Blast from the past: When Halloween false faces were scarily popular
Halloween is big business, with scary amounts spent on decorations and costumes. But, growing up, fright night was a more modest affair.
We bobbed for apples, made costumes out of old sheets or bin bags. We did not carve lanterns out of plump pumpkins, but rather scooped the innards out of turnips, the hardest vegetable known to mankind.
Instead of elaborate face-painting we worse plastic false faces – nobody called them Halloween masks in those days.
Whether it was a snaggle-toothed witch or a red-faced devil, false faces were practically impossible to see out of as the eye holes were invariably too small. But as a child, when you put one on you were convinced you had transformed into the scariest ghoul. Then, the only thing was to find your granny (any old person would do) and scare the living daylights out of them. They’d play along with much Oscar-worthy screaming and heart-clutching.
The inside of a false face was sweaty within seconds and the smell of plastic and paint was enough to knock you out. The string used to attach the mask was invariably too tight, cutting into childhood chubby cheeks, so that before long it would be pulled off the face and worn on the head, whilst you scoffed your way through a frightening amount of monkey nuts.