The OED has one citation for shark costume, from 1980:

In 1980, my mom made me a shark costume. It was the best Halloween costume ever. I loved it so much that I didn’t want to take it off, not even to go to bed.

But I couldn’t find any other mention of shark costumes before the 80s. The top result on Google is an article from the New York Times called “Who Invented Shark Costumes?” by Mimi Sheraton. (That’s right: an article about who invented shark costumes written by someone named Mimi Sheraton.) The article starts like this:

Who invented shark costumes? This is a question that has long intrigued me because I still vividly remember the joy and fear of seeing my first live creature of the deep in such garb. That innocent young shark wore only a monogrammed blue shirt and diaper, but he was enough to inspire nightmares.

A few years later, I got one of those nightmares for Christmas — a three-foot-long plush toy in black flannel with embroidered eyes and teeth and a pull string that emitted a bloodcurdling bellow when yanked.

I’ve been trying to find out who invented the earliest shark costumes since then,

When Shark Week first aired on the Discovery Channel in 1988, it was an instant success. Since then, people have been dressing as sharks for Halloween and sporting shark costumes at baby showers and costume parties. In fact, shark costumes are so popular that there are more Google searches for “shark costumes” than for “sharks” every year. But who invented shark costumes?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to pin down. While there is a long history of humans donning the visages of animals, shark costumes are a relatively new phenomenon. The reasons are twofold: (1) sharks were not previously a common subject of human costume and (2) the traditional shark costume did not appear until after Shark Week’s debut in 1988. There is no evidence that the traditional shark costume existed prior to 1988. For example, the National Costume Archive at the University of San Diego does not contain any examples of traditional shark costumes from before 1988. And yet, there are websites that claim to know who invented shark costumes, such as this one and this one. But when you look into their claims, you find that they simply point to other websites that make similar claims. None of them cite any original source material or provide any evidence substantiating their claims. They all seem to be repeating

Is there a particular person who invented the shark costume? And, if so, why don’t we know more about them? These are questions that I have been asking myself recently as I’ve become increasingly interested in the history of the shark costume.

The truth is that I’m not sure anyone knows exactly how the shark costume came to be invented. It seems like most accounts of the invention of the shark costume can be traced back to a single article written in 1998 by Michael Schrage for LA Times Magazine. According to Schrage, he was at his daughter’s third birthday party when she asked him “Why is it that we celebrate my birthday but no one knows who invented me?” This caused him to start thinking about inventions and inventors, and ultimately led him to investigate who might have invented the shark costume.

Schrage found it easy enough to trace out the evolution of other costumes – for instance, “the bunny was a logical descendant of rabbits and hares”, while “the scarecrow was originally an attempt by farmers to thwart birds eating their crops.” But he struggled to find any similar justification for the shark costume. In fact, he found that no one seemed to know anything about who had first had the idea of dressing up as a shark.

It’s been debated for ages: Who invented the shark costume?

Trying to answer this question is like trying to solve a centuries-old murder mystery. There are no eyewitness accounts, no smoking guns, only scattered clues and conflicting testimony.

As in any good detective story, there are plenty of suspects: toy companies, Halloween retailers, animatronics experts and even an Oscar-winning production designer.

But the best we can do is narrow down the possibilities. The origins of the shark costume will likely remain a mystery — perhaps it’s better that way.

Shark costumes are among the more bizarre costumes you’ll find today. They’re odd, they’re somewhat frightening and they don’t have a lot of mass appeal. It’s hard to imagine who invented them and what their inspiration was.

Many shark costume theories trace back to The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. First broadcast in 1988, it has become one of the channel’s most popular programs and is now a full week of shark-related programming that runs for five days every year in August. The show has gained popularity over the years, and a number of 2008 Shark Week specials attracted record ratings.

With a little bit of research, you can find plenty of great shark costume ideas as well as some interesting facts about sharks. Here are some things you might not know:

● Sharks have existed for 400 million years, longer than any other fish species on earth.

● The fastest swimming shark is the shortfin mako shark which can swim up to speeds of 20 miles per hour.

● Depending on what kind of shark it is, its eyesight varies greatly. Hammerhead sharks have 360 degree vision while dogfish sharks are completely blind.

● A shark won’t get sick if it eats another sick or dead shark because sharks don’t get sick! They also

Shark costume, shark costume, shark costume. Shark costume! Shark costume? Shark costume! Shark costume, shark costume: shark costume; shark costume. A shark costume, a shark-costume…

Shark Costume? SHARK COSTUME! SHARK COSTUME. The Shark Costume!!!?!

Who invented the Shark Costume?

We’re not sure of the exact date, but we do know that it was somewhere around the year 1894 that Ray Aldridge (founder of Aldridge’s Department Store) first saw a man wearing a shark-costume — an adult-sized gray suit with a tail, fins and frills — in the window of a small shop on Main Street.

“What is that?” he asked his assistant manager.

Aldridge had three words to describe the scene in front of him: “Shark Costume,” he said, as if reading from a script. “Shark Costume!”

“That’s right,” said his assistant manager. “It’s a shark costume.”

“Shark Costume?” said Aldridge. “Yes,” said his assistant manager. “This is a man dressed as a shark.”

Aldridge nodded, smiled and turned to leave.

When people say shark costumes are awesome, they usually mean the human kind. But did you know that sharks have costumes too? That’s right: we’re talking about shark skin.

Sharkskin is made up of tiny teeth-like structures called dermal denticles, which are arranged in rows to give the skin a uniquely smooth texture. If a shark wants to go super fast, it can swim backward, causing the denticles to flow in the same direction and creating an ultra slippery surface that can reduce drag by as much as 60 percent!

Sharkskin was first discovered in 1760 by an Englishman named John Hunter, who was studying how to improve ship hulls. He noticed that sharks were able to glide through water more smoothly than other fish—and soon figured out why: their scales were flat on one side and sharp on the other. He built a special boat with rows of similar scales on its bottom, but found that they slowed it down rather than speeding it up because they had trouble staying aligned while moving through waves at high speeds. In 1804 he gave up on his research when his wife died tragically from a fever after returning home from visiting family members in India during the summer heat wave there (a common problem for sailors