Halloween at Lowe's 2023

Written by Jonathan Wojcik


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Hell yeah dude, you said it!! Lowe's is the top competitor to Home Depot, which is what we looked at last time, so how do the two measure up in 2023?! Oh man! HOW INDEED!



Wacky Face Pumpkins

I didn't catch their official names. I didn't catch the official names of anything we're going to see here sorry! Deal with it!!! Lowe's basically went with a "zany pumpkins" theme this year, offering a TON of different styles of weirdo Jack O' Lanterns. These for example have caricatured human faces, kinda looking like grumpy old men or pointy-nosed witches. They're very reminiscent of human faced pumpkins that used to be popular when I was a kid, back in the 80's, which were made out of soft foam rubber. Does anyone know what the heck I'm talking about?!



Burlap Pumpkins

Not real burlap, but modeled like they're covered in it, complete with stitches! There are three varieties, all of which light up, and the smallest of which is also kind of skull-shaped. Funny thing is that they don't really look like they were designed as a set. They're made of the same materials and they work the same way, but their artistic style feels ever so slightly different between the three. Doesn't it? Do you know what I mean or am I losing my mind after years of looking at thousands of different pumpkins?



Different Wacky Pumpkin Altogether

This one's got a cartoony style with a wide, grinning mouth full of white, squareish teeth, and just the eyeballs in the sockets light up!



Fanged Pumpkin

This seems to be a counterpart to the previous one, but much more menacing, a taller pumpkin with needly sharp teeth in its mouth. Similar light-up eyeballs, but I can't really decide which of the two actually looks more deranged. As you can see, I was able to snag a crisp image of this one off their website, but I only saw the other design in person!



Toon Pumpkins

Maybe these are beginning to get redundant? Maybe these are TOO MANY different kinds of silly pumpkin? Well if you agree with me you're wrong. I tricked you. I BAITED you into having wrong thoughts. It's great that they decided to make plastic pumpkins in so many different styles! These two have more traditional carved looking faces, but with an exaggerated fleshiness to them, like their brow ridges, and I like how they're shaped to fit right next to each other. They look like they should be giving rude commentary together, like Statler and Waldorf.



Candle Pumpkin

This is a one-off with no matching friends! Tragic! A highly detailed, wrinkled, kinda rotten looking smiling jacko with a candle melting on top of its head. That's not where the candle goes!!! But...the interior lights up anyway?!

Oh my god...you guys...if........if the candle is THERE....then........wh-wh-WHO'S lighting the inside?!!?? Eeeeeeeeek lol



Pumpkin With Arms

This scary pumply has arms and hands! Green, sharp-fingered ones draped in green gauze, like they're made out of rotten plant matter! I also like the thin, dark strands veining the transparent plastic inside its eyes, nose and mouth, giving it a really cool look when it lights up. I will say however that pumpkin creature designs aren't making enough use of the actual stem and vine. If that's where the rest of the plant was, shouldn't that be where a pumpkin's appendages come out? Show me one with green plant creature arms on TOP of the cranium!



Pumpkin Wreath

This is a talking pumpkin character but I didn't get you a video, sorry. It's a great design though, a pumpkin with just a few blocky teeth in a black, crscent smile and little yellow triangle eyes with pupils. Then it's got a big blue neck ruff and tie, a top hat, and this cool looking twisty tree branch encircling it. It doesn't really feel like a "wreath" per se, but what it really reminds me of is that yokai that's just a head in a big wheel.


...WANYUDO! That's the guy! the branches of "pumpkin wreath" coincidentally evoke both the surrounding wheel of this goofball and the way the flames are traditionally drawn.


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This Animated Gooey Mouth Pumpkin

I DID get you a video of this one! See!? I can totally put out sometimes! That's what that phrase means right, "putting out" a video of a halloween decoration instead of just teasing you that one exists? This particular pumpo opens up its mouth when it detects movement, and there's yellow rubber strands connecting its jaws, so it has this rad goo effect as it opens! It's the pumpkin guts!!!



Giant Zombie

So now for something that is not a pumpus! Lowe's gently threw its hat in the Giant Towering Corpse ring this year with a giant size zombie, the proportions of which are similar to Depot's giant skeleton, except the Zombie is sunken in the ground up to its knees, it holds a lantern in one hand and its other hand rests on a tombstone. It also has tattered, greenish, actual cloth fabric hanging around its completely skeleton torso and pelvis, which looks great. It's all around much more elaborate than the skeleton, which makes it less versatile, true, but it's badass either way!

I have of course saved the best for the last, though it goes straight back to pumpkinland, so if you're sick of pumpkinland, TOO BAD:



THE SPIDER PUMPKIN!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my god YES!!! I've seen spider-pumpkin hybrids before, but they're usually small tabletop figurines, and usually just a normal pumpkin with some spidery legs, maybe sometimes with an additional pumpkin body segment if you're lucky. THIS is great big "lifelike" plastic pumpkin spider prop, which I do believe is the absolute first of its kind! It has a wrinky orange pumpkin abdomen with eight thick, black arachnid limbs, and some gashes on its back that light up. It might have been cooler if those actually formed a face, especially since there are spiders with face-like abdomen markings in nature, but the haphazard slashes aren't bad; it's kind of like someone just barely got through trying to carve it before it sprouted limbs and turned the tables.


Spider Pumpkin's face is pretty charming, too. It's not a spider face, no, but it's a fun monster face, also formed of pumpkin flesh, with big, scowling eyes, no room for a nose, and a wide upper jaw with a crooked array of short, sharp teeth and a smaller lower jaw that overall gives it a real Todd McFarlane look, like his demon character Violator, who was also the inspiration for a lot of Digimon. Basically the same grumpy eyes and flaring maw as Ogremon:





Here's a couple of their website photos of the thing, too. I make all these transparent png's myself, you know, they usually come as a jpeg on a white background. A DESPICABLE white background! Can you believe that!? How dare they put spiderpumpkin on a plain white square! Good thing I'm around to fix it and YOU'RE WELCOME, LOWE'S!!!! For this great service I've performed perhaps you should send me a 99% off coupon so I can get this thing for $1. Don't get me wrong, it's clearly absolutely worth one hundred if not one hundred thousand million dollars but I don't have that kind of money just lying around!


So to answer the question we started with, Lowe's stacks up to Home Depot very, very well this year, to the point that I can't honestly decide whose selection delighted me more, though admittedly the skeleton cockroach at Homey had to constitute over half of its appeal. Taking a step back, being more scientifical and objective about it, I might have to say Lowe's is the clear winner for all these whimsical pumpoosles and primarily the arachnogourd, which is unfortunately like a hundred dollars, so I really wish they also offered a little mini version or something! They do, of course, have plenty more than just what I reviewed here, too, it's just mostly more traditional animatronic monsters. So really, it's got some of the same kinds of things as Home Depot AND an excess of pumpkin styles AND one of them is a bug demon!



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