Old-School Cosplay Retrospective On Old Stuff Day
Today is Old Stuff Day, which is a bit of a mystery among the typical marketing-born unofficial holidays. It seems nobody knows where this unofficial holiday started, and its mission is simply to encourage people to look at their old stuff and and maybe let go of it and try something new. Seems like that would be something created by the 1-800-GOT-JUNK folks, or at least Marie Kondo.
To recognize this day with mysterious origins I decided to set an arbitrary date of 45 years as the barrier to what cosplay characters I chose for this retrospective gallery. That means no character or character design newer than 1975. (OK, technically that would be 46 years, but really we’re just barely past two months into 2021.) That eliminates nerd fandom characters from things people consider pretty old already, like Star Wars or Star Trek: The Next Generation. Nearly all the most popular Disney characters come from after 1975, as do most of the most popular toy-based cartoons, movies and shows. So, no Ariel or Belle, no Lady Jaye or Bumblebee.
When it comes to comic book characters, I picked only those characters that existed before 1975, and then only their costumes or designs from that period — and didn’t include any of the incredibly popular characters whose designs hardly changed before 1975. That means no Spider-Man, no Superman, no Wonder Woman. Well, I would have made an exception if I had ever photographed someone cosplaying the early 1970s powerless karate Wonder Woman in her bell-bottomed white suit. Or the late 1960s Supergirl with her red bloomer-style shorts instead of the skirt — otherwise, no Supergirl either.
In addition to nerd fandom characters, there are cosplays from general pop culture too — a gumby from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the Phantom from the movie musical Phantom of the Paradise, a No. 2 from the original version of The Prisoner, and even a set of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
There are a couple of mashups in here too, but again, only if both characters and designs were appropriate — such as the red-and-gold early Iron Man design with the plain white round repulsor in his chest mashed up with the Tin Woodsman from The Wizard of Oz. Or the Doctor Pooh mashup of Winnie the Pooh and the fourth Doctor — any later version of the Doctor wouldn’t have worked.
Even with all those restrictions, I was shocked that I had more than 220 images by the time I was done. If I had included those super popular characters listed above, the count would have been more than 1,000.
Cosplayers in this gallery include Alazar Cosplay, serenacosplay, West Street Studios, Samantha Young Cosplay, bostontonystark, Bunny Moon Cosplay, Everyone’s Hero Cosplay, MicroKitty, Briezerker, Jessica Mercy, Luv SydneyMarie, Gina B. Cosplay, Spock Vegas, Zombie Leader, jiro-sensei, Cosplay Dad, Powers Family CozPlay, christians_comics87, caniseeurmanager, BelleChere, uptownbill007, Gallant-Z, moogapproved, LeeLeetheBunny, _ellystar_, The Matrix Cosplay and Photography, misterabsfitness, In the Long Run Designs, its_tenny_, Knightmage, Nicole Marie Jean, aestheticworkhorse, R.W. Martin, elegantfeatherduster, Brandon the Shapeshifter, yogajoedasilva, and many, many more.
We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.
To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
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