26 vintage photos that show what Halloween looked like in the 1980s

"Sweating and struggling to breathe properly in our cheap K-Mart vinyl costumes on Halloween night, 1985," wrote the Redditor who shared this photo, and anyone who wore one knows the feeling. Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird came straight from "Sesame Street." The kid in the red mane was right on trend, since "ThunderCats" had debuted on TV that year. Each costume was a smock and a mask with a slit for breathing (barely). They cost a few dollars and lasted one night.

One Redditor shared this photo of "my American dad and Canadian mom as Niagara Falls for Halloween 1985," and it may be the most thoughtful couple's costume of the decade. Each parent wears one side of the falls, built from cardboard and painted water, with a rocky island in the middle flying both flags. The real falls straddle the border too. The American Falls sit in New York, and most of the Horseshoe Falls belong to Ontario. This marriage had the geography right.

"One of my favorite pictures of my parents, Halloween 1980," wrote foobaby1992, the Redditor who posted it, and it's easy to see why. Dad went full gangster: a pinstripe three-piece suit, a fedora, a white tie, and a carnation in his lapel. Mom drew on whiskers, added paper mouse ears and a white bow tie, and gave the camera a kiss. Neither costume cost much. Both of them nailed it.

The Redditor Dawnzarelli shared this snapshot of "1989 with Granny and the matching homemade Halloween costumes," and Granny clearly did the sewing. Both wear blue with a hand-cut "S" in a diamond, and Granny added a red belt and cape for herself. The timing was a little contrarian. Tim Burton's "Batman" had been the biggest movie of that summer, and much of the country went with the other guy. These two stayed loyal to the S.

"My 100% handmade Stegosaurus costume that my grandmother made for me because I was obsessed with dinosaurs," wrote the Redditor PocketSizedSheHulk behind this 1989 photo. The craftsmanship holds up, with stuffed green plates running down the back and all the way along the tail. Those tail spikes have a name, and it came from a 1982 "Far Side" cartoon. Gary Larson called them a "thagomizer," and paleontologists adopted the word. Grandma got the anatomy right.

"My little brother and I dressed as The Blues Brothers, Halloween 1987," reads the Reddit post from johngrady77. The costume was cheap and instantly recognizable: black suits, skinny ties, fedoras and dark sunglasses. The movie was seven years old by then, but the look had staying power. Those Ray-Ban Wayfarers had a second life after Tom Cruise wore a pair in 1983's "Risky Business." The crossed arms complete it.

"For Halloween in 1985, my mom made me and my brother Transformers costumes," wrote the Redditor, Derffe, who shared this photo. "To cap it all off, she hand-drew the Autobot and Decepticon symbols. Still the best costume I have ever worn." Hasbro had launched Transformers in the U.S. just a year earlier, and the toys were the hottest thing in any playground. Mom built these from boxes, construction paper, and strips of reflective tape. No store sold anything better.

Kids in costume took turns at a tub of apples in the Lynnfield High School cafeteria in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, on Halloween 1982. Parents were especially wary that year. The Chicago Tylenol poisonings had happened just weeks earlier, and fears about tampered treats pushed many towns toward supervised indoor parties like this one. The girl on the left came up soaked and empty-mouthed (the apples usually won).

Two brothers, ages 5 and 8, rested on the steps of Boston City Hall during a Boston By Foot walking tour on Halloween 1982. The younger boy was dressed as a character from "The Dukes of Hazzard," and the older one was the Headless Horseman. The younger boy's costume was timely, and a little complicated. That fall, Tom Wopat and John Schneider had walked off the show in a contract dispute, and CBS replaced Bo and Luke with two cousins for most of the season. His brother built his costume from a coat, gloves, and a paper bag. It worked.

Nearly two weeks before Halloween in 1983, this stuffed rider was already parked in a yard on Chestnut Street in North Reading, Massachusetts. The tricycle is a Big Wheel-style ride, a design Louis Marx and Company introduced in 1969, and that 1980s kids rode down driveways everywhere. Someone tied the dummy's arms and feet in place with yarn and hung a plastic pumpkin pail from the handlebar. It went nowhere, in style.

A mother adjusted her son's costume at a Halloween party at Wilder Nursery School in Hingham, Massachusetts, on Oct. 30, 1984. He and a classmate both came as Gizmo, the furry hero of "Gremlins," which had come out that June. The movie was a little scary for its target audience. Parent complaints about it and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" helped push the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating that summer. The preschoolers went as the cute one anyway.

Two pilots parked their homemade planes nose to nose on Sixth Avenue during New York's Village Halloween Parade on Oct. 31, 1984. The parade began in 1973 as a puppeteer's walk through Greenwich Village with his kids and their friends. By the mid-'80s, it had grown into one of the biggest Halloween events in the country, and wearable aircraft like these fit right in. Both pilots came in period flight gear, down to the leather caps and goggles. Nobody crashed.

At a costume party somewhere in the U.S. around 1985, the best costume in the room stood about 4 feet tall. The guest painted a droopy-eyed, buck-toothed face on their own stomach, hid their head inside a giant cardboard cowboy hat, and belted a vest, bandana and toy holsters around their middle. The result was a stubby cartoon sheriff with a real body and an unsettling sense of scale. Behind him, a homemade Xenomorph from "Alien" and a guest in a paper bag had to settle for supporting roles. The sheriff ran this town.

A family worked the front steps on Halloween 1985, in a photo from a European series on everyday American life. It's all here. There's a carved pumpkin, a plastic trick-or-treat bag with a cackling witch on it, a matching tracksuit, and one adult in a rubber hag mask to scare whoever came up the walk. The candy supply was a 20-count box of M&M's Plain (the name Mars used for the milk chocolate kind, to set it apart from Peanut). That counts as a well-stocked porch.

Costumed actors got into position at a haunted house on Midlothian Turnpike in Chesterfield County, Virginia, in October 1987. Vampires were having a moment that year. "The Lost Boys" had hit theaters that summer, and this Dracula, with his velvet cape and white face paint, fit right in. Look past him to the floor, though. Behind his cape sits a 7-Eleven Big Gulp, the oversized fountain drink the chain introduced in 1980. Even the undead needed to stay hydrated.

A frog and a pig posed on Sixth Avenue during New York's Village Halloween Parade on Oct. 31, 1987, and nobody needed to ask who they were supposed to be. "The Muppet Show" had ended in 1981, but the Muppets were still everywhere (Saturday-morning "Muppet Babies" was a hit on CBS). The details here are loose. This frog has polka dots, which Kermit never did, and a face painted green to fill the gap. Miss Piggy is closer, with the blond curls, the satin gown, and the attitude. Close enough for the parade.

A young trick-or-treater posed with her star wand outside a Wienerschnitzel in Alameda, California, on Halloween 1988. The building is pure Wienerschnitzel. John Galardi opened the first one in 1961, and the chain's steep A-frame roofs became a landmark along West Coast roads. The banner is the real time capsule, though: a chili dog and chili fries for $1.89. The same order runs roughly $9 to $12 today, depending on location. Behind her, two more kids headed off with their candy bags. Dinner could wait.

A young witch opened the door on one of the best homemade costumes at New York's Village Halloween Parade on Oct. 31, 1987. The kid inside the "Human Fridge" stocked the shelves with real packaging, and it's a 1980s grocery run. There's Cherry Coke (introduced just two years earlier), milk cartons, a tub of Polly-O, Gulden's mustard, an egg carton and a plastic hamburger. A hand pokes through the middle shelf, and the bottom drawer is labeled "Fruit." The witch had a crown and a scepter. The fridge had snacks.

Someone made a call from a San Francisco pay phone in October 1980 while wearing one of that season's sharper masks: Mayor Dianne Feinstein as Dracula. Feinstein had been mayor for under two years, and her famously coiffed hair made her easy to caricature. The fangs did the rest. Beside the mask, the phone itself is a time capsule, with a coin slot for nickels, dimes, and quarters and a card explaining long-distance calls. The Chronicle ran the photo on Oct. 27.

Two girls spread their skirts for the camera outside a house in Hayward, California, on Halloween 1988. One went for a draped, goddess-style gown. The other wore off-the-shoulder satin ruffles and a tiara, a look straight out of a late-'80s prom (the decade loved a puffed sleeve). Above them, paper pumpkins are taped against the window blinds, the low-budget decorating standard of the era. No masks, no fangs. Just two very good dresses.

A crowd of trick-or-treaters worked the steps of a house in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood on Halloween 1983, and their costumes could double as a TV guide. There's G.I. Joe, relaunched by Hasbro in 1982 as a line of small action figures and backed by a hit Marvel comic and an animated miniseries. There's a Smurf, from the NBC Saturday-morning cartoon that started in 1981. There's "The Dukes of Hazzard," again. All of them came as vinyl smocks with molded plastic masks, the standard store-bought costume of the era. The candy went into paper grocery bags.

By August 1982, this U.S. costume shop already had its masks lined up, and the handwritten price cards are the best part. Darth Vader and Yoda went for $40 each (more than $130 apiece today). A skull mask was cashing in on "Poltergeist," which had come out just two months earlier, for $12. The knockoffs got creative names. Frankenstein's monster is "Man-Created." A melted face is "Fantom." One mask is simply "Creepy," for $35. For anyone on a budget, the bottom shelf had Beagle Puss glasses and stick-on mustaches.

Paul Reubens scooped out a jack-o'-lantern on the set of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" at Culver Studios in Culver City, California, in 1989. Naturally, Pee-wee's pumpkin is green. The CBS Saturday-morning show ran from 1986 to 1990 and became a surprise awards magnet, an unlikely run for a set full of talking furniture and a dinosaur family living in the wall (one peeks out behind him). Reubens died in 2023. Pee-wee still belongs at every Halloween party.

A crew of devils posed on Sixth Avenue during New York's Village Halloween Parade on Oct. 31, 1987. The one in the middle went all in: red face paint down to the knuckles, a painted goatee, rubber horns and elf ears, a pitchfork, and a grin that sells it. Anyone in costume can join the parade, which explains the company. One of Snow White's seven dwarfs wandered into the frame on the left. Graffiti covers the wall behind them, pure 1980s Manhattan. 

Two costumed skaters rolled down Speer Boulevard near University Boulevard in Denver in October 1982, taking advantage of a warm fall afternoon a week before Halloween. The quad skates date the photo as much as anything. Roller skating was coming off its disco-era boom, and plenty of people still had a pair in the closet. The sunglasses and the handbag finished the look. The Denver Post never identified them. They clearly didn't want it to.

Three brothers lined up in the living room for a family photo on Halloween 1985, a perfect sample of what was on store shelves that year. Two went with "Sesame Street": the Count, fangs and all, and Oscar the Grouch, wearing a hand-lettered sign just in case anyone missed the trash can. The oldest went as E.T., three years after the movie came out and still the highest-grossing film of all time (until "Jurassic Park" passed it in 1993). Every costume is a vinyl smock with a plastic mask held on by a thin elastic band. The masks did all the work.