Find out how we had fun for Halloween in 1962: candy, music, costumes, and more!

1. Halloween Fun in 1962
By Donald Dale Milne
https://www.roadtrip62.com/halloween-fun-in-1962.htm
It’s October, 1962 and Halloween is coming up fast! When I was growing up, we got most of our candy at Halloween and Easter, with a smaller dose at
Christmas. Halloween was the most fun, because we went door-to-door in costumes and collected the candy ourselves. The beauty of getting candy from a lot of
different people was that they bought a lot of different things for you. I never cared too much for the taffy products like B-B-Bats, Mary Janes, Kits or peanut
butter twists. I also didn’t like popcorn balls and Tootsie Rolls were just so-so. But I ate a lot of bubble gum, candy cigarettes, and anything tart like Smarties or
Lik-M-Aid. I also loved candy corn, caramels, and candy bars. Those wax bottles with liquid candy were also great, if odd. The oddest treat was Pumpkin
Seeds: real pumpkin seeds roasted and completely coated with salt! Butterfingers were one of my favorite candy bars, even though they stuck to your teeth after
you were done. I suspect that was the cause of several of my rear tooth cavities. Learn more about your favorite Halloween candy at the Roadtrip-’62 ™ “How
Sweet it Was“ page at https://www.roadtrip62.com/how-sweet-it-was.htm .
Brach’s Halloween candy magazine ad from 1962 (photo from an online auction)

2. We always carved pumpkins, usually the night before Halloween. And to this day, nothing says Halloween to me like the aroma of pumpkin innards.
We always lighted them with candles inside, set them on the front porch, and let them burn until the candles went out. By then, the smell of burnt wax always
ruined the fresh pumpkin aroma. Looking back, I’m surprised that kids under age 10 were trusted with sharp kitchen knives to cut pumpkins, but I’m sure none
of my brothers or myself ever cut ourselves. Of course, we only operated under my mother’s watchful eyes: I guess mom knew what she was doing. I recall
several years of cutting rather typical triangle eyes and square-toothed smiling Jack-O-Lanterns before realizing, maybe about age 12, that you could be more
creative. I eventually tried my hand at Charlie Brown and Alfred E. Neuman.
field of pumpkins
The Sycamore Pumpkin Festival (see https://sycamorepumpkinfestival.com/ ), Sycamore, Illinois, started as an idea by resident Wally Thurow in 1956
to do something special for the students of Sycamore. It quickly grew from display on his front yard into a full festival by 1962, and today is the city’s biggest
event, running for 5 consecutive days. There will be over 1000 entries in the Decorated Pumpkin Display, 2 carnivals, 3 indoor craft shows, and a parade on
Sunday. You’ll even find a Giant Cake Cutting Ceremony with the giant cake donated by Hy-Vee supermarkets. Meanwhile, in Circleville, Ohio, they will be
holding their annual Pumpkin Show (see https://www.pumpkinshow.com/ ), which is always held the 3rd Wednesday through Saturday in October. The event
began in 1903, again as a small personal display. Mayor George R. Haswell placed a small exhibit consisting mostly of Jack-O-Lanterns in front of his house.
The next year, others joined in the idea and it eventually grew into today’s multi-day festival featuring music, crafts, food, and four different parades! This
festival also includes the baking (and eating) of The World's Largest Pumpkin Pie. It’s 14 feet in diameter, uses almost 800 pounds of pumpkin, and takes 10
hours to bake!

