Ben Cooper masks | Nightmare Nostalgia

It’s not an opinion- it’s science folks. The beloved Ben Cooper masks and costumes are a symbol of yesteryear’s Halloween. A time when making the neighborhood rounds in noisy plastic costumes while carrying your mom’s pillowcase for the candy haul, or if you were the cool kid, a McDonald’s McBoo Bucket, was the highlight of the year for many little horror-heads everywhere. Whether your Ben Cooper costume of choice was a Master of the Universe, or the doll of false dreams Barbie, I think we can all collectively agree that while we all thought we looked super cool, turns out we really were creeping the shit out of our parental units with what my Dad refers to as, “Plastic Heart-Attacks.”

I suppose he has a bit of a point…

Although completely unintentional I’m sure, there truly is no denying the subtle creep factor these costumes gave off looking back on them now with adult(ish) eyes. While of course, these collective images of plas-tastic nightmares are on top of my unsettling Ben Cooper masks list, I challenge anyone reading this to say that they could never picture a serial killer hiding underneath these simple, yet chilling stringed- facial huggers.

Happy the Clown

Image via Etsy

Straight out of your worst nightmares, Happy the Clown surfaced from the company sometime in the ‘80s and in my humble opinion, is the damn creepiest of the many Cooper clown variants over the years. Possibly due to the fact it always reminded me of the heavier set of the trio of clowns from 1989’s Clownhouse. Just. NOPE.

Ghostbusters Egon

Image via Etsy

This Egon mask take from The Real Ghostbusters Saturday morning splendor from the mid-‘80s is mildly creepy. My train of thought runs, the simpler the mask, the creepier it comes across. The mildly surprised expression from the Ghostbustin’ favorite makes for something quite eerie here. Give me the ghosts over this plastic nightmare any day.

Beatle Paul McCartney

Image via Pinterest

This. Is just bizarre, and I can’t look away. Perhaps what is most perplexing, is how the hell this was deemed a normal mask in 1964. Vintage Halloween never seems to let me down as modern times don’t hold a candle to this kind of gem. As stated, my favorite part about this is that is not meant to come off as creepy. Beatlemania never looked so damn terrifying.

King Kong (1976)

Image via Etsy

Image via Ebay– Both are equally as horrifying.

Because 1976 Kong wasn’t quite scary enough, the fine folks at the Ben Cooper Company just had to release this little number. OK, I know you’re probably thinking, this isn’t so bad? I’ll admit, this is a more personal thing for me, as 1976 Kong traumatized the crap out of me when I was a kid. Aside from the freaky mask, the smock is wonderfully designed with Kong in battle atop the World Trade Center. This just reminds me of the gory-as-hell ending from the Dino De Laurentiis production. I got my big girl panties on. Bring on the jokes.

Hairy & Scary

Image via Pinterest

The Hairy & Scary line of Cooper masks add a little extra edge and while all variants of the curly-headed mask are sufficiently frightening on their own, THIS gorilla mask races to the front of the line with the creep factor. Although if you’re asking me, the mask looks more like it’s channeling the Zuni doll from Trilogy of Terror. This is why I felt like I would be doing a disservice to readers if I didn’t mention this sucker.

The Chattermouth Cooper Variant

Image via Etsy

The highly recognizable Chattermouth Ben Cooper line disables those muffled voices inside the plastic masks, and steps up the game with a moveable jawline. Productive? Yes. Less horrifying? Not even a little bit.

Phantom of the Opera

Image via Pinterest

The 1964 Phantom Ben Cooper mask looks more like Leatherface than a Phantom, but maybe that’s why it’s so damn scary. The acidic burns on both sides of the face rather than just the one, gives this version of the Phantom in the Ben Cooper universe a slight edge, even if it’s not what we’re accustomed to seeing. I like that ballsy move. You have to respect that.

Hobo with a Bowtie

Image via Etsy

Clearly, the Ben Cooper Hobo is modeled after the infamous melancholy hobo clown Emmett Kelly. If I’m wrong, there’s a hell of a resemblance going on there. Either way, you can’t argue the unnerving facial structure.

