After today, all those temporary Halloween superstores close up and (to borrow an old Johnny Carson joke) will appear next year as H&R Blocks. I’ve killed some time in them this Fall while waiting to pick up my nephew or in yesterday’s case, helping Somara’s quest for a particular wig.
These pre-packaged, licensed getups are pretty amusing…in an awful way. I guess they serve a purpose, namely for those without a lot of spare time and/or imagination. I should talk, I hardly bother anymore. How could I top Patsy Stone in 1995? There was a costume which demonstrated the merits of creative shopping, calling in favors and finding the right audience.
Below, I couldn’t resist poking fun at the two Olive Oyl options offered at Party City. If you’ve seen the Robert Duval movie starring Robin Williams and Shelly Duval, you’d be quite grateful the filmmakers stuck with the latter option.
Maybe if Olive ate her spinach she would look this good.
The hours upon hours of Popeye cartoons I watched as a child (from the Thirties through the Seventies) could never convince me that Olive Oyl was attractive. What the pugnacious sailor saw in her was beyond us kids. When we got to high school, we figured Popeye must’ve been smoking spinach in his pipe. If I were single and a woman approached me in this, I think I would need to squint with one eye just stop from laughing. Now the one below isn’t as horrifying.
With this being the counter to sexy, shouldn't it be called Virgin Olive Oyl?
They forget to mention the Fran Drescher/Cyndi Lauper voice lessons as an accessory with either costume.