Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Six Amazing Halloween Items That Only Existed in a Dream I Had.
So, speaking of dreams...when you spend more than twelve weeks of the year hunting down, photographing, reviewing and sometimes purchasing Halloween goods, it starts to feel almost as second nature as showing up to the grocery store with no pants, accidentally jumping into the stratosphere and wondering how you'll land safely, or that time I thought the ceiling was made out of tiny, living, angry volcanoes.What I'm trying to say is that I dream about finding Halloween junk in stores. I dream about it way more than you probably even think I would, and it BARFS WEINERS when I start to realize I'm waking up and that all this stuff I just spent perfectly good dream-money on is about to fade away.
It was this very month, on about November 20th, that I had one of the most vivid of these nocturnal shopping sprees in my memory, and I figured, some of you really enjoy reading about the spooky knick-knacks I find every year, so maybe you'll want to know about the ones that simply manifested themselves intrusively into my unconscious brain and escaped into nothingness. SUCH AS...
SHARK O' LANTERNS
This particular dream was actually set in real-world time, so I fully believed it was the middle of November and that, somehow, I'd just stumbled onto a mother lode of leftover Halloween items priced at a whopping 90% off...and at a Toys R' Us, no less.
In real life, Toys R' Us typically offers very few Halloween items of any note, but this one was selling items as fantastic as shark-faced pumpkins. They were small, unfortunately, no larger than a handful, but they were also made of a rubbery foam that jiggled like Jell-O, and they were also caked with glitter, but I didn't feel like drawing glitter.
WEIRD...HEART GHOSTS?
These were hanging, metal ornaments, kind of flat, with slightly crackly paint jobs and little cloth tutus for some reason.
I don't know the meaning of the single drumstick beating on the heart, but the heart was on a tiny spring, so it would knock against the stick like a bell.
I should let you know that I am portraying this ghost's face 100% wrong because the geometry of it was impossible to parse, describe or recreate in the waking world. If you dream a lot, you know what I mean.
BOARDS WITH STUFF ON THEM
I was much more impressed than I probably should have been by these items, which were nothing but weathered old pieces of wood with moss and various "spooky" things glued to them. This one had a little tissue-paper ghost, with a single googly eye, and a second glow-in-the-dark sticky eyeball attached to it.
I remember thinking in the dream that I could probably make these myself. Maybe I should.
RAINBOW REPTILE SKELETON
This Halloween toy was fairly large, maybe three feet long, and the sculpt was no more detailed or realistic than what I've drawn here. It was just like the crude, goofy rubber lizards and dinosaurs that used to be so common in the real world, but have become increasingly scarce.
SPOOKY CANDY BANANA
This one was a massive let-down, because I was told in my own dream that it wasn't for sale. It simply decorated the wall behind a candy shop, because the Toys R' Us in my dream sold both Halloween things and fresh made chocolates.
This object was actually made of plush, but just flat enough that it hung on the wall like a sign.
DRACULA AND HIS WEIRD BUGS
The last thing I picked up before I started to wake was a small, cheap plastic baggie full of the same rubber bugs and lizards you might find in a small, cheap plastic baggie at the Dollar Tree or a gas station...all except for the teeny, tiny plastic dracula in every bag, which was designated as "the leader," and again, no better looking in the dream than in my drawing.
There was, however, one plastic "bug" I really couldn't even identify, also shown here. I like to think this one was at least the second-in-command, or something of importance.
And there you have it. I don't know how interesting this was for any of you. Hearing about other people's dreams is notoriously divisive as it is, and this was a dream about imaginary inanimate objects, to boot, but this happens to me so often, I felt like I really had to share at least one...HIS WIFE!!! THAT'S it! That one is Dracula's wife! DUH!
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