SWEATSHIRT MONSTERS: Then & Now - Countdown To Halloween / BlogOWeen

A little boy wears a monster sweatshirt to school in 1962 and threatens to unravel the fabric of society…

These cool screenshots are from “Sweatshirt Monsters” - a 1962 episode of Leave It To Beaver.  In this episode Beaver and three friends race to a local store that is selling gruesome monster sweatshirts. (I find most episodes of this show mind-numbingly boring but the great looking sweatshirts steal the show.)

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The four boys agree to wear the monster shirts to school the next day and they even shake on it.

Gentleman's Agreement

Needless to say,  Beaver’s family is not impressed with his new purchase even though, according to Beaver, it was “only $3.75 and the face is guaranteed not to run when you wash it.”

Before each boy leaves his house to go to school wearing the agreed-upon monster sweatshirt, each parent stops them. 

Beaver, however, outwits his parents with this clever ruse…He leaves the house with the shirt and changes in the garage.

When Beaver gets to school in his monster sweatshirt, he enters the classroom to laughter.  To add insult to injury, his three “friends” who agreed to wear their monster sweatshirts laugh at Beaver as well.  Beaver is immediately sent to the principal’s office.

Beaver’s father is called and is angry that he changed into the forbidden shirt.  The principal explains WHY this is so disruptive to education… 

"This manner of dress tends to detract from reason we are here… When you entered the classroom there was tittering among other students?… What if everyone in school wore something like that?  Gruesome and no one would get any work done. Blah, blah, blah.”

That's right.  If everyone wore a monster shirt to school, all classwork would stop.  People would be so stunned and distracted that they could not even graduate grade school.  This would start a horrible chain reaction of uneducated, illiterate kids wearing monster shirts and running amok.

CUT TO 2013 the average kid (and I don't think I am exaggerating) looks roughly like this...

I say we go back to the time where a gory monster shirt is the most disruptive thing in school.  In honor of "Sweatshirt Monsters", I have found some cool modern-day monster shirts...

The shirts that come closest to "Sweatshirt Monsters" are Ed Roth's Rat Fink t-shirts.

Large Marge from Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

The infamous Crime SuspenSeries (1954) cover with the ax and severed head.  It was part of the national uproar about horror comics and sparked the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. You are a walking history lesson in this shirt.

This Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic.  It is the little black dress of monster shirts. Just make sure you get the one that has the movie poster for Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic.  (No later incarnations of TCM are acceptable - you will look like a psycho.)

Any proper horror buff should buy this shirt and show some love for Fangoria magazine.

No horror t-shirt collection can be complete without Pushead.  Here is a "Super Rare 1990 Pushead Mummy Skull Shirt" - the seller suggests buying it and FRAMING IT.