Collectors, always be wary of anything that claims to be for ‘collectors’. Collectibles occur naturally when great things come together into groups, like the elements of carbon and lead. However, when the idea of a collectible is emblazoned on something and manufactured, like promethium, it’s probably radioactive and should be avoided ‘cause it’ll make your babies glow in the dark. Or something like that.

The ‘Collector’s Edition’ of Nightmare Before Christmas is finally out. The original ‘Special Edition’ DVD was released in 2000 without too much fanfare, and had been out of print since shortly thereafter. Because of this limited availability (which is common with Disney DVDs and their fabled ‘vault’), auction prices for the DVD have exceeded $100 at times, with people clamoring for an enduring copy of the classic as their VHS copies sputtered out. While these VHS and Laserdisc copies also exist, the release of this new DVD set has leveled out availability and pricing considerably.

The Collector’s Edition includes every bonus that was on the original Special Edition DVD : a few deleted scenes and storyboards, an extensive behind-the-scenes feature, over 450 images of concept art, a few small animation tests, trailers and posters, as well as commentary from the director, Henry Selick. This alone is a vast amount of extras for any DVD to include - and they did it all on one disc without sacrificing any quality. Also included on that singular amazing disc were two of Tim Burton’s previous short films : Vincent and Frankenweenie, running about 40 minutes total.

This new edition adds a few small things : an exploration of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride as it was decked out in Nightmare decor for Christmas, and audio commentary by Tim Burton and soundtrack artists Danny Elfman - which is something I’ve pretty much always wanted to hear. Unfortunately, the audio commentaries were all recorded separately - at different times and later edited jerkily together, so there’s none of that ‘sitting around in a room laughing and reminiscing’ feeling, which is the best part of any audio commentary. The observations are mostly general things about the film, ignoring the scene specifics.

Burton and Elfman DID begin to feud with each other in the aftermath of this film (but later reconciled) because of the intensity of their working relationship, so perhaps that’s part of the reason they didn’t sit down together to discuss the film.

There’s also Burton’s original poem narrated by the incomparable Christopher Lee, and newly animated menus, which are a lot fancier than the old deal. This is now all spread over 2 discs, and additionally a ‘digital file’ third disc is included - presumably to thwart DVD piracy and such. This disc can be loaded into your iTunes or Windows Media Player, and then the movie can be watched on your computer or any portable media device that you might have. Be forewarned - every digital copy comes with a unique unlock code, and you need to be connected to the internet in order to activate it. When I tried to activate mine, the online iTunes store was having issues, so I had to wait a few hours before my request was processed.

I still don’t fully grasp the concept of additional digital discs, which are coming with more and more DVDs. The practical appeal of watching any movie on a 2-inch screen is lost on me, and if someone really wants to copy the DVD, they’re going to find a way to do it anyhow. Entire armies of socially inept geeks are toiling away in basements underneath X-Men posters to crack any code you slap onto a DVD. I certainly don’t advocate movie piracy, but the idea that I’m being charged extra for a digital copy that I don’t have use for, or have a choice about, doesn’t sit well. Aren’t we trying to use LESS plastic? And in terms of excess, the new DVD packaging is about twice the width of a regular DVD case - and half of that space is given over to an embossed, blurry portrait of Jack Skellington that’s just aesthetically bizarre. I have to say that I’d prefer an artfully done cover, or something lenticular, over more weirdly-used plastic.

Anyone who’s picking up this Collector’s Edition is probably a hardcore fan, and they’re being vocal about the subtlest of differences between this and previous editions. The familiar, blue Touchstone logo that always opened the film is gone, and replaced with a ‘Walt Disney Pictures Presents’, and while some folks are saying that this offsets the timing of the opening sequence, I haven’t noticed any differences. There’s a point in the opening song where part of the vocal track is strangely quiet, as if something were left out in the re-mastering of the audio. This problem isn’t present during the ‘commentary’ version of the audio.