3. Rattles The Snake Man costume by Ben Cooper, 1962 (photo from an online auction)
Besides the candy, I’m sure stores made the most money from Halloween on the costumes that every kid wore for trick-or-treating. You could find
costumes of favorite cartoon characters, standard witches, pirates, reptiles, monsters, spacemen, cowboys, etc. I’ve seen online auctions featuring 1962 costumes
of Dick Tracy, Ollie of “Kukula, Fran & Ollie”, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and friends, Mr. Ed, Popeye, and Disney characters. There were even characters
from “Tales of the Wizard of OZ”, a largely forgotten cartoon from Rankin/Bass, who would produce the classic “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” TV special
just two years later. Most of the commercial costumes were made by Ben Cooper, Halco, or Collegeville. They were the three largest Halloween costume
manufacturers in the United States from the 1950s-1980s. Though Spider-Man was introduced in comics in 1962, he was not yet popular enough for a costume.
That would change by 1963, when Ben Cooper sold the first Spider-Man costume. You could buy these costumes from any department store such as J. C.
Penney or Sears, or Woolworth's, Kresge’s, and other five-and-dime stores. Of course, many people made their own characters, including us. I remember being
part of a troop of Zorros as my mother made my brothers and I identical costumes. We used those for several years.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thH3qnHTbI
Watch a “Monster Mash” video
Back then, there were no public displays of horror or zombies, no Halloween fright houses, or similar attractions. But the beginnings of these may have
been foretold by one of the popular songs of the year, “Monster Mash”. Though firmly tongue-in-cheek, it showed there was an appetite among adults for some
Halloween fun beyond taking their kids out for trick-or-treats. Bobby "Boris" Pickett wrote the song with Leonard Capizzi and they recorded it with studio
musicians that included pianist Leon Russell, as "The Crypt-Kickers.” The lyrics refer to the few popular horror movie stars of the day, Dracula, Frankenstein,
and the Wolfman. Besides 1962, the song has been in the Top 10 two other times, in 1970 and 1972. The “Mash” in the title refers to the "Mashed Potato" dance
craze it is based on. They performed it live on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” TV show, which was in its final year as a live national broadcast. The next
year the show moved Los Angeles as a taped weekly program. Even Boris Karloff, who Bobby Pickett modeled the voicing after, loved Monster Mash. He
performed it on a special Halloween edition of the TV show “Shindig!” in 1965. Pickett recorded a number of other monster-themed songs over the years, but
none has come close to Monster Mash in popularity.
Besides the “Monster Mash”, another pop culture legacy of Halloween 1962 is the legend of The Great Pumpkin from the Peanuts comic strip. Though
strip creator Charles Schulz came up with the idea some years earlier, he fleshed it out in 1962 strips such as the one shown below. Several of the strips from that
year were adapted into the TV special “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” in 1966. Well, I’m off to read the comic strips and eat candy; see you next time
on Roadtrip-’62 ™!
“Peanuts” comic strip of October 26, 1962 (Copyright © Peanuts Worldwide LLC., used for fair use education and illustrative purposes only.
See https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts .)

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Author of Roadtrip-'62TM ( https://www.roadtrip62.com/ ), Donald Dale Milne
If you haven’t heard of Roadtrip-62™ , my name is Don Milne and I'll be your travel guide on this virtual tour of the U. S. of A. First, I suppose you're
wondering why Roadtrip-62™ is different from other travel sites? There's a very simple answer: everybody else travels only in space, but we also travel in time!
That's right, we don't just go somewhere, we also go somewhen. And the when is 1962. We'll try to see what's left today from 1962, by driving as if it were 1962.
We will drive on highways as they were in 1962, try to eat only at restaurants that existed in 1962, try to stay only at motels that existed in 1962, try to buy gas
and sundries, play the music, see only the sites across America, and just generally live in America as it was in 1962!
What we will do is enjoy the FUN of cross-country driving. And the fun of cross-country travel is all the differences from our everyday life! We'll talk
about politics, food, great inventions, how people lived, television, and more. We'll get to see some of the people that made our history; that made this country
great. We'll stumble across unexpected pleasures, like one trip I made through Cherokee, North Carolina where I just happened to be in town as the 1996
Olympic Torch procession came through on it's way to Atlanta, Georgia. You really never know what you'll find when you travel!

6. 1962-style US-23 signs
Now, let's see where we'll be going! We're going to drive the US-numbered routes of 1962. Because we'll be using the roads of 1962, that means we
won't be on freeways very much. There weren't many freeways in 1962, as the country had just begun building the Interstate system,, so we'll travel mostly the
two-lanes through every little town on the way. Sometimes even where there was a freeway, I'll go back on the old road just to see what was there. Anyway, even
if there was a freeway in 1962, it was only there for a couple of years and things had not changed much. Sometimes a "business route" ran through a town on the
old route, because there were no services at the freeway interchanges yet.
Just in case you're asking why 1962, it's because I remember 1962. I traveled on my first freeway as a boy with my dad about that time, and fell in love
with both travel and freeways. But, besides my own memories and the fact that it was a time largely before interstate freeways, 1962 is just cool...wait and see!
And I'm writing this virtual tour just because I like to drive. I like to go places, see things, and just drive for the joy of driving! I decided I want to talk about it, to
share the fun with others. I'll be doing the driving on Roadtrip-62 ™, but if you see anything you like, I encourage you to get out on the road and enjoy it in
person. This virtual roadtrip may be fun, but there's nothing like the real thing!