They haven’t made masks like that since the 80s… maybe the 90s.
What you probably saw was Batman or Captain America or Hulk or Iron Man - but with no skin tone on the costume. Likewise if you see a Black Panther costume, it is just has a mask, no skin tone.
Kids do get a bit of a pass because they don’t know better. But their parents should. I know last year there was a story of a kid who dressed up as MLK for a school presentation with blackface. Clearly he didn’t understand why that wasn’t cool, it should lie on the parents to understand why, but people are ignorant.
To @Bobo 's point about masks… eh… you know they make political masks Trump, Putin, Kim Jung Un, Bush, Obama, Clinton, Nixon, etc. with a variety of quality. I am not sure how much those appeal to kids. I guess for political satire it gets a bit of a pass for me. Now that I think about it, that Halloween before McCain/Obama election, I saw two kids like 12 or 13 in suits, one with a McCain, one with Obama. No idea if the races matched (probably not), but they were just like “Vote McCain! Vote Obama!”. I guess that falls under passable area for me. I don’t know if they make such things for other celebrities. I mean generally a mask of a character has been acceptable. And I guess that included skin tones in the past, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. And there is a subgenre of anime cosplay that includes doll like heads. Disney had a misstep with a Maui costume which was basically a body sock with tats, but it was a brown color. I dunno, those cases get a bit murkier for me.
I do know having attended several conventions, belonging to cosplay groups, and doing some costuming myself, playing characters of different races or genders doesn’t require anything more than just putting on a costume. Honestly 3 of the best local cosplayers are black and they come up with some freaking amazing stuff, like the twins from Thundercats (they are twin women), and this other guy does a lot of horror stuff, twisted fairy tale or Silent Hill type stuff. I can’t recall ever seeing someone attempt black or brown or white face at a convention. There are some fantasy characters like Dark Phoenix or a dark elf drow I’ve seen, but that is generally considered a fantasy race and would be similar to being painted blue or purple for a character. But I’ve never seen anything like these sorts of for the LOLs Halloween costumes.
