The Most Disturbing Halloween Costume Ever: Atari’s Asteroids
October 11th, 2006 by Benj EdwardsI hereby declare: let this monstrosity be spread about the world as the scariest, strangest, and most disturbing Halloween costume ever conceived by mankind:
And “luckily” for me, it has to do with video games. I’m not quite sure what Atari’s marketing department was thinking when they approved (or commissioned?) this costume. Oh wait; I know: money…
“Say, Charlie…we’ve got this great idea…kids can dress up as the game Asteroids for Halloween. Their face will look like a disfigured conglomeration of hollow rocks! We’ll sell ten million units in three months — each family buying two or three costumes a piece because, quite frankly, we shit gold.”
We can only hope that this costume didn’t encourage anyone to shoot little kids in the face. Hmm…perhaps next Halloween I’ll go as one of those big straw archery targets. But hey; the 1980s was a more innocent time.
These images are from the brilliantly entertaining site known as RetroCrush. They have a gallery of some other vintage video game-related costumes that’s definitely worth checking out. Also, some years ago, the curator of RetroCrush compiled a list of the worst Halloween costumes of all time, and sensibly, this costume has a place on the list.
Coming Soon: Halloween costumes based on the racing asphalt in Pole Position, the inky blackness of Pong, and a realistic plastic mask of Donkey Kong’s hairy ass.
After all, he is a donkey.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:10 am
ROFL! Hairy ass! XD
But even though that costume sucks HORRIBLY, if you had it and put it on eBay you’d be pretty rich…
October 11th, 2006 at 11:00 am
This costume’s on the shelf behind me. Only $10 on Ebay.
Obviously the thing can’t be worn; this family of costumes were made primarily with plastic and the plastic’s really started to go to seed, but the point is there.
This whole “plastic sheet and mask” set of costumes flourished for a while, and sometimes got absolutely insane. I guarantee whoever put it together put a bunch of similarly idiotic themes together.
This Asteroids Costume pairs up nicely with the Asteroids album:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/09/atari_music.html
October 11th, 2006 at 11:12 am
You have one? That’s cool. I always thought all those those mask and sheet costumes were pretty dumb. I had a few as a kid myself — I remember my Bugs Bunny one the most. Then there was He-Man.
And yeah, the plastic tends to degrade and get brittle or sometimes gunky — especially if the costumes have spent years in a hot attic. I had some rubber masks that turned into nothing more than a ball of sticky goo over time. It was pretty sad.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
I had a Sonic The Hedgehog one, the weird thing is the plastic shirt had a screen of Emerald Hill Zone and the Sonic logo instead of Sonic’s chest…
October 11th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
[…] What is it? Follow the link to find out. I’ll give you a hint! It’s got the word “ass” in it. Well, sort of. […]
October 12th, 2006 at 7:29 am
[…] read more | digg story Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: . […]
October 12th, 2006 at 7:41 am
[…] Well it is based on a video game you know… Asteroids. No, really.read more | digg story […]
October 12th, 2006 at 9:40 am
i had one of those when I was a kid! I remember pretending my thumbs were joysticks and walking around demanding quarters.
Lame costume, but the party I went to was fun ’cause of the quarters. I got ice cream on the way home.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
▀█▀ █▬█ â–ˆ ▄▄█▀▀ LIKE ME 🙂
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
DIGITAL PRESS LINKED TO HERE!
http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/205
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Yeah, I know.. that was a long time ago. 🙂 Apparently, you linked to here too!