While I haven’t heard anyone mention this yet, the picture quality of the film is absolutely different. Being an owner of the original DVD, I was able to switch back and forth between the two to pinpoint any strangeness, and indeed, this ‘restored’ version has higher contrast. Also, the organic, subtle wavering of the camerawork in the original is gone, now digitally corrected and aligned. Instead of a minutely drifting camera, we now have an attempt at a perfectly still image, but it’s just not a successful attempt. Instead of the wavering, the image now leaps left and right in jittery increments in order to correct itself into consistency. It’s kinda like if George Lucas went back into Star Wars and added all kinds of crazy lasers and monst… oh, wait. It’s way more jarring than the original camera, and a correction that makes the film difficult to watch.

I have four words for you, o great universe : Leave Well Enough Alone. Also : Digital Is Not Better. And : Bring Me Free Bacon. You know, while you’re at it.

If you don’t have the rare, original copy of this movie, it’s really a holiday staple in the vein of the Rankin-Bass delights, and it’s worth having - even for all of its excess. If you’re hardcore, you’ll want to hear the long-awaited Elfman / Burton commentaries, even if they’re fairly general observations. And if you’re all up on the Blu-Ray thing, that’s where the money is. That’s where you can really witness the 24-frames-per-second animation like never before. If you’re ultra-hardcore, pick up the $180 super-mega-pack, which is numbered, includes a Jack bust (with Santa Claus costume options), and a letter of authenticity.

Last weekend, I found myself on my knees, crouched over a row of repurposed cardboard liquor-boxes, flipping through pawned LPs. I was actually surprised to see record albums in a pawn shop, but these were good — no Ferrante and Teicher, no 101 Strings, no Sing Along With Mitch. Many of the records were in remarkable shape for used albums, but most were common popular musicians of the sixties and seventies. I picked out a little stack of the rarer albums, along with the obligatory Whipped Cream & Other Delights that I buy any time I find it (I own fourteen).

Much like the classic Herb Alpert, one other album was chosen purely for the cover art. I’d never seen the album before, do not recognize the band’s name, but the art itself is immediately familiar. The artist, known for his stylish caricatures that teeter on the edge between realistic and fanciful, is Jack Davis.

I, of course, remember Jack Davis from his early years at MAD Magazine. Starting in commercial art and comic books in the 1950s, Davis applied his tremendous skill for everything from horror to humor, along with more than a few things in between. Many of his works have reached iconic status, such as the “life-sized” Frankenstein poster that was sold in the back of comics throughout the sixties and the two-legged bug constantly fogged by RAID during 1980s commercial breaks. Known for producing quality work in little time, Davis has been a mainstay in advertising for decades. And, as I’ve found many times, he was particularly skilled at producing record album covers.

Jack Davis’ poster for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World makes for an obvious transition to the soundtrack album cover, but Davis’ record albums aren’t just a creative reuse of an already paid-for painting. Davis produced unique, custom artwork for numerous recordings, from comedy to rock-and-roll. Davis often returned to his roots as a horror-comic artist, producing album covers for Halloween records.

For a comic art collector, a Jack Davis record album provides a piece of art worthy of hanging on a wall. Record sleeves measure approximately 13″ on a side, and numerous places manufacture frames designed for displaying record jackets. Even larger are his fold-out or wrap-around covers that double the width, like the Sailcat cover I got this weekend. While much of Davis’ art is smaller than the page in a magazine and was often black-and-white, his album covers show off the detail and color of his work.

Record collectors no doubt have their own quirky tastes in collection (as my Herb Alpert collection attests), but when a collector begins to find themselves seeing the same albums over and over, it takes a new perspective to give the act of digging through boxes at a thrift shop a new life. Davis illustrated numerous albums — so many that it’s difficult to find a complete list, despite several online archives devoted to just his album art — that simply hunting for Jack Davis art will open up new directions in a record collection. Imus in the Morning, The Cowsills, Homer and Jethro: you don’t even have to like to listen to the albums, if the art is the key. Trying to find every Jack Davis illustrated album jacket could become a full-time obsession. Look through your existing collection first, of course — you may not have noticed that the Kelly’s Heroes soundtrack and The Greatest of the Guess Who both feature Jack Davis illustrations. For the rest, give the record bins at your usual haunts a second look — you might have missed out on a work of art.

