Halloween remains a popular and very fun time of year, providing some much-needed cheer to fight away those winter blues. It's a time for dressing up, interacting with folks, entertaining children, carving pumpkins, decorating your home in all sorts of wacky ways, and dishing out oodles of candy. Although many traditional Halloween activities have continued throughout the decades, the way in which we go about them has changed noticeably since the advent of the smartphone.
Here are seven things that made Halloween different before smartphones.
Cameras
These days, everyone carries around a decent camera in their pocket, and it's never been easier to take a snap. Back in the day, cameras were a relative rarity. You had to buy a physical unit, plus enough of the appropriate film in advance. You only got one shot to take a snap. No easy editing or lighting adjustment. No filters. Then, once you'd finished up a roll, you'd have to deposit this at your nearest outlet, or send it through the post, and wait up to two weeks to have your photographs printed out and returned. This was always a magical moment.
Shopping
Curling up on the sofa flicking through endless smartphone feeds of Halloween costumes and decorations is a very modern experience. Before the rise of the smartphone and online shopping, you had to visit a physical store to buy all your spooktacular items. Orange plastic pumpkin candy buckets, fake spider webs, strings of fairy lights, monster masks, candy, candy, and more candy. Halloween took way more preparation than simply clicking a few buttons and waiting for your parcels to arrive. A pre-Halloween trip to the store was an event in itself.
Going Outside
It might seem obvious to say it, but pre-smartphone, if you wanted to see what was going down in your neighborhood or with your friends on Halloween, you had to leave the house. With no Instagram posts or livestreams, and with the relative scarcity of cameras, doing the rounds of neighbors and friends was a must, even if it was just to say hello. Every kid of a certain generation will remember going for a family drive in the car on Halloween, peering out of the windows to see all the inventive costumes and decorated houses lit up.
Candy
The essential ingredient of any good Halloween! Every generation has its iconic candy. The pre-smartphone era goes back a long way, of course, but across the 1980s and 1990s we had some strong contenders for the title of “most memorable candy ever.” Nerds candy came with an attractive gimmick – a two-sided box with a different flavor in each compartment, meaning that you could sample each separately or combine them for a taste explosion. Sour Patch Kids brought a unique hit – a sour initial taste followed by tasty sweetness. Big League Chew gave us baseball charisma, Laffy Taffy gave us silly jokes, and Reese's Pieces catapulted to success on the back of the movie, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
Maps
No smartphone equals no GPS. If you wanted to see a detailed plan of your neighborhood and mark out a Halloween candy trail route, then you needed a good old-fashioned paper map. These came in handy flick-book or fold-out options. If you weren't that confident of finding your way around, or wanted to follow a particular path, it would always be a good idea to carry your map with you. Checking street signs and looking up grid references is a skill all of us pre-smartphone kids learned early.
Costume Reveals
These days, we put a frightening amount of our lives online. Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky – social media provides so many opportunities for us to share what we are planning or thinking. Pre-smartphone, you might discuss your Halloween costume ideas with your close friends, but beyond that tight circle, you'd have no idea what crazy and inventive costumes folks might be cooking up. Wondering around your neighborhood, or attending a Halloween event, brought a raft of genuine surprises. Ideas you may never have thought of would be brought to life before your admiring eyes.
Homemade Decorations
People seemed to have more time back then. Life moved at a slower pace, and, with no online shopping or twenty-four-hour delivery, making your own decorations (and costumes) took time to prepare and accomplish. Cardboard cut-out witches, cats, skeletons, and assorted monsters could be painted black for scary silhouettes. Cotton wool made for convincing spider webs. White bin bags transformed themselves into ghosts. With a bit of paint and some stick-on googly eyes, even empty toilet roll tubes could be pressed into service.