Cher or to his time as a California politician is another question.

(Note: It is entirely possible that there's some other reason why the wig has that name, but nonetheless the picture on the bag is meant to look like Sonny Bono, so I'm sticking with this explanation.)

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Another set of costumes that were particularly noteworthy are the "sexy" versions of just about anything. Nurse, cop, super-heroine, and the like are staples of any party. Pretty much anything that can be adapted to show skin on a female is all that's necessary to qualify in that category.

One would think that male horror icons would be beyond the scope of that area. However, there's also (I'm not making this up) "Sexy Freddy Krueger."

It's starts with the brimmed hat and claw gloves that undoubtedly are part of the (what we'll call) standard Krueger costume. However, the iconic striped sweater, with slashes, is instead a mini-dress. So, apparently, if Freddy's legs hadn't been disfigured along with the rest of him in the fire and he showed them off he would have been making People magazine's list rather than tormenting children in their dreams. (Or both; I suppose those aren't intrinsically mutually exclusive.)

I'm not suggesting that there aren't people whose fetishes wouldn't go that way; obviously the company wouldn't bother (in this case) to pay the licensing fees to be able to use the actual character name unless they believed they would sell enough costumes to make back that investment.

What's more disturbing is that someone at the company who owns the rights to Freddy signed off on turning a character that struck fear into… well, something that is only scary in the way it causes one to question the psyche of the costume wearer.


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Here's hoping you won't be resorting to any costume mentioned above.  Happy Halloween!

(Photos of my costume will be revealed in the next post.)