Ben Cooper and Collegeville: The Plastic Mask Halloween Costumes of the 70s and 80s
If you trick-or-treated in the 70s or early 80s, you remember the smell first. A box with a cellophane window, a vinyl smock that swished when you walked, and a thin plastic mask on a white elastic string that snapped by the third house.
Most of them came from a handful of companies, led by Ben Cooper in Brooklyn and Collegeville in Pennsylvania. Their story runs through Star Wars, two bankruptcies and a warehouse fire, and it ends with collectors paying $2,000 for a costume that once cost a few dollars.
Ben Cooper, the Halston of Halloween
Ben Cooper was born in 1906 on New York's Lower East Side. He tried songwriting, then at 21 got into theatrical costumes, making outfits for the Cotton Club and some of the Ziegfeld Follies. Why leave the theater? In his words: "I wanted to eat regularly."
In 1937 he took control of a company that held Disney licenses for Donald Duck and Snow White, the start of the business that became Ben Cooper, Inc., run by Ben and his brother Nat out of Brooklyn. It earned the nickname "Halston of Halloween." From the 1950s to the mid-80s it was one of the three biggest Halloween costume makers in the US, and it was the biggest by 1979. The costumes sold at J.C. Penney, Sears, Woolworth's, Kmart and five-and-dimes.
Collegeville, the flag company
The rival started even earlier and stranger. In 1909 a dentist named Samuel D. Cornish founded the Collegeville Manufacturing Company in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, in a one-room building, making aprons and then flags. Somewhere between 1923 and 1927 it started making costumes from leftover flag fabric. Family lore says the first one may have been Santa or Uncle Sam, which makes sense if all you have is red, white and blue.
By 1935 Collegeville had a dedicated costume plant employing more than 125 people. Its licenses read like a timeline of pop culture: the Lone Ranger in the 30s, Casper and Looney Tunes in the 50s, Star Trek in the 60s, Jaws and KISS in the 70s, and in the 80s Transformers, Freddy Krueger, E.T. and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
How the costumes were made
The formula barely changed for decades. A thin, vacuum-formed plastic mask with eye holes, nose holes and a mouth slit, held on by a skinny elastic string. A sleeveless vinyl smock with a big printed picture of the character and the name across the front. A flimsy box with a cellophane window. One size fits all.
The printed picture on the smock had a reason. Kids pushed their masks up onto their heads, and the licensing companies wanted the character to stay recognizable anyway. As StarWars.com put it, you were "almost a walking billboard on Halloween."
They were cheap. In the 1950s most were under $3. In 1979 People magazine priced them at $2 to $5 at Kmart, Kresge's and Woolworth's. A Collegeville skeleton box in a museum collection still has its penciled price: $2.98.
Superheroes, then Star Wars
Ben Cooper got the Spider-Man license in 1963 and Batman in 1964, and was the first company to license Marvel superheroes. In 1966 it sold 2 million Batman costumes. Ben's summary: "Everything is coming up superheroes."
Star Wars was bigger. Ben Cooper locked down the Star Wars license by 1977, before the film was even out. The first costumes were Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and C-3PO, and stores ran short that Halloween. The company paid Lucasfilm a royalty of 5 to 10 percent of revenue and kept the license until 1983, adding Leia, Boba Fett and Wicket, Admiral Ackbar and the Gamorrean Guard in boxes branded with the film's working title, Revenge of the Jedi. It was described as its most lucrative license ever.
The catalog was everything on TV: the Fonz, Laverne & Shirley, Welcome Back Kotter, the Smurfs, Sesame Street, even a Rubik's Cube. In 1979 Ben Cooper made its first costume from an R-rated film, the creature from Alien, and parents complained. It also sold political masks, including Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
1982: the scare
The Chicago Tylenol poisonings of September 1982 hit Halloween a month later: some towns, including Vineland, New Jersey, canceled trick-or-treating. Costume sales dropped that year, though E.T. still sold well, and stayed down for several years.
The industry's answer was organized. Ben Cooper and eight other makers formed a Halloween Celebration Committee and, with the Toy Manufacturers of America, published "13 Great Ways to Celebrate Halloween."
The market bounced back in a new shape: costume and accessory revenue hit $300 million in 1989. In 1988 Collegeville sold about 3 million costumes, thanks largely to the California Raisins.
Why it ended
The plastic smock started to look cheap next to latex masks and more realistic costumes, and rivals like Don Post dominated rubber masks. One writer put it bluntly: "Quality eventually won over quantity."
Ben Cooper filed for Chapter 11 on March 13, 1988. While it was still in bankruptcy, on January 6, 1989, a fire destroyed its Georgia facility and millions of dollars of inventory, and a fight with the insurers went all the way to the Supreme Court. The company paid its creditors in full and came out in April 1989. In 1991 the company moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, and that October it filed for bankruptcy again. Rubie's Costume Co. bought it in the early 90s. Collegeville's own story ended in the mid-90s.
The Ben Cooper name sat quiet for about 25 years. In 2017 Ira Cooper, Nat's son, relaunched it with writer Jon James Miller as a collectibles brand. Miller's line on the old company: "They lived off pop culture for 50 years, and then they became it."
What old Ben Cooper costumes are worth
Most vintage costumes sell for $30 to $50. The box matters a lot. A boxed costume in good shape can be worth up to 40 percent more, and some buyers only want the mask or the empty box for display.
The rare ones go much higher. A complete 1966 Ben Cooper Daredevil costume sold for $2,000 on eBay, and a 1965 Morticia went for $1,752 at Hake's. A 1979 Collegeville prototype Paul Stanley mask from KISS sold for $389. On the other end, a 1977 Luke Skywalker mask alone fetched $29.40.
If you're buying one to wear, remember what the US Consumer Product Safety Commission was already telling parents in 1983: loose masks can block vision and breathing. Cut the eye holes bigger or switch to face paint.
Dressing up as a grown-up
Grown-ups rarely want a vinyl smock. A mask over a normal outfit does the trick: our Carnival Masks ($29.99) and LED Ball Mask ($19.99) are the quick options for a party. For the scarier side of the decade, read about how 80s horror villains evolved and why Halloween costumes were simpler and scarier.
Questions we get
What were Ben Cooper costumes made of? A thin vacuum-formed plastic mask on an elastic string and a sleeveless vinyl smock printed with the character, sold in a box with a cellophane window.
When did Ben Cooper go out of business? It filed for bankruptcy for the second time in October 1991 and was bought by Rubie's in the early 1990s. The brand was relaunched for collectibles in 2017.
Who made Star Wars Halloween costumes in 1977? Ben Cooper, which held the license from 1977 to 1983, starting with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and C-3PO.
How much is a vintage Ben Cooper costume worth? Most sell for $30 to $50. Rare complete ones, like a 1966 Daredevil, have sold for around $2,000.
What happened to Collegeville costumes? The Pennsylvania company made costumes from the 1920s and closed in the mid-1990s. The Cornish family still runs a costume store in the area.
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