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Ben Cooper, Inc. was a privately held American corporation which primarily manufactured Halloween costumes from the late 1930s to the late 1980s. It was one of the three largest Halloween costume manufacturers in the U.S. from the 1950s through the mid-1980s.〔Rinker, "Halloween Costumes Worth Scaring Up By Collectors," ''The Morning Call,'' November 10, 1996.〕 The company's inexpensive plastic masks and vinyl smocks were an iconic American symbol of Halloween from the 1950s to the 1970s,〔Sandstrom, "Frightfully Collectible," ''The Plain Dealer,'' October 28, 1994.〕 and Cooper has been called the "Halston of Halloween"〔(Shapiro, "Trick and Treat! Ben Cooper Bags Millions as the Halston of Halloween," ) ''People,'' October 29, 1979.〕 and the "High Priest" of Halloween.〔("Ghoul Gear," ) ''The Village Voice,'' October 25–31, 1973.〕 ==Corporate history== Founder Ben Cooper was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1906.〔 Although his father was a restauranteur, Cooper studied accounting and briefly sought a career as a songwriter before founding a theatrical costume business in 1927.〔"Halloween Costume," in ''Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion,'' 2004, p. 167.〕 Cooper designed costumes and sets for the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem and several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.〔〔 With live theatre becoming rarer in the 1930s due to the Great Depression and Halloween becoming a more popular holiday, Cooper established Ben Cooper, Inc., in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937.〔〔 The firm assumed control of A.S. Fishbach, Inc.—which had a license to produce costumes based on characters owned by The Walt Disney Company such as Donald Duck and Snow White—in 1937 and began selling Disney costumes under Fishbach's Spotlight brand.〔〔("Snow White Costumes By Fishbach," ''Playthings,'' June 1938, p. 47. )〕 The two companies formally merged and incorporated as Ben Cooper, Inc., on December 8, 1942.〔("Ben Cooper, Inc." Entity Information. Division of Corporations. New York State Department of State. June 25, 2003. ) Accessed 2010-09-20.〕 By the late 1940s, Ben Cooper, Inc. was one of the largest and most prominent Halloween costume manufacturers in the United States.〔Fendelman, "Vintage Halloween Costumes," ''Country Living,'' October 1, 2007.〕 Its costumes were generally very thin fabric with a silk-screened image on the front that sold for less than $3.〔Rosenkrantz, "Chills and Thrills Have Long History," ''San Diego Union-Tribune,'' October 20, 2002.〕 The company began selling its costumes through large retailers such as J. C. Penney, Sears, Woolworth's, and five-and-dime stores.〔 Costumes often sold for $1.25 ($ in dollars).〔 At the time, the most popular costumes were traditional Halloween figures such as devils, ghosts, skeletons, and witches.〔 In the 1950s, television characters such as Davy Crockett, Superman, and Zorro were more popular.〔 As parents became more concerned about safety in the 1950s, the company responded by creating its "Glitter Glo" costumes, dresses, and jumpsuits with large amounts of blue glitter glued to the front (which would reflect the headlights of oncoming automobiles).〔 The company banked heavily on the popularity of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, but had to destroy thousands of masks after Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.〔 In the 1960s and 1970s, Ben Cooper, Inc., was one of the "big three" Halloween costume companies, along with Collegeville and the H. Halpern Company (Halco).〔Moody, "Television Land Outside Your Door," ''The Hartford Courant,'' October 30, 1960.〕〔Rinker, "Unmasking the Value of Old Halloween Costumes," ''The Morning Call,'' October 23, 2007.〕 The company became known for licensing popular film and television characters and getting their images onto store shelves quickly.〔〔 For example, it licensed Spider-Man, a virtually unknown character at the time, in 1963.〔Petty, p. 737.〕 The company also licensed the Batman character in 1964.〔McLaughlin, "Costumes' Popularity Is Absolutely Batty," ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch,'' October 26, 1989.〕 The company produced a very popular Richard Nixon mask in the late 1960s, which sold as equally well as its Ronald Reagan mask even in the late 1980s.〔(Kleinfeld, "The Weird, the Bad and the Scary," ''New York Times,'' October 15, 1989. )〕 The company produced a George H. W. Bush mask in 1987, anticipating Bush's election as president by a year.〔 In 1979, Ben Cooper, Inc., was still the largest Halloween costume company in the U.S.〔 That same year, the firm issued its first costume based on a character in an R-rated motion picture, the creature from the film ''Alien''.〔 The company suffered heavy financial losses in the early and mid-1980s. Beginning on September 29, 1982, seven people died after taking the painkiller Tylenol. Investigators discovered that someone had tampered with the product, lacing it with potassium cyanide. Terrified parents nationwide refused to allow their children to celebrate Halloween the following month, and sales of costumes plummeted and did not recover for several years.〔 Ben Cooper, Inc. formed the Halloween Celebration Committee along with eight other manufacturers of Halloween costumes, masks, makeup, and accessories and (in cooperation with the Toy Manufacturers of America) published the booklet "13 Great Ways to Celebrate Halloween" in order to reassure parents and help stimulate interest in the holiday again.〔Lesem, "Booklet Aims to Make '83 Halloween Trick-or-Treat Both Scary and Safe," ''United Press International,'' October 4, 1983.〕 Despite this setback, in 1984 the firm was still the largest supplier of Halloween costumes in the United States.〔Kita, "Just Needle and Thread Create Stuff of Dreams — and Nightmares," ''The Morning Call,'' October 25, 1984.〕 The company recovered around 1987, as total sales of accessories, costumes, and makeup rose at an annual rate of 20 percent a year.〔〔DeCaro, "Grown-Up Goblins: Halloween Fantasies Let the Ghoul Times Roll for Stressed Out Baby Boomers," ''Chicago Tribune,'' October 25, 1987.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ben Cooper, Inc.」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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