Ten Little Goblins

Following is a collage of pages scanned from a 1960's public service announcement on Halloween safety. The actual printed piece is a wallet-sized 3"x4" fold-out booklet from the Minnesota Department of Health printed in 1962 by Imagination Inc.  Mod, kitschy, and rather grim, the story is a cross between a certain politically questionable rhyme of the late 1800's with humor reminiscent of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

Trick-or-Treat Treasure Chest

If you look beyond catalogs (like Dennison's Bogie Books), there exist a ton of wonderful vintage imagery appearing in magazines, early readers, and comics, etc., receiving little attention for valuation. I'm guessing this is because the content of these various publications is not completely devoted to the holiday, nor tied to the decor that people love to collect and display. So a beginning budget-conscious collector can find some real gems!  

One of my favorite vintage covers is this single panel scene of sight-gags created by Graham Hunter for Treasure Chest (of Fun and Fact) Comic Book Vol 4 No. 4. October 19, 1948. A search engine will lead you to a number of his covers (and for other holidays) that are just as much fun! There's so many brilliant details inside of this one piece, that you don't mind the lack of any Halloween content in the rest of this Catholic comic book series.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if one day someone gathered all the smaller, less-noticed Halloween works together in one volume for us?

Links of interest: Halloween Books on Pinterest.

Halloween Print by Unknown

Unknown artist, the illustration (above) is a digital touch-up I created this evening after another photograph (below) of an amazing metal-block printers set spotted some years ago at auction.

Auction photo...