The Thing... in a Beatles wig
Beatle Wigs were a popular novelty item for a while in the early 1960s. That was an era of more than slightly repressive styles, where men and boys kept their hair short (on pain od ridicule)and usually greased it down with Vitalis. (As the styles changed, the slogan "The wet head is dead" heralded the Dry Look letting your hair breathe for a while.) An occasional would-be hoodlum or Elvis fan had a pompadour or duck's tail, but for the most part guys looked like they had just got out of the service. When the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, phones buzzed as people were startled and amused... these musicians from England had hair that covered the tops of their ears and reached down over their collars. What a scandal! (Boy, if those parents could only see what was coming in a few years...)
Here from THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 34, January 1965, the Beatles explosion reaches even the Baxter Building.
A little episode like this doesn't strictly speaking advance the plot or anything, it's just a breathing space between fights. But it expands the characters and makes them and their world seem more real. Ben Grimm's personality remains a delight. In the first few issues, his bitterness over becoming the Thing left him enraged and always on the brink of running amok as a public menace; that eased in time, as the continued support of his teammates and his relationship with Alicia helped him come to terms with what happened.