Happy Halloween! Behind Christmas, Halloween is the holiday people most love to decorate for. Over the years in our house we’ve come up with a nice collection of Halloween knickknacks. My favorite is the beautiful jack-o-lantern wall hanging that my talented mother-in-law made, but my kids go for the scary skull with a candle inside.

Halloween collections are easy to grow - every year there’s something new and different. One of our neighbors has such a huge collection of Halloween stuff that their home is known by all the kids as “that Halloween house.” In the front yard there are 10 foot hight blow ups of ghosts, pumpkins, witches and goblins. They have a faux graveyard and skeletons driving a broken down antique buggy. Spooky hands dance around the garage and an electrical rat races towards the sound of a voice. Inside, there’s more spooky stuff, including an entire miniature Halloween village. It all started with a single jack o’lantern and grew. When friends and relatives find a fun Halloween ornament they immediately think of this couple. The local newspaper has featured photos of their yard on the front page. It’s the one house that everyone makes sure to hit for Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night.

Looking for more info about Halloween collecting? Here’s a website with lots of photos of vintage Halloween decorations and other spooky stuff. http://www.spookshows.com/ .

And here’s another site with photo galleries of Halloween collectibles: http://collectibles.about.com/od/halloween/ig/Halloween-Collecting/index.htm

In case you missed them, there have also been some great blogs right here on Collector’s Quest lately about vintage costumes and Halloween candy.

With Halloween less than one week away, it’s about time to start thinking about candy. Or, given the obesity epidemic in America, thinking about it a little more than usual. I’m partial to Whoppers and Peanut Butter Cups, though I usually abstain for the simple reason of not wanting to die. Like any sensible human under the age of 75, I was never quite so fond of the notorious Halloween ‘small plastic baggie full of pennies’, nor the leftover candy canes from the previous Christmas. One year, I was unfortunate enough to find a foreign candy called ‘Krot’ in my bag of treats, which I carried around as a hilarious curiosity until I showed it to my friend George, who promptly devoured it while my back was turned. To this, I loudly proclaimed, ‘Oh George, you ate my krot!’, which had everyone questioning our relationship for the remainder of the school year.

When you’re giving out candy to the invasive little door-knocking monsters, or ‘children’ as some people might address them, here’s two super-heroic options for you to consider.

First, for about 1.50 each, these Marvel Heroes minifigure packages come with 5 gumballs each, or ‘Infinity Gems‘, as I like to call them because I spend a lot of time alone. Blind-packaged, there’s a wide array of heroes to collect, all done in the horribly-obnoxious-but-eventually-endearing Big Head style. I started buying these because I wanted to find a Big Headed Galactus, since nothing seemed more amusing than a teensy, disproportionate galaxy-devouring ultra villain. Because of case ratios, I ended up getting about 5 Galacti and giving them to friends, in addition to 5 other highly undesirable characters. I mean, does Mystique really qualify for anyone’s top 25 favorite bad guys? I’d honestly prefer Arnim Zola to her, and that guy’s a total dweeb. He’s got a bellyface. I haven’t found these anywhere but the candy aisle of Wal-Mart, buried deep within the action figures and bicycles. With minifigures like The Thing and The Hulk still out there, I’m probably going to be blindly buying these things into oblivion. They’re not the pinnacle of sculpting and good craftsmanship, but they’re cute.

If you think that I sampled the gumball confections, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m in it for the hot hero action, folks. Candy is for kids. Lining up tiny superheroes around your computer and pretending you’re a giant is adult business.

Also buried within the Wal-Mart candy aisle are the Edibles, self-described ‘candy action heroes’ that you assemble, play with, and eat, assuming that you had the foresight to not play with them on a hairy rug or in a sandbox. These are basically small block figures molded out of candy, and there are four different characters to discover. There’s Spider-Man, in delightful “slingin’ strawberry” flavor, followed by The Thing in “rock’n orange”, “banana-x” Wolverine and “smashing sour apple” Hulk. All of this makes perfect sense, because when I look at a banana, I IMMEDIATELY think ‘I bet that’s what Wolverine tastes like. Bananas, cigars and chest hair.’