Bozo the Clown

Vintage Halloween Horrors: The Creepiest Ben Cooper Masks I've Ever Seen — credit: Ebay

While the infamous 1963 Ben Cooper clown mask and costume is the most recognized, in my personal opinion, the 1966 Bozo uniform has it beat by a mile. If I saw this on my doorstep, I would give the kid wearing it a card to my therapist in lieu of candy.

I mean, LOOK AT THIS.

MTkyOTYyMzI3MzM4MDM0ODk2 — Image: Antique Trader

“Shudders”

The smell of colorful plastic under your nostrils and vinyl smocks ensured that the “High Priest of Halloween” company dominated the scene of Samhain in not just the ‘70s and ‘80s, but for over 50 glorious years until the company ultimately went bankrupt in 1992.

Ben Cooper masks may be off the modern market, but they will forever live in our Halloween hearts as a nostalgic memory of how simplistic, yet terrifying a mere Halloween mask once was. As we’re strolling down vinyl Halloween memory lane, check out this really cool video put together by YouTuber Alanna Grace that showcases an array of costumes, of which the bulk is of course, Ben Cooper. Enjoy Nostalgic Nuggets!

Is there a particular Cooper mask or costume that you feel should be included? Let’s discuss some creep-tastic retro Halloween fuzzies below!

I, and I’m willing to bet most of you reading this, can fondly recall some of our favorite childhood memories walking around a dimly lit neighborhood on Halloween night collecting an assortment of sugar-crack in our mom’s pillowcases. And if you were a little hellion, (hey, we were all kids once) you took full advantage of the spirit of Samhain and pulled the ever so important Halloween pranks on friends, family, and annoyed neighbors. Of course, some of these mischievous shenanigans required some stealth and if you were donning a Ben Cooper mask complete with a plastic garbage-bag-like costume, ninja-ing that prank became one HELL of a challenge. Walking around in those costumes were about as a loud as Freddy‘s razors on a chalkboard.

In any regard, Ben Cooper masks were and remain a nostalgic staple inside our fuzzy memory banks. So I couldn’t be more excited to see that horror merch extraordinaire FRIGHT-RAGS announced a new line of mini-masks that replicate those glorious days of when Cooper was King of the haunted holiday! The first up in the series is a 1979 mini replica of the Ben Cooper Alien mask to be released on, of course, Alien Day, April 26, 2018!

Per Ben Scrivens-FRIGHT-RAGS:

“As part of our Alien Day (4.26) line up this year, I am proud to announce a brand new addition to our mask line up – MINI MASKS! For the past several years we’ve been reproducing vintage-style Ben Cooper and Collegeville vacuform masks, selling them with t-shirts as a box set. These were full size masks in full size boxes, meant to replicate the costumes from our childhood.However, with the more masks we released it became apparent that…these take up some serious space! I have stacks of them on my office shelf and as much as I love looking at them, they take up a lot of collectible real estate. We wanted to be able to enjoy the warm nostalgic fuzzies these sets gave us, but without cluttering up people’s display cases. So we went back to the drawing board and tried to think of a different way to showcase our love for these vintage collectibles, but also stay true to them as well. Enter the MINI-MASK. We captured all the details (the eye/mouth holes, rubber band, etc) from the originals, but in a package roughly half the size of an original mask/costume set so it can be displayed much easier. In fact, the box is about the same height/width of a Blu-Ray case. Our first MINI-MASK release will be a replica of the 1979 ALIEN mask produced by Ben Cooper. We recreated the mask and box, but on a smaller scale. The mask itself measures approximately 4.25” x 6” and boxed it is approximately 5.5” x 6.75”. You can see its scale when compared to a VHS tape in this image (sorry, didn’t have the original ALIEN VHS tape handy, lol). This mask is limited to 426, and will be released on Thursday, April 26 at 10am EST. It will be sold on its own (no shirt), and retail for $17. We are stoked about this release, and have several other MINI-MASKS in the works, for new and old characters. Stay tuned!”

In addition, an all-new shirt and enamel pin will be released in honor of the day Sigourney Weaver became the baddest bitch in Sci-Fy-Horror history! Make sure to set your alarms and head on over to FRIGHT-RAGS for this nostalgic little diddy next week!