Halloween 2024: Week Five Sightings
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Are we sad that I'm not posting every other day, or is it kind of more exciting and more comprehensive that I'm consolidating the very best discoveries by month? It certainly saves space and sanity in my ever-unmanageable article archives, that's for sure! Let's explore the most intriguing ghoulies I've spotted since our August post!
Home Depot Horror Bunny
I didn't bother to look up what they actually call this, but it's pretty awesome, it's a plastic blow mold character almost around a meter in height, sculpted like a stitchy burlap doll of a cartoon rabbit with button eyes and a smile full of clearly biological monster fangs. It's got a cute little black bow around its neck with a tiny human skull, and even the CARROTS its holding have skull faces! Ahhh!!! More like SCARE-ots am I right!?!
It reads as a bit of cashing in on the look and feel of "Five Nights at Freddy's" characters, but scary plush designs like this are plenty older than that franchise, including in Halloween decor. This is just the first time I've seen a plastic monster rabbit doll the size of a child. Stylish, fun, just "creepy" enough that it doesn't overwhelm the "cute."
Home Depot "Pet" Spider
This is a hairy spider with fabric legs, but it has a soft plastic head with a more "monster spider" look. It lights up and chitters when you press a button!
Home Depot "Pet" Bat
Similar in construction to the spider, this bat has a cloth exterior but a detailed, fleshy looking rubbery head. I have to say it's kind of an awkward combination, the heads looking so much more "real" than the bodies, but there's a charm to that as well. What confuses me however is that when activated, this bat repeatedly covers its eyes with its wings and says "peek-a-boo! I see you!" in a child's voice. It's not that absurd, but if you asked me to guess what this bat says and does, that would still just never cross my mind in a million years.
Walgreen's Skullmoths
Skullmoths are actually pretty plentiful in general this year, even moreso than last, I think! But Walgreens is offering two totally different designs as brass-colored statues on little black stands. Interestingly, the one on the left is anatomically more butterfly than hawkmoth, and while the one on the right has more hawkmoth-like wings, its head looks a very great deal more like some kind of fly, with its huge eyes and short antennae!
Michael's Paintable Skullsnail!
This is now the SECOND snail with a skull for a shell that I've ever seen sold as a Halloween-specific item! The previous one was the stupendous Crazy Bonez skeleton snail last year, but this paintable, white ceramic figurine from Michael's differs in having a fully fleshed Gastropod body. This could mean that skelesnails start out with meat on their bones, but it could also mean this is an entirely different sort of snail that just happens to have a skull-faced shell. A third and final option is that this is actually a type of slug that carries skulls around for protection.
Michael's Spidercandle
Maybe I should be saving this for the skeleton creature roundup coming later in the season, but I'm not sure! It's not exactly a "bone spider," per se, though it is a human skull with spider legs, which is also a resin candle holder. Sadly, like the other resin spider creatures at Michael's this year, they seem pretty fragile; this is the only one I've spotted with all of its legs intact.
ICE SCREAM MAn Plastic Ice Cream Cones
These are fun little tabletop decorations available at Target's "dollar" section for 2024, each resembling an overturned ice cream cone, either minty green or strawberry, but with the ice cream forming the shape of a spooky, drippy skull! I like the skulls even have upper teeth, but those are melting and deforming into the surrounding gooey puddle. I just think that's a nice touch, as is the fact that their branding is made of paper wrapped around the cone, like you get with many real actual ice cream cones. I obviously read these immediately as sentient creatures, of course, and not just inanimate confections in a scarier than usual configuration. Clearly this "Ice Scream Man" has thousands of these slithering around as his minions.
Wanda Webworth!
I haven't seen this in person yet, but Spirit Halloween has just introduced this animatronic spider creature which, unlike any other animatronic spider creature to date, stands upright on its hind legs. What's more, they gave this bipedal arachnid a character name! Wanda Webworth?! That's adorable!
Zombie Gull
Another item from Spirit this year? A latex zombie seagull, or just "gull" if you wanna be a stickler about it. It's a really fun choice of animal to zombify, perfect the steady wave of nautical horror these past few years, although, if you're a hardcore gull fan, you're probably picking out various little inaccuracies already. That's definitely a slightly more raptor-like beak, isn't it? Maybe it's more than just undead, and more like a t-virus mutant.
Rat King
This is another one put up by Lippman co. Party Supply, a hunched humanoid rat man! He's pretty rad looking, with solid red eyes and pale skin to indicate he's sort of an albino lab rat. You will also note that he's a steal at only $395! That's an oddly specific price, isn't it? Why exactly $5 short of $400? Neither you nor the customer are going to miss an extra $5 at this point! Pick a direction and round to it!
Target Felt Pals
Every fall for the last few years, Target has put out a new wave of these little felt figures who come in thematic pairs, and there's always some pretty fun ones. This year, there's a zombie accompanied by an anthropomorphic brain and a vampire holding hands with what appears to be a...coffin filled with blood? It's a white coffin with arms, legs and a face, but it also says "AB" on it and it's printed to show the blood sloshing around inside, so like, does this represent some sort of transparent glass or plastic coffin? ...With just blood in it? But it's also alive. Is it the coffin that's alive or the blood that's alive? What kind of entity is living blood in a walking glass coffin?! Other than a positively sick as heck one, obviously.
Michael's Spider Doll
This is now the THIRD spider-legged doll head in our Halloween reviews, which means they may be due for their own "bestiary entry" at some point. This one also has the most elaborate doll head that we've seen, featuring black hair, a stitched mouth, AND bleeding eyes! It's only about the size of your hand, but it's really cool looking, especially the knobby black spider legs that hold it just an inch or two off the ground. It's also interesting to me that the doll head is the only body segment, but it still has a couple of protrusions beneath it that could be either venomous fangs or silk glands.
What TERRIFYING apparitions and abominations will we see by October?! This wound up being a fairly short article, but I think it came stuffed with a few more original and surprising creature concepts than our August entry. Quality over quantity! That's how we're doing Halloween this year!
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