Before Spirit Halloween, there was Ben Cooper

Before there was Spirit Halloween and "IP," brands Ben Cooper and Collegeville struck licensing deals and sold millions of pop culture-influenced Halloween outfits.

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For much of the 20th century, Ben Cooper, Inc. and another company, Collegeville, revolutionized the Halloween costume industry. Instead of churning out ghosts and witches, they competed for licenses to sell costumes based on TV shows, comic books, and movies.   Their reign over the holiday continued until the 1980s, when a string of unsolved murders rocked the entire industry and helped change the way America celebrated Halloween.   From dentistry and jazz to tricks and treats   The first major Halloween costume company in America was founded by, of all people, a dentist.   Samuel D. Cornish was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in 1865. He worked in drafting for the Phoenixville Iron Company before completing a dental degree in 1898 and opening his own practice in nearby Collegeville.   In 1909, Cornish had another idea. He started the Collegeville Flag and Manufacturing Company and by the late 1920s used the same materials that went into his flags to make costumes.   Collegeville became a leading producer of Santa suits and so-called masquerade outfits that children wore for Halloween, which had evolved from a niche Irish immigrant celebration (often spelled as Hallowe'en) in the 19th century to a mainstream affair, marked by trick-or-treating, pranks, and parties in church basements. Dressing up was a must for kids. Frankenstein and Batman costumes by Ben Cooper, Inc. (eBay)   On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a few years after Cornish founded his company, a 7-year-old named Ben Cooper received a red devil costume from his neighbor. It wasn't fate just yet: Cooper went on to study accounting at City College and considered becoming a songwriter for a short time.   "I gave it up," he later told People. "I wanted to eat regularly."   In the 1920s, he and his brother Nat Cooper started a business designing clothing and sets for jazz and vaudeville establishments, including the Cotton Club, the Harlem nightspot where patrons like Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson listened to Count Basie and Duke Ellington.   About 10 years later, the brothers pivoted to Halloween. Costumes were still basic. One New York Times story from 1937 described the popular costumes as paper-based — King Winter and ghosts for adults; ducks, squirrels, and foxes for kids.   But around this time a new trend surfaced: dressing up as characters from books and movies. As the Buffalo News noted in 1936, costumes of Popeye, Orphan Annie, and the comic hero Buck Rogers showed up in stores. "The long-honored Halloween figures [of ghosts and witches] have been eclipsed."   And to manufacture costumes of popular characters — and win Halloween — you had to get the licenses.   'Television did it'   As Nat Cooper's son, Ira, explained it, Ben and Nat went directly to the source to score a life-changing deal shortly after pivoting to costumes. They traveled to California and met with Walt Disney, who agreed to licensing deals for costumes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, and other characters. Mickey the Mouse and Felix the Cat costumes by Ben Cooper in 1960 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Bettmann/Getty Images)   "Once they saw the power of Mickey Mouse and then they saw Snow White as another Disney character license, they knew that licensing was going to be a powerhouse," Ira Cooper told Investor's Business Daily in 2017.   By 1960, Ben Cooper, Inc. had produced costumes of: Minnie and Mickey Mouse Snow White Jiminy Cricket Goofy Zorro Tinkerbell Felix the Cat Superman Robin Hood Yogi Bear Dennis the Menace Collegeville had Casper the Friendly Ghost, the Lone Ranger, and Woody the Woodpecker, along with characters from "Looney Tunes" and "Star Trek."   An executive from another competitor, Halco (which was sold and got out of the Halloween business long before Ben Cooper and Collegeville), credited the boom in licensed costumes to the rise in TV. In 1960, 90% of American households had a TV set, compared to 9% in 1950.   "Television did it," the executive told the Associated Press. "Nowadays kids don't want to be skeletons. They want to dress up like the characters they see on TV."  A 1976 Collegeville catalogue, the year the company had the license for "Jaws." (Etsy)   The Collegeville and Ben Cooper costumes were simple and inexpensive, typically a plastic mask with a vinyl smock sold in a box. The cheap quality didn't always ingratiate them to parents, who paid ~$1-$3 in the '60s ($10-$30 today) to buy them, as nationwide costume sales reached an estimated $10m in 1960 ($108m), according to the AP.   