Witchiepoo is the antagonist in Sid and Marty Krofft’s H.R. Pufnstuf, which originally ran in late 1969 but stayed in syndication until 1985. The bat costume has an image of Vampira on it—I have a better shot I’ll post soon. I also see a Tweety Bird costume. What’s the yellow costume with the blue tie and suspenders? It looks familiar. Any others I’m missing?
They’re all eating cupcakes on a Halloween napkin, drinking out of Halloween cups. The cupcakes are not gluten-free or sugar-free. Construction paper jack-o’-lanterns hang from the blinds. And those desks!
2 Warps to Neptune 
Ah, those Ben Cooper “smock and mask” Halloween outfits we all knew so well. From those vinyl smocks to those masks that stank with our own sublimated breath after a block or so of trick-or-treating…and those cheap elastic strings that were literally just stapled to the sides of the masks. Loved ’em or hated ’em, they were our standard Halloween get ups, if not the only ones.
Regarding the mystery costume—I remembered Plaid Stallions had the 1980 Ben Cooper Halloween Catalog up on his site, so I checked into it. I know it’s 4 years later, but it was worth a shot. I’m wondering if it’s an early variant of the Yogi Bear costume on this page of the catalog.
Yeah, I think you got it. Looks exactly the same. I should add that this could be later than ’76, but I don’t think so. We’d see some Star Wars costumes if it were ’77 or later.
I’m starting to wish there was a definitive Ben Cooper museum online somewhere, similar to the Mego museum.
Turns out the Witchiepoo was Collegeville, not Ben Cooper. I’ve been raiding some of the Plaid Stallions catalogs, which I ironically found linked from a thread on the Megomuseum boards…
http://www.plaidstallions.com/collegeville/19736.html
Good catch. Lol, totally dig the “Saf-T-C Eyeholes” selling point on that page. Trippy name for the company, huh? “Collegeville?”
Jaws was a Collegeville, too. Yeah, the eyeholes were never big enough, according to my mom. She used to take scissors to them so my sisters and I would be able to “see the cars” or something.
Speaking of Halloween safety, check out this 1977 video. Because the black witch costume is unsafe, homegirl gets remade into a KKK initiate!
http://archive.org/details/HalloweenSafetyEducationalFilm1977Centron
There are a lot of resource blogs that would be fun to start, Ben Cooper and Viewmaster being the first ones that come to mind.
And how about all those UFO, paranormal, Bermuda Triangle, and Bigfoot books, shows, and documentaries from the ’70s? That would be a kick-ass project that would tell us a lot about the era.