Risque Business

A.SNAKE CHARMER, a doctor and a genie all walk into a Halloween party and no one laughs.

But if the snake charmer's reptile and the genie's magic lamp are strategically placed, and the doctor happens to be a proctologist named Harry Fingerman, the trail of laughter can be traced back to a nondescript Camden County warehouse filled with dirty and creative minds.

Rasta Imposta, a Runnemede-based costume manufacturer, has erected a veritable Halloween empire over the last decade by deftly weaving penis jokes, college humor and sexual double entendres into head-turning costumes.

"Sometimes we draw the line," said Rasta's president and founder, Robert Berman, stressing the "sometimes."

Straddling the line has helped Rasta become the top producer of "adult humor" costumes in the United States, with about $20 million in gross sales.

The company's rise to the top has coincided with Halloween's rebirth as a retail monster over the last decade. The National Retail Foundation estimates that consumers will spend approximately $4.75 billion on the holiday this year, second only to Christmas.

Berman, 42, said that he was writing a play in New York during the early '90s, when he decided to glue some wool dreadlocks to a baseball hat.

While at a bar one night at the Jersey Shore, Berman wore his impostor Rasta cap and a business was born.

"I sold it for $20 and a beer," he said.

Berman made the hats in his father's basement and tried to convince a woman with a hat stand on Long Beach Island to sell them.

"She wasn't interested in the dreadlocks, but she was interested in me," he said of Tina Wayne, whom he married on Halloween 1998.

After the release of the first "Austin Powers" movie in 1997, Berman made what he says was the industry's first "pimp suit." That purple velvet suit became a hit and, by 1998, Rasta was elbowing into a Halloween market that was no longer just for kids.

"We had to make a choice: Either we grow or we get knocked out of the business," said Tina Berman, Robert's wife and Rasta's chief creative director.

Steering clear of the bloody, gory and frightening costumes, Rasta has stuck to a simple credo ever since: Women want to look sexy and guys want to laugh at one another.

"We can take any profession, put in a short skirt and make it a sexy costume," said Eliot Spiegel, director of sales.

The company's rapid success in the adult-humor market has also landed it unlikely licensing agreements, including with Crayola, the children's Teletubbies characters and even a Christian-based cartoon about vegetables.

"I asked them if they had seen our catalog and they said, 'Yes, we know you make giant boobs,'" Robert Berman said.

At Halloween Express, a retailer in Washington Township, Gloucester County, owner Neil Whomsley said that customers crack up at Rasta costumes before they're out of the bag.

"Last year they had this one that was a beer-pong table," said Whomsley, 26. "They're great."

Recently, inside Rasta's headquarters, once home to Berman's father's candy and tobacco business, dozens of employees already were knee-deep planning for Halloween 2010.

Jodi Lee Berman, Robert's sister and Rasta's chief operating officer, says that the industry has grown to the point at which there's no "off" months for Rasta.

"It's always crazy here, but it's a good crazy," she said.

Coming up with adult-humor costumes is a fun-filled process, Berman said, a year-round brainstorming session with constant input from pop-culture television, the Internet, customers and, more recently, the Urban Slang dictionary.

"We really put the happy in Halloween," Berman said.

To see some of Rasta's racy costumes, visit www.rastaimposta.com