Unsolved Mysteries: The Beistle Company

October 26th, 2010 by Art Chantry

The Beistle Company (pronounced ‘bee-sill’) is probably one of the most widely distributed, widely viewed, most famous popular manufactured art in the United States. Bet you never heard of them, right? But, I’ll bet you’ve seen their work. They’re the folks who have made the bulk of all that great Halloween stuff we’ve lived with all these years.

Articulated skeletons, embossed Jack o’ lanterns, dangling witches, scary ghosties – all their work. Probably the most famous is that classic articulated skeleton (the joints are grometed to allow them to move) that every single person in america hung in their window or door. You now the one. Sorta scary and shows up in every amateur haunted house over the last 50-60 years?

The thing about Beistle is that they never seemed to protect their copyright. They would use a design for a while (if it sold well), then abandon it to make a new design and try to push that. It had a sort of built-in planned obsolescence to their work. The result was a sort of walking-away from their old images, resulting in the wholesale exploitation by the masses. You see their work show up in clip art and designs everywhere. We just assume it grew on a tree and dump it into the “vernacular” column and then “appropriate” it for our brilliant postmodernist glop. I know I have.

Over the years, I’ve collected numerous vintage catalogs of their products (it’s, jadedly, a terrific clip source). No one is ever referenced for the artwork. The ubiquitous and extraordinarily over-familiar images are all credited to “Beistle.” There is no other authorship (as per the American Capitalist way).

So, who actually was the hand that drew this stuff? No one knows. There is obvious authorship and stylistic traits involved. You can spot the differing voices creating the images. There is also a transition over time; you can see new hands coming into the picture and the old hands fading away. In effect, these hands created our shared experience of Halloween. We can’t think of Halloween without drawing upon these images, and yet we have no idea who created these memories for us. It’s rather sad.

This item I’m showing today is from my small collection of Beistle crap. This one I remember rather well from my youth because it marked the transition from “Scary Halloween” images to “Friendly Halloween” images. There was a moment, about the time of my early adolescence, when somebody out there made the unchallenged “PC” decision to make halloween no longer the province of scary monsters and ravenous ghouls into “Casper” ghosts and smiley-face Jack o’ lanterns. Why? It would scare the kids, I guess. It’s as if we suddenly became a nation of chickens. That chicken-heartedness sort began in earnest around that time, and we’ve become the nation of ‘terrorized’ rabble we are today. Whoever made that choice should be boiled in oil in the darkest corner of a dungeon in a Roger Corman “Poe” movie.

But, that’s just one man’s opinion.

The other problem with this piece was that it was the first major seasonal Halloween skeleton line that Besitle had made in decades that wasn’t “articulated” (I assume to save money). The side problem of this decision was that couldn’t fold it up and use it again next year (which was maybe more “Planned Obsolescence?”). It was one big solid peice of cardboard and it got trashed very quickly. They essentially fell apart very quickly from the “Love” (a.k.a. use).  Almost none of this design seems to survive in larger sizes. This particular copy made it through the years because it is tiny (about 14″ tall). Even then, it’s lost part of a foot.

The result was that it didn’t catch on and was phased out within a year or two for a move back to the old articulated design, but re-worked with a smiling visage. A real step down, as far as I was concerned.

In retrospect, this was actually a pretty terrific image. Now that I’m an adult “Commercial Artist,” I recognize the skill, and experience the correct nostalgic sentimentality when I look at it. It hangs on my wall.

Anyway, this silly-looking skeleton failed rather quickly in the marketplace. It wasn’t scary. Since it was the first of the ‘happy’ skeletons, it was new and different. And finally, it was too fragile. It was anonymous. It was “vernacular.” It became lost.

I wonder who drew it?