Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Robo vs. Holy Hobo

Can a D-cell battery powered, blinky-eyed, cloth robot stand toe-to-toe with a down-on-his-luck, nothin' to lose hobo who in all likelihood is actually probably Emmett Kelly? Hmmmm... let's RE-EVALUATE POST: it's actually Halco vs. E. Simon's Sons Costumes in an epic, dime store brawl of the vintage midcentury Halloween costumes! Annnnd I do believe the battle was over the second our wrinkled robutt blasted a couple of hellacious holes into mister sad sack's frowny clowny face anyway. Not to mention, the real winner here is of course the beautiful, brightly colored box art designs, --though low and behold *SKELETON! SKELETON! --we discover that someone is actually stored in the wrong box! Oh well. I didn't even buy these, just took the pictures as clearly both have too many problems to warrant the whoppin' $27.99 (each!) price tag that both were insanely doomed with. Good luck antique mall seller! Even that awesome off-model Casper the Ghost couldn't stop me and my whispering wallet from being scared away...


5 comments:

Brian Barnes said...

Robot, or motorcycle guy that had a really bad accident and needs machines to stay alive!

I will while I'd rather be the robot, the hobo is a really nice mold and paint job, even cracked like this one is. The hair and eyebrows and fake "straw" like pattern on the hat are top notch work.

JMR777 said...

For $27.99 the hobo would be thinking "Wid dat kind o' money I could like da king a da road"

While the robot would get an oil change.

I don't know how scarce these costumes are, but as I have seen on Ebay, there are real prices and then there are wishing prices. Wish on, seller, wish on.

Mr. Cavin said...

Yeah, for me that robot costume is the big winnah because I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before. They went all in on the excellent frock art/design and the flashing battery power would have really sold to me as a kid. I always wanted a light-up costume so bad. I am a little less enthused with what looks like a hand painted canvas sack for a mask, but I'd have to see what it looked like fifty years ago to really get snobby about it.

The hobo mask is, as Brian said, an excellent design, both in terms of what to paint and what color to paint it. And E. Simon's and Sons has the cooler box, in my humble O.

JMR777 said...

Typo on my fault, meant to say the hobo's reply would be "Wid dat kind o' money, I could live like a king a' da road."

Still lousy grammar for a guy who rides the rails, but we will give him a pass.

I wonder if the robot could be viewed as a poor man's bionic man/cyborg.

Tom said...

I wonder if the Hobo mouth was intentionally punched out to insert stereotypical cigar. The boxes are definitely the draw here.