Welcome back to Designerland. I hope you all had a swell weekend. This week's post was supposed to be a new typography case study, but as I'm not through with all my research and font-finding, I will instead present the Haunted Mansion Halloween Costumes!
Like many of you, I was part of the boxed costume generation. I remember going to the store and seeing the shelves lined with boxes of various monsters, cartoon characters and movie stars peering at me through their cellophane die-cut windows. Picking the right costume was important because you wanted to make sure no other kid showed up to school in the same one. I can remember that tense moment when the teacher told us to go put on our costumes. We'd all run to the closet, each of us grabbing up our boxed costumes, the cellophane crackling as we opened our boxes, and we would each scan the room to see if we matched with anyone else. Luckily, I was always the odd kid out. While most kids wanted G. I. Joe or Hulk Hogan, I was Yoda or some obscure glowing skeleton creature.
The most popular vinyl box costume producer was Ben Cooper, followed closely by Collegeville. I was always drawn to Ben Cooper’s line of costumes due to the quality of design and selection of characters. Since the plastic masks and vinyl “aprons” were the Halloween uniforms for so many of us, I wanted to pay homage to Ben Cooper by retheming some of his classic costume box designs to align with Designerland & Disney Theme Park merchandise. I recreated the mask designs, using existing Disney art and are FPO.
Well that about does it for this week’s post. We'll be honoring the Halloween season all month long here at Designerland, so stay tuned for more frighteningly fun posts. As for the next Case Study, that'll have to wait until next month. As always, thanks for stopping by and see you all next week.