As you can guess, the properties of candy do not hold up as well to the elements as plastics might, and the figures are subject to decay and deformation both before and after opening. They’re not really for display, clearly, so we’re back into the more ephemeral aspects of collecting. If you’re very serious about holding onto these beyond their shelf life, I’d advise that you eat them. In that way, they’ll always be a part of you. Like it or not. The designs are runny and the molds are horribly inconsistent, so that arms and legs won’t even attach to Spider-Man’s lumpy, malformed pegs. In short, it’s a wonderful disaster, which is much more than those little door-beggars are worth in their store-bought Power Rangers costumes. The Power Rangers were never cool, even when they were so uncool that they were almost cool, and no matter how hard you squinted, Amy Jo Johnson wasn’t really hot enough to justify not changing the channel.

In the interest of accurate reportage, I actually ventured to open up the Spider-Man package, which instantly emitted a terrifying odor and partially blinded me. Not only was the hard candy cemented into the triple-sealed package with sugary, sticky tendrils, but I was fairly certain that if I touched it directly, it would bond with me like an alien symbiote and wreak all kinds of havoc. I also made every effort to avert my gaze from its eyes. So, basically, completely kid-friendly. I think I’m going to go pray now.

So, as Halloween approaches, think of the superheroes…. slowly, sweetly shortening the life expectancy of small, costumed children. Think of it as a treat that’s horribly tricky.

The most vivid memories of Halloween are of trick or treating and the costumes we wore.

For those of us growing up in the 60s, 70s and upwards, our costumes often were little more than advertising for television shows and movies. These costumes were simple: A plastic mask with eye cut-outs, two hole punches for nostrils and a slit for the mouth-breathers; and a shift of vinyl &/or flame retardant fabric with the film or TV show’s name printed on the front which we were to wear over our clothes. (God willing, in the colder climates of the midwest it fit over our coats too.)

These costumes may be responsible for the dumbing down of Americans because they required no imagination. Neither by the kids who wore them or the adults at the doors who handed out the candy. Even the coolest of old people could tell one Sweat Hog from another when you had Barbarino written across your vinyl chest. But I digress.

If it made a screen, a costume was made and we Americans raced to stores to buy them. Now we race to auctions and auction sites to buy them. Folks want to buy back their warm and fuzzy memories by getting back ‘their’ childhood costume. Or, if they were, say, stuck being Kate Jackson instead of Farrah Fawcett, they finally get the costume they really wanted to wear.

These retro costumes have what is called in the biz “high crossover appeal” meaning that along with the Halloween collectors you’ll have the entertainment collectors bidding.

This makes vintage and retro Halloween costumes very popular.

But these aren’t the only costumes to buy; nor is buying the costumes themselves the only way to collect Halloween memories.

Many collectors turn to photographs of Halloween trick or treaters to get their costumes. Not only are they easier to store, but many of these photos show imaginative costumes that pre-date or for-go the mass-produced mass media corporate costumes.

There’s also something strangely sweet about looking into what you can see of the faces of trick or treaters past.

We recognize not only the fun of dress-up and the anticipation of free candy, but the freedom silliness brings.

Even if we have to guess what they are…

Maybe because we have to guess what they are.

And it’s not just for the kids — adults join in at Halloween too.

Of course, some of these crossdressing photos have their own crossover appeal as well. *wink*

But then I didn’t say collecting vintage Halloween costumes or photographs of them would be cheap; I said it would be fun. And silly.

Let’s not forget silly.

I personally prefer the photos to the costumes.

I can fit a whole lot more of them into the house. And I love to rescue those antique and vintage photographs.

But then this last photo is of me in the Halloween of ‘69 — and if I had the chance to buy this costume ‘back’, I surely would.