Three generations, three seasons.

Fun World started out with another holiday entirely. The company’s own history, reproduced on its employer profile, says the story begins in 1959, when Sam Rosenberg created the S. Rosenberg Christmas Co. In 1963, the same history says, Stanley Geller bought the business from his father-in-law and renamed it Funworld, Easter Unlimited — a name that kept a second holiday in the title.

Halloween arrived with the next generation. The company credits Alan Geller (spelled Allan in English Wikipedia) with giving Fun World “a real jump start in Halloween”, and says he became known in the business as the “Halloween Guru”. Its history lists Fun World’s warehouses, showrooms and offices in Carle Place and Manhattan in New York, and in Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Hong Kong and Hangzhou in China.

The house sells to the seasonal trade: masks, costumes, decorations and novelty items for the Halloween shelves. Fangoria, in a 2023 history of its best-known mask, describes Fun World simply as a seasonal novelty company, and that is the register of its catalogue — item numbers, assortments and shrouds rather than designer collections.

The ghost mask from the 1991–92 catalogue.

The product that made the name came out of a novelty range. English Wikipedia says the mask later known as Ghost Face was first developed for novelty stores for the 1991–1992 Halloween season by Fun World, as part of a series called Fantastic Faces, where it was known as “The Peanut-Eyed Ghost”, and that the final design was approved by Fun World vice-president Allan Geller. Fangoria reported in March 2023 that the 1992 catalogue listed the masks, sold with shrouds, as a glow-in-the-dark ghost mask, and that Alan Geller, Stanley Geller and a product manager chose which designs went forward.

Credit for the face is shared between several hands. Wikipedia says the design was adapted from a “wailer” ghost mask created by Loren Gitthens, an artist at Alterian, Inc., in 1990 and 1991. Fangoria names Fun World’s in-house designer Brigitte Sleiertin as the person who adapted existing designs into the ghost masks, and reports that Fun World’s own website credits Alan Geller as the creator; Wikipedia quotes Sleiertin describing the face as horrible, sorry and frantic at once, and saying it was not inspired by Munch’s The Scream.

Fangoria adds detail on the earlier designs. It says Gitthens, a special effects make-up artist, created a ghost design for a 1990 Halloween costume, loosely based on a 1985 mask of his called “Screamer Long Jaw”, and that he and Tony Gardner’s Alterian Ghost Factory sold it as part of a “Ghost Maker” kit with the “Wailer” design at its centre. The magazine says Sleiertin was a recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts when she was given the job of adapting existing designs into ghost masks, and it cites a January 2000 Fangoria interview crediting her with designing the mask before the film was conceived.

The physical mask was simple. Wikipedia describes the 1991–92 Fantastic Faces edition as made of thin white rubber with blackened eyes, nose and mouth, and says the Fun World mask was sold on its own — the black hooded robe seen on screen was custom-made for the film and only reached shops after it.

Design and documentation.

Costume and Halloween brands sit at several different points in a seasonal trade. Some design and manufacture costumes, masks and accessories for other shops to sell; some are retailers whose own name is the brand; and many sell licensed characters from films, television and games alongside their own designs. A single name can therefore stand for a factory, a wholesaler, a chain of shops or all three at once.

Because so much of the business is concentrated into a few weeks of the year, a costume or Halloween brand’s identity is often carried less by a logo than by packaging, shop signs and the look of a whole aisle or storefront. The company behind a name may also have changed hands, merged with a rival or moved where its products are made since it began.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started it, who owns it now, where its products are made and how its packaging and stores have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a shop shelf to Scream.

Film turned a catalogue item into a character. English Wikipedia says producer Marianne Maddalena found the mask in a house while scouting locations for Scream (1996) and showed it to director Wes Craven. It says Craven asked Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB Effects to make a custom mask based on the Fun World design, but did not like the result, and that once Fun World and Dimension Films reached an agreement he was able to use the original; the KNB version still appears in some scenes.

Fun World kept hold of the face. Fangoria reported in 2023 that Fun World legally owns the design and is credited with its creation, and that the company trademarked it and named it “Ghostface” in 1996. Wikipedia notes that stunt performer Dane Farwell wore the costume for most of its appearances in the first, second and fourth films, and that in the third season of the Scream television series, Scream: Resurrection, broadcast on VH1 from July 2019, the killers wear the Fun World mask. Wikipedia also says the design bears reference to works ranging from Edvard Munch’s painting to the poster for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, ghost characters in 1930s Betty Boop cartoons and an early Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode. In April 2021, Halloween Daily News reported that Fun World had announced a more screen-accurate version of the mask and costume for the film’s 25th anniversary, with a silver metallic accent hood and cowl, a matching robe and gloves.

For a design guide, Fun World shows how a seasonal novelty house can end up holding a horror icon: a white rubber face designed for the shop shelf that became a franchise mark. Compare an established costume house in our Rubie’s brand guidelines and the seasonal retailer in our Spirit Halloween brand guidelines. For this guide we use shroud black, mask white and pumpkin orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fun World’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.