Today, scary Easter bunny photos from Gen X Easters past are comedy gold. Bunnies with off-kilter, serial killer eyes, matted fur, and mouths frozen in maniacal grins created a golden era of child-endangering photo ops. Bahaha. Some of the bunnies wore tuxedos for some reason while others wore cracked plastic masks that looked like rejected props from a slasher film. Still others had sad, slumpy ears that drooped like they knew the existential futility of this gig.

The origins of the giant Easter Bunny photo op trace back to the post-WWII consumer boom, when department stores started using mascots to draw in holiday customers. Santa Claus was already a big hit, so naturally someone thought, “Hey, what if we made an enormous anthropomorphic rabbit to represent resurrection and chocolate eggs?” (Because obviously.) But unlike Santa, the Easter Bunny didn’t have a standard look. There was no Coca-Cola campaign to define his image. So the bunnies varied wildly. Some were charming, others looking like they’d just walked off a horror movie set.

The earliest known department store with a costumed Easter Bunny mascot appears to be L.S. Ayres. Based in Indianapolis, it began hosting visits with a giant Easter Bunny as early as the 1940s. By 1957, the store had expanded its Easter celebration to include live barnyard animals alongside the bunny. Another early example comes from Foley’s in Houston, where a frightening Easter Bunny made headlines on April 3, 1952, so scary, in fact, that it left both children and adults unnerved.

Scary Easter bunny pictures are in plentiful supply around here. If you’d like to submit a vintage Easter photo, please email me at jenx1967 at Gmail dot com. Thanks! Also, be sure and check out vintage pictures of Halloween and Christmas.

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