It's time for another round of 90s Kid Halloween Nostalgia!
Sometimes it saddens me that today's kids will likely never know the true magic of Saturday morning cartoons. There was something about that feeling of waking up, maybe earlier than we should have been on a day off, but wanting to make the most of our day, knowing we had two full days of freedom ahead of us. Somehow the cartoon blocks felt like a celebration. As if Saturday was a weekly holiday and Saturday morning cartoons were the party we were always invited to, or the special we waited for with bated breath.
Some of my fondest memories of my childhood weekends are of losing myself in those cartoons for several hours. My favorite block of all was the One Saturday Morning block on ABC, run by Disney. It premiered just after I turned ten, and it immediately became a weekly fixture in my life, with me counting down the days until it came back around, and begging my parents not to plan any outings until the programming block was over for the day. (I can't remember if they listened or not.)
One program that was part of the original One Saturday Morning block was a cartoon about a twelve-year-old girl called Pepper Ann. Now, Pepper Ann wasn't a favorite of mine per se. I liked it, I watched it regularly, but I didn't relate to it in the same way I did to some of the other shows on the block, like Recess, or my personal favorite, 101 Dalmatians: The Series. Pepper Ann was about a seventh grader. A middle school kid. And even though I was only two years younger than Pepper Ann and her friends and probably should have considered myself a "tween", middle school felt a world away when I was ten. I wasn't one of those kids who was dying to grow up. In fact, I was terrified of getting older, and spent significant amounts of time trying not to think about the fact that I'd be starting middle school in two years. Pepper Ann felt above me in a lot of ways.
There is, however, one episode that has always, always stuck with me. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that this is, of course, the Halloween episode.
A 'Tween Halloween is available to watch here on YouTube.
The reason why I remember this episode so vividly and not any of the others, aside from it simply being a Halloween episode, is probably because, at least in the beginning, it was the one time I actually related to the titular character.
The episode opens with Pepper Ann attempting to make a huge pumpkin display that spells out "HALLOWEEN ROCKS", and getting frustrated at the fact that the "s" just won't fit. Even at ten years old I related to the great Halloween decor plight of having so much to display and not so ample space.
As she's attempting this interesting feat (eventually leaving her sister's best friend to hold the "s" indefinitely) her friend Milo approaches, and the two start discussing their costume plans. I'm a little concerned that two people who claim to be so into Halloween and are apparently semi-famous for their costume choices in their area have waited until October 28th to have this conversation but it is what it is. The two head off to a renowned local thrift shop on Pepper Ann's insistence that this is where they'll find the most amazing and unique costumes.
And that they do, with Pepper Ann opting to be a "motorized beauty shop patron", and Milo excitedly settling on an actual giant dehydrated papaya. (More about this later.)
While there, though, they encounter three children, younger than they are but not by much, who seem utterly shocked by the fact that Milo and Pepper Ann are talking about going trick-or-treating at their age! Like seriously, they react to it as if the two twelve-year-olds are talking about robbing a grave. It's pretty weird.
Regardless, the three fourth graders get into Pepper Ann's head and she immediately starts second guessing her life choices as they relate to Halloween.
This is so, so weird to me, that this poor girl who claims to love Halloween so much, is letting three children younger than she is dictate her life so much. It's not like they're even kids from her own peer group! They don't even go to the same school!
But Pepper Ann is convinced now. She's "too old to celebrate her favorite holiday".
Milo, however, is not at all swayed by the opinions of elementary school children and goes even harder with his Halloween spirit, creating the concept of "Halloweek", in which he will wear his dehydrated papaya costume to school for the entire week, starting on October 30th.
Pepper Ann is now officially embarrassed to be around someone who's so into Halloween at their advanced age, and finds any excuse she can to avoid being seen with her Halloween-obsessed friend. She even goes so far as to take a poll of her entire seventh-grade class, to find out if anyone else is going trick-or-treating, and everyone (presumably except Milo) says they are not.
