I thought it would only be fair to do a quick and dirty post for Don Post Studios today.
This is a scan of my personal copy of the famous 1966 Monster Calendar, which pretty much serves as the 'official' collector guide for the Classic Universal Monster Masks-because it's in color. Most of us saw these masks for the first time in the back pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine in the 60's and 70's...AND HAD TO HAVE THEM!!!
Cigarette Lighters and Latex Masks...two things that go great together when you're a 12 year old boy!
Don Post started his Company around 1939 and soon started making Latex Masks of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini - which he dubbed the 'The Dictator Line'...and they were incredibly successful. But as we all know - that's not why WE remember him...it was his Monster Masks that had all of us drooling like little maniacs. During the 'Golden Age' of Horror & Monster merchandise of the 1960's, Don Post Studios began to produce some of the most sought after Monster Masks ever created. But alas, they were well out of my price range ESPECIALLY in the 70's when I desperately wanted to own them...I had to wait until the early 90's when they reissued them to finally get my hands on a few.
...It was worth the wait.
(The ads are from my copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland issue 49 May 1968)
I always slobbered over these well, but I was always crestfallen by the out-of-reach for a kid prices attached to these marvelous masks. If they had a sale and begged my parents to combine Christmas with several birthdays, I would have loved to have had the Wolfman mask. It would have been the star of every 8mm opus me and my brother ever made. Nope. Not to be. Instead I had to settle on the dime store rubber masks that looked as if somebody vomited into the mold. They were usually drive-by painted and were impossible to identify. Maybe it was Frankenstein. Maybe it was a bum.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't have said it better myself Joe...I would stare at the ads in Famous Monsters and would try and think of ways to get one, whether it would be extra chores, beg, sell something...but the same thing would happen every single time I have a few extra dollars in my pocket. I'd blow it on something less expensive. It's the curse of childhood and being impatient.
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