Halloween. When we’d get dressed up as our favorite superheroes — or at least, as the design geniuses at Ben Cooper imagined them.
Now you can get studio-quality Batman and Superman costume replicas over the Internet. But back in the days before multi-billion dollar movie franchises, many adults seemed to have only a dim notion of what super-heroes looked like, and were not very motivated to fill in the gaps of their knowledge. This was true for our parents as well as the people who were, theoretically at least, being paid to make kid versions of the superhero costumes for Halloween.
That’s how we ended up with vinyl aprons that featured badly copied versions of comic-book art on the chest.
As usual, The Simpsons said it first and said it best.
Lisa: I don’t think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it.
Milhouse: He would on Halloween!
Chris Sims has a nice round-up of the worst offenders here at ComicsAlliance. But you can look at the whole, sad range of contenders at Wonderful Wonderblog and Plaid Stallions, which should eat up the rest of your afternoon quite nicely. You’re welcome.