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Claim A says Ben Cooper Inc. went bankrupt on Halloween night 1991. Claim B says Ben Cooper Inc. filed for bankruptcy the day before Halloween. Claim B is true, and Claim A is completely made up.
Ben Cooper, Inc. was once the king of trick-or-treat. At its peak, the company made nearly 80 percent of the country's Halloween costumes, and by the early 1990s it was cranking out more than four million a year.
Then came a brutal run of bad luck. The company filed for Chapter 11 in March 1988. In January 1989, a fire in Georgia destroyed an estimated $2 to $3 million worth of inventory.
The company was also relocating from Brooklyn to Greensboro, North Carolina, to sit closer to Southern textile factories. Meanwhile, rivals were selling more realistic costumes and high-quality latex masks, making Ben Cooper's classic plastic-mask-and-smock outfits look dated.
The final blow landed on October 30, 1991, when the company filed for bankruptcy again, just one day before the biggest night of its year. By 1992, Rubie's Costume Co. had bought what was left.
As for Claim A, the filing didn't happen on Halloween night itself. It came on October 30, the day before.
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