A Drug Store Halloween Circular from 1986

Rea & Derick was drug store chain based in Pennsylvania that had a bunch of locations in my area in the 1980’s. There was one in the Whitehall Mall and the South Mall. In 1990, CVS bought the parent company and shut a lot of them down because of redundancies. The one in the Whitehall mall became a non-pharmacy CVS, the one in the South Mall became a Petco which is still there today. I was looking up some stuff from Halloween 1986 and found this circular in the Sunday October 26th newspaper. Lets Look at it.

First of all, the set decoration is perfect, they used little plastic jack-o-lanterns and skeleton bears in a lot of the pictures. Do I want to buy wise laundry detergent for $2.99, maybe now I do? The star of this show is the bag of Peanut Butter Kisses for $.99. Remember those taffy like chunks with salty peanut butter in the middle in black and orange wrappers? What happened to that candy? I used to love getting those.

The Next page has a kid at the top who might be a devil? They're selling various electronics and wood furniture here, highlights are the Hip Cycle Exerciser for $8.99, and the Sanyo Duel Cassette Stereo for $49.99. Nothing much for halloween.

Next Page we get to the goods. You can get a witch’s hat for $1.99 and some Jump clown ties for $1.49, boom Halloween costume for under 5 bucks. Of course don’t forget you film and flash cubes so you can take pictures of the kids in their costumes. Some good candy for sale, 5th Avenue, Milk Duds, and some different flavors of nerds all for $.99 (well 1.29 for the nerds). I’d say the cost of candy has gone up significantly in 40 years.

And finally on the last pages, some more premium candy for 1.69 a bag. Give me those Hershey’s Assorted Miniatures every day baby! The 59 cent jointed skeleton was a staple for every teacher in every classroom across America. That Soft skin mask for 1.99 is freaking creepy. Finally you can grab a 10 inch pumpkin basket for only 99cents.

In an era where the only big box store in town was K-Mart, a lot of the time, these small pharmacies and Hall-Mark stores were where you went to get all of your Halloween goods. There was no Spirit Halloween, or Target putting out Halloween stuff on the 5th of July.

BONUS: I clipped the Peanuts comic strip from the Sunday paper while I was looking around. It features ole Linus still waiting on the Great Pumpkin while Peppermint Patty gives him the business about it.