A 1950s Halloween Parade in San Francisco. I posted a similar edit of this footage on Instagram and got DMs saying it looked like death camp footage. In reality, it was filmed at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco in the 1950s. This was long before pop culture trends and memes took over Halloween costume inspiration. Back then, kids often chose archetype costumes. The costumes you see here represented broad, familiar roles rather than specific pop culture characters. They were based on classic personas that anyone could recognize without a brand or character tie in. By the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more TV shows took off, companies saw potential in character licensing. They started buying the rights to popular shows and mass producing inexpensive costumes. These companies focused less on quality and more on speed, getting costumes out in time for Halloween. You probably remember these: a stiff plastic mask held on by a single rubber band, and a thin plastic jumpsuit with matching branding. If you went as Casper the Friendly Ghost, for example, your jumpsuit would have an illustration of Casper printed right on it. By the late 1980s or early 1990s, those costumes had mostly disappeared. source footage 🎥: Dasin Smolt