While Halloween in the United States dates to the late 1800s , the traditional dressing up and going door to door didn’t start until the 1930s, said Lesley Bannatyne, the author of five books on the holiday’s history. Halloween until then had been an occasion for mischief and light vandalism. Fed up with thrown eggs and stolen fences, homeowners decided to try a different tack: Bribe the would-be miscreants. And with the rise of trick-or-treating came commercial costumes.

“Trick-or-treating was kind of an effort on the homeowners’ part to be prepared,” she said. “It’s like, O.K., you’re going to come to my house and demand something, and if I slam the door in your face you’re going to do something to my yard? Well, I’m ready this year. I’ve got candy.”

Early Halloween costumes were homemade and classic: witches, ghosts, princesses, the occasional Frankenstein . But after World War II, things shifted, largely thanks to one Brooklyn company.

[Read more about how New Yorkers celebrate Halloween.]

Ben Cooper Inc . was founded in 1937 by the brothers Ben and Nat Cooper. Sons of Russian immigrants , they had gotten their start in vaudeville in the 1920s, creating costumes for Harlem’s Cotton Club and the Ziegfeld Follies. When it came to Halloween, their specialty was pop culture. As comic books, cartoons and television took off, the Coopers began buying up the rights to characters like Sleeping Beauty and Davy Crockett and turning them into plastic masks. Kids could become their heroes for a day.