This is the final straw for Pepper Ann. Despite a brief fantasy of going into the cafeteria and making a formal announcement that she still believes in Halloween and becomes a hero by deeming it okay to still trick-or-treat at twelve, she decides that Halloween as she knows it is over and done with for good. (Fun fact: I've been able to hear the way she delivers the line I believe in Halloween! clear as a bell in my head since the day this premiered.)
Pepper Ann also finally goes off on Milo for wearing his dehydrated papaya costume everywhere and tells him he needs to "start acting like a preteen".
Milo argues a little, reminding Pepper Ann that she was the one who insisted that they should be daring
and different in the first place by thrifting their costumes, but eventually he takes a good long look in the mirror (or in this case a store window) and starts to think that maybe Pepper Ann has a point.
The next day, Halloween arrives, and Pepper Ann sulks her way through the evening, sitting by the door, setting off some spooky effects, and handing out candy, but not dressing up in any way. This baffles me, because even if she's deemed herself "too old" to trick-or-treat, she could still get into the spirit of her supposed "favorite holiday" in other ways, even just simply putting a costume on to hand out treats. The fact that she so easily rejects not only trick-or-treating but any real celebration of Halloween in general, is kind of maddening.
But then, Milo shows up, looking like an exhausted husband who just spent an extra hour in traffic on the commute home from his 9-5.
Pepper Ann thinks it's a costume at first but no, Milo has come to denounce his childhood once and for all, even bringing a bag of everything that's no longer considered "cool" at his age, to bequeath to Pepper Ann's younger sister. This is where Pepper Ann finally sees the error of her ways, as she glimpses what her best friend would be like if his entire personality evaporated. She realizes she was in the wrong to listen to everyone else's thoughts on trick-or-treating rather than just do what she wanted to do all along, and that she was even more wrong to peer pressure Milo as well. The two snap out of their pre-teen try-hard era, don their costumes and have the time of their lives.
The funniest part is that the episode ends with several of their seventh-grade peers arriving home in intense disguises, revealing that they went trick-or-treating as well, and only said they weren't out of fear of what other people would think.
Even though I was tiny bit younger than the characters when this episode premiered, (It's actually part of the second season, so I would have just turned eleven but still been in elementary school.) I can definitely vouch for how true-to-life it was. I had just gone through my own
battle with Halloween peer pressure the year before (though this was about my choice of costume, not trick-or-treating itself) and I learned very quickly after that to just
lie about certain things. Anything I thought could be deemed too "babyish", I never admitted to doing, enjoying, thinking about, etc. in front of my peers. I never really
stopped being myself, but I learned how to
hide it, like the other kids did in the
Pepper Ann episode. And, of course I have no real way of knowing if it was true or not, but my mother did say that there were likely other kids doing the same things I was doing, also in secret because
they were afraid of being made fun of, too. The episode really, really nailed the feelings and reactions to tween-age peer pressure in that way.
Still, though, I don't ever recall trick-or-treating being a subject of controversy during any of my school years, elementary days through my senior year of high school. Sure, there were kids that openly stopped going, but not very many that I can recall, and it really wasn't even the ones you'd think...The popular crowd loved costumes and free candy as much as the next kid. There were just small handfuls of kids who simply lost interest in Halloween after a certain age, and that's okay. (If not a bit unfathomable for someone like me but I digress.)
I have to wonder, though, between
Pepper Ann and
the Halloween episode of 'The Adventures of Pete & Pete', if perhaps I maybe
just missed a generation of tweens and teens who were convinced being caught celebrating Halloween was the ultimate way to commit social suicide? Was this ever a thing that really happened, in the capacity it was shown in the media in the mid-90s? Was I just lucky to live in a Halloween-friendly area?
Regardless, I'm just happy that I never felt the pressure to give up Halloween, and can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that even if I had, I know I would not have succumbed to it. As Pepper Ann stated in her dream sequence speech, I believe in Halloween! And I always, always will.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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