The next few years led to a major bounce in Halloween's popularity, with Ben Cooper estimating that overall costume sales tripled. In 1966, he said Ben Cooper, Inc. sold 2m Batman costumes alone, with a healthy number of Superman and Green Hornet costumes, too.   "Everything is coming up superheroes," he said. (A few years later, the company successfully filed for the phrase "super heroes.")   One of Ben Cooper's biggest coups came in the late 1970s, when it purchased the license to produce "Star Wars" costumes, sharing just 5%-10% of revenues with LucasFilm for popular characters like Darth Vader and Chewbacca. In the fall of 1977, demand outweighed supply in many cities.   "Ben Cooper seemed to win that battle of the biggest licenses," says Rob Caprilozzi, editor of Horror News Network and maker of the documentary "Dressing Up Halloween." A newspaper ad for Ben Cooper "Star Wars" costumes in 1978. (Newark Advocate via Newspapers.com)   Collegeville had a strong relationship with Mattel and a Hollywood consultant to help them seek deals. Other times, companies with new entertainment products would pursue the costume makers at licensing shows or the annual North American Toy Fair.   In the early 1980s, according to Caprilozzi, Collegeville gambled on the license to "E.T." without knowing what the character looked like. All they'd seen was a glimpse of the alien's lit-up hand. The costume, released in 1982, gave Collegeville a major edge in a year that changed Halloween forever.   Mass-produced costumes fall out of favor   In late September 1982, a handful of people in the Chicago suburbs mysteriously fell ill at nearly the same time. Seven people died within a few days, all having consumed Tylenol filled with potassium cyanide, in a murder spree that remains unsolved.   Halloween was just around the corner, and the Tylenol murders incited panic among parents who feared trick-or-treat candy could be laced with poison or razors. Hospitals in the Midwest offered free x-rays of children's treats so they could detect metal objects.   "Maybe we'll have to do away with Halloween," Russell Currier, a doctor in Iowa, said at the time. "Maybe it's a custom that has outlived its usefulness." Ronald Reagan, E.T., and Yoda masks in 1982. (Bettmann/Getty Images)   That year, many stores reported "E.T." costumes as their best seller, but overall sales were down.   By the time Halloween bounced back later in the decade, with costume and accessory revenues up to $300m in 1989, people were celebrating the holiday differently. Half of all costume sales went to adults, who'd previously accounted for ~10% of costume sales in previous decades, according to Collegeville. Halloween parties and trunk-or-treat outings, often with costume contests, proliferated. With more focus on parties and contests, kids (and adults) didn't want the same mass-produced costume everyone else had. They opted for pricier masks and creative looks.   "It just got to the point where these costumes were looked at as a little bit hokey," Caprilozzi says. Olivia Heller/The Hustle   Ben Cooper, Inc. struggled in this new era, filing for bankruptcy in 1988. It was acquired by Rubies Costume Company, a competitor that first started as a candy store, in the early 1990s.   Collegeville, still owned and operated by the Cornish family, lasted a few years longer before it was also acquired by Rubies. In 1988, it had one of its best years, selling ~3m costumes on the strength of the California Raisins. The next year it produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes and got licenses for summer blockbusters like "Batman Forever" and "Casper" in the '90s. Barney, the purple dinosaur, became its top-selling costume of all time in 1992.   Not all licenses paid off. In the '90s, Collegeville got stuck with "Waterworld," one of the biggest busts in movie history. And Ben Cooper, Inc. designed JFK and Jackie Kennedy masks, which became unsellable immediately after Halloween in 1963.   Costume consolidation   These days, the company that acquired Collegeville and Ben Cooper, Rubies, is still one of the top costume makers. So is Jazwares, which has a Marvel license. The brands are popular at major retailers like Walmart, Spirit Halloween, and Amazon.   But they aren't family-owned small businesses like Ben Cooper and Collegeville. Jazwares is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which bought out prior owner Alleghany Capital in 2022. Rubies sold the majority of its assets to an investment group that included Atalaya Capital Management during bankruptcy in 2020.   Yes, the Halloween costume business has entered the same frightening stage as numerous industries: Familiar brand names are just masks, concealing a holding company or private equity firm underneath. 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