"Welcome to oblivion... er...Halloween Express." |
Speaking of dollar stores…like craft stores, the holidays are the only time you'll find me there. If I'm going to buy something that I'm only going to use for a month or so, cheap is certainly a good selling point. Plus, you’ll never know what you’ll find there. This year, one of our local dollar stores stocked a bunch of NECA Nightmare Before Christmas action figures for a few bucks each. As a result, this year’s Halloween is a lot more Tim Burton-y for me.
So this is Christmas...Tree Shop. |
Another big Halloween disappointment are seasonal stores, mostly represented by Spirit and its grim reaper mascot whose presence on random signs always signals the coming of darker days. Simply put, they should be awesome. First, they're entire stores dedicated to Halloween. If you’re that, you should set the bar. Second, they swoop mysteriously in every year, take over an abandoned store, sell strange wares to children, and then swoop mysteriously out. That's a great story worth more than a few movie treatments. The only thing missing (as far as we know, anyway) is a company CEO who is hundreds of years old and eats the nightmares of children with milk.
The ghost of a furniture store. |
Drug stores, on the other hand, are surprisingly amazing when it comes to Halloween merchandise. Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid...these stores often have great Halloween aisles, with officially licensed merchandise, a large candy selection, and a sizeable proportion of the store dedicated to the holiday. I went to a Walgreens the other day that had a car-sized inflatable black cat with a moving head dominating the store from the top of one of the aisles. Most places have stuff like this, sure, but when you take into account the small size of your average drug store, it’s a pretty bold move. Drug stores also seem to be way okay with the gruesome, both in their props and their candy. I guess when a large percentage of your stock is condoms and toilet paper, you don't much care what else goes in your aisles, even if that “else” is a party platter of gummy human body parts.
Walgreens: For when you need to pick up an asthma prescription and a demonic jack-in-the-box. |
It even often licenses Halloween mascots for each year. Past years have featured such properties as Domo-kun, Edgar and Ellen, and original creations, as well. This year, I didn’t see an official mascot per se, but the fact that its celebrating the season with a giant “Happy Halloweekend” banner shows that the Halloween committee there put in some advance thought into the displays. Target’s only downfall is that, at least for the past few years, their merchandise is often too cartoony. You'll find very little that is vintage or obscenely gruesome. Still...Bravo, Target. I don’t know how big or profitable the Halloween demographic is, but you’ve got us.
Pic doesn't do Target justice, but it's a busy store and an embarrasing place to take pics. Especially when you're standing in Children's Apparel (the department). |