What’s so wrong with being a toilet for Halloween?

Toilet CostumeYesterday on Boing Boing, David Pescovitz posted a link to a Toilet Halloween costume, calling it “deeply depressing disturbing.” Even worse, the product description for the costume says:

A Child toilet costume is perfect for every potty mouth kid– Use as a modern day Dunce cap!!

Sheesh! Well back when I was a not-so-potty-mouthed-kid, my dad, brother, and I used to make realistic Halloween costumes out of corrugated cardboard and glue guns. And when I say realistic, I mean we carefully measured and enlarged the object we were building to precise scale. We’d go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and at the local mall (apparently the place to show of your costumes) and collect candy from the stores.

For the Halloween of 1989, I was toilet and my brother was a hammer, which caught the eye of a photographer at the Poughkeepsie Journal, and we made it in the paper:

Justin as toilet and Matthew as hammer for Halloween, October 1989

Note the toilet paper, Comet, and Vanish on top of the tank. Also, note that I edited the caption to correctly read that I was the toilet and my brother was the hammer, not vice versa.

Thursday, October 19, 2006 5:31pm
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6 comments

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Brian/Dad
10/19/06 7:12pm

Well now everyone knows that you’re years ahead of your time - seventeen years to be exact. But then you’ve always been mature for your age. And having been there it was a hoot to watch you lift the seat while hidden in the tank so people could read “treat or flush” and throw candy into the toilet bowl. P.S. the kid in the picture really looks dorky - something you’ve never been.

matthew
10/20/06 6:34am

It was fun doing all of that. The sad thing is, I don’t even remember how much time we actually spent making those costumes. I do remember that they were hard to move around in so I would take it off for the trick or treating and put on a mask. That way David and I could run from house to house and collect more candy in our trash bags.

marcia
10/20/06 9:52am

You are so adorable!
OK, this had me cracking up, nearly in tears at my desk for many, many reasons (for one, a newspaper photo with the caption “Justin Watt, the toilet…”). But somehow a child Justin who enlarges a toilet to scale and then walks around wearing it somehow makes sense with the adult you’ve become. And I mean that in a good way. And your costume is way better than that kid in today’s toilet costume. going to go with drag this year, or harken back to the old days?

I was a tea bag once for Halloween.

matt
10/20/06 10:28am

Something about the way Justin Watt, The Toilet sounds is cracking me up. Like some kind of unfortunate nickname.

leona
10/20/06 1:13pm

Marcia’s sentiment, “But somehow a child Justin who enlarges a toilet to scale and then walks around wearing it somehow makes sense with the adult you’ve become. And I mean that in a good way,” is exactly what I was going to say. This is so funny.

goblinbox
10/23/06 11:54am

You’ve always been famous! ;-)