My Favorite Costume

Greg and Chris Reinke Reinke Brothers Costume Littleton, Colorado

It all started back in 1968, when two young boys hooked a shopping cart while fishing at a local watering hole. Greg and Chris Reinke took that cart home, cleaned it, then set up their first “haunted house” in the basement of their parents’ home. Borrowing a plaster skull from their older brother Don, and their father’s footlocker for a coffin, they built the walls with blankets hung from the rafters of their new empire. That Halloween, visitors paid a penny for the haunted tour, with Chris pushing the cart through the maze and Greg pulling strings to create movements that terrorized the customers.

Flash forward to 2022…

Those entrepreneurial brothers are the owners of Reinke Brothers Costume, a popular Halloween Superstore and 30+-room Halloween season Haunted Mansion in Littleton, Colorado. The business offers a complete selection of masks, wigs, and makeup; the largest selection of magic tricks and illusions in the Denver area; theatrical props and special effects lighting; and more than 20,000 costumes for sale or rent.

The Reinkes even have worked on props, costumes and sets for productions including The Shining, Maverick, Goonies, and Dinotopia.

But ask Greg about one of his favorite costumes, and it isn’t one from any movie or TV series he’s worked on. It’s Mrs. Bird,

Big Bird’s mom, a costume he designed as a mascot for Rocky Mountain PBS in the 1970s.

“I was 17 and it was one of the first commercial products I ever sold,” Greg says. “I got a letter from Jim Henson giving me and Channel 6 permission to use the costume.”

Years later, that letter from the puppeteer who had created Big Bird saved the day.

“I got a cease-and-desist letter from Disney, who had acquired The Muppets,” Greg says. “But because I had the letter, they couldn’t do anything.”

Ends up the Reinkes and Channel 6 are the only ones in the country allowed to use Mrs. Bird!

No wonder it’s a favorite!

What is your favorite costume? To be considered for an upcoming My Favorite Costume profile, email Editor Kathleen Furore at kfurore@yahoo.com.