Halloween hasn’t been the same since Canadians lost this nostalgic trick-or-treating staple
If kids today can’t accessorize with a real orange UNICEF box, a limited-edition Kotn T-shirt is the next best thing
Halloween as an adult isn’t quite the same. Sure, it’s still fun to dress up, and you can govern your own sugar intake now, but there’s one particular trick-or-treating memory that really makes us long for the good old days of cruising the streets in a costume with a pillowcase full of candy: the classic ’90s UNICEF box.
Someone at Canadian clothing retailer Kotn must agree, because the brand just unveiled a limited-edition UNICEF T-shirt featuring the unmistakable orange donation box, which kids in Canada would carry around with them on Halloween from 1955 to 2005.
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The program raised hundreds of millions around the world, with Canadian donation boxes raising around $3 million every year. It was eventually discontinued due to the burden falling on teachers and parents to roll all the coins.
The Kotn T-shirt design features a QR code that leads to a page for donations. UNICEF’s fundraising goes toward clean water, nutrition and education for kids in more than 190 countries. Every purchase of the $50 T-shirt also supports UNICEF.
Even without real coins, we can still hear them clanking around in those little cardboard boxes as we run home to eat 15 tiny chocolate bars way past bedtime.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
