Toy Tales Halloween 2025 Archivist – The Halloween Retrospect by Joanna Hauser – Oct 31, 2025 The Friday Five. What a most wonderful surprise! This Halloween 2025 is a special treat for The Halloween Retrospect! The archive has once again been interviewed by the fun-loving folks at Toy Tales (independent toy journalism website with a […]
Category: News
Artifacts V2 Festoons
NEW Sixth reference for Halloween! Announcing Halloween Artifacts, Volume 2: Festoons which is book six (!!!) in a two-year+ publication venture from the archive library of The Halloween Retrospect! This will continue the Halloween Artifacts series with large-scale full-color photographs spanning 114 pages. This bigger 8-1/2 x 11 format offers multiple views of familiar and […]
Honeycomb Repair
Non-Invasive Restoration of Existing Honeycomb The above image shows the before and after of af Beistle novelty dancing figure Lasansky dates 1930-1937. Note the facial features will change across the decades in latter versions. Over a decade earlier in days of initial blog The Sane Halloween Observer a musing is penned as author wonders if […]
2nd Anniversary Review
Digests & Art Surveys: 2 Years of THR Guidebooks The above image reviews some of the various vintage Halloween collectible guidebooks and art surveys published by The Halloween Retrospect since July 2023. Not to toot one’s own holiday noisemaker, but The Halloween Retrospect wishes to take a moment to review it’s own recent past. The […]
Digest V4 THR (March 2025)
Volume 4 Vintage collectibles Guide The archive librarian returns in a big way to its digest series of vintage Halloween collectible guides with The Halloween Retrospect, Volume 4. This new release book not only continues solving mysteries of old holiday products (via research of 625+ catalogs 1900 to 1979) but this time includes a one-of-a-kind […]
To: Halloween, From: Xmas
Other Holidays Unlocking Halloween Product data As collector these past twenty-something years, it becomes apparent very early that numerous holidays (Christmas, Easter, et. al.) provide data relative to vintage Halloween collectibles, (and this writer thinks of their own multi-seasonal forays for Bindlegrim as creative maker). Thus, even though The Halloween Retrospect publication list (see Books) […]
The Peculiar Bookshelf
Great Tastes in Books With recent inclusion of Halloween Artifacts, Volume 1: Lighting among books about vintage Halloween in the Practical Peculiarities household library (and see Nikk’s latest cookbook Peculiar Baking), it seems a perfect time to review some of the items shown in Nikk’s 2023 AND 2024 specials… and offer a few links to […]
Local Collector Guides
Art books & Research Digests (THR) Image Updated March 2025 to include The Halloween Retrospect, Volume 4: A selection of book publications from The Halloween Retrospect archive library – featuring vintage Halloween collectibles guides in small digest volumes and the newest art-book survey Halloween Artifacts. Since the first THR archive library publication of September 2023, […]
Artifacts V1 Lighting
NEW! Full-Color Halloween Guide Halloween Artifacts, Volume 1: Lighting is the newest guide for vintage Halloween collectibles. The book is expected to have a sales release date of September 21, 2024 from the THR bookstore on Etsy. And while the new survey book series will shift into picture-book style with big photographs (on 8-1/2 x […]
Reference Books V3
Primary sources & The Halloween Retrospect V3 Do you know where your guidebook gets its data, and will future research be able to use it as a citable source? This question is a continuing concern at THR’s archive library, and it is a distinguishing direction with its own series of vintage collectibles publications – that […]
References for Collectors
Reference Book Guides for Vintage Halloween collectors Updated December 2, 2025 Welcome to THR’s quick review of its new best-selling book series published about vintage Halloween collectibles! As of this update, the research archive now offers a six-book library which includes two art-book style surveys (Halloween Artifacts, V!: Lighting) and (Halloween Artifacts, V2 Festoons)and four […]
Digest V3 THR (June 2024)
Volume 3 Vintage collectibles Guide The next reference for vintage Halloween collectibles is expected for sale in early summer 2024 with The Halloween Retrospect, Volume 3. As with earlier volumes, the newest book in the series will continue to delve more deeply into certain subjects of the vintage Halloween market, offering illustrated data as a […]
Toy Tales Spotlight
Toy Tales Collector Interview The Halloween Retrospect’s catalog collection is a market history seen through vintage pages filled of gewgaws, thingamabobs, whatchamacallits, doohickeys, and holiday curios (including my personal favorite Halloween) dating 1900 to 1979. Since the library began as a bit of a side-project as a relatively new venture built on past interests, it […]
Digest V2 THR (Dec 2023)
Volume 2 Vintage collectibles Guide Guidebook announcement here for The Halloween Retrospect, Volume 2 – the continuation of a new series of reference booklets about vintage Halloween collectibles. This newest edition is set to arrive mid to late December 2023, to offer more unearthed treasures found while the archivist librarian digs through period catalogs: about […]
Digest V1 THR (July 2023)
New Vintage collectibles series The Halloween Retrospect announces the new series of self-titled research digests (magazines) arrive July 2023 to gaze into the world of vintage Halloween markets as seen through hundreds of information objects (mainly ~500 vintage catalogs 1900-1979) housed in The Halloween Retrospect archive library. The content for the first volume has been […]
A Sane Halloween Blog
From Blog to Book Began as long ago as late 2014, The Sane Halloween Observer gave an unofficial farewell (January 14, 2023) in a recent blog entry What Next? announcing a newer print venture with The Halloween Retrospect archive library. This was a move on the author’s part to be more involved with developing a […]