New Hulk is EXTREME!!!!!

Ah yes. Today's child demands a full latex mask, padded muscle suit, full length pants and leggings, a personal trainer, and an interview with Ang Lee. Not included are green rubber fist gloves that make growling sounds when you hit things.

I once made a robot costume out of a cardboard box. Mom got me some gray sweat pants.

Okay, so that's one gripe. Or maybe it's sour grapes. These costumes nowadays... are pretty cool. In all truthfulness.

However, another trend seemed to becoming far to glaring to miss. While strolling down the costume aisle at the nearby Party City, I perused the wall that featured pictures of all the available costumes, divided into sections for infants, children, teens, and adults. Infants and Children were pretty standard. You had all your old standby's: vampire, policeman, witch, batman, George Bush...

...but when I got to "teens," and "adults," I was a bit surprised. I'm not a prude, but I couldn't help but notice the amount of flesh was involved in teen and adult costumes. In actuality, "teen," is probably a misnomer. By "teen," they probably mean "college teen." Because self-respecting teens I remember never wore costumes for Halloween. They just wore the requisite ratty sweatshirt and jeans, chasing each other around with shaving cream and eggs. They're the ones that rang the doorbell, after dark, during dinner... looking a little ashamed of themselves, covered in soapsuds, holding out their soggy pillow case, mumbling, "trickertreat." And by then you were pretty much out of candy, because you already ate the last fun-size twizzlers that your Mom always insists on buying... and then you have to grab a bouple of Mary Janes out of your little sister's pumpkin...

Hmm... that just got a bit autobiographical, there....

So, anyway... ladies costumes these days are getting a whole lot more risque. And I was hard-pressed not to find a single female costume at Party City that didn't start with, "sexy," "naughty," or "double-jointed."

For visual reference, I've conveniently provided some examples of what I found: