Halloween 2024: October Roundup
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
$1 Witch Car
That's right! I wasn't actually done at all! This tiny plastic car is also a witch! Or...actually, is it really even a "car?" We like to think anything with four wheels is a car unless otherwise noted, but this is basically just a purple lump with sleepy, lashy eyes and a witch hat. Nothing makes this witch a car other than the presence of wheels, and TRUST me, from experience, adding four wheels to a disembodied head does not legally reclassify it as a car.
Zombie Dad?!
This soft rubber zombie with pop-out eyeballs seemed fairly typical at first glance, but when you turn him around:
Eyeball Chandelier Nightlight
This is a large, elaborate, scented nightlight from Bath & Body Works of a roughly octopus-shaped chandelier, completely black except for its dangling purple gems, purple flames, and the big light-up eyeball it has at the top! What a rad little creature design! This is totally a boss or miniboss in some sort of haunted mansion game.
ELVIRA CHIA PET
I believe a majority of people on this Earth would accept an effigy of Elvira into their home for any one or more of several possible reasons, so why not one that's partially alive and growing?? I keep forgetting that chia pets are still made, honestly. They were ALL THE RAGE once, and now they're kind of like a kitschy gag gift not a lot of people actually attempt to grow. I think you'd be letting down the ghost of Elvira if you bought this and you didn't grow it, and that's impressive because she's not even dead yet at the time of this writing. Doesn't mean she doesn't still have a ghost somewhere out there.
Tombstone Window Cling
This is, remarkably enough, one of only a couple times I've seen a personified gravestone in all my halloween collecting, and it's a window sticker. It's a lovely looking window sticker, though! The tombstone has a jack O' lantern kind of mouth and green-yellow eyeballs in its sockets, so you know it's really alive and doesn't just have a carved face. There's ALSO a skeleton hand rising from the grave beneath it....does that tie in? Is the tombstone perhaps animating the corpse? Is the same necromancy imbuing them both with life? Or have they, in fact, become a singular entity? Perhaps when it finishes emerging, this ghoul will have an entire happy tombstone for a head or body.
Plush Tombstone Couple
But wait! There's another living tombstone entity out this very same year?! Two adorable gravestones with faces on them, linked together, with "TILL DEATH" on one and "DO US PART" on the other. This is so incredibly cute, all the cuter for how morbid it really is. Like, imagine this decorating the house of an elderly couple who aren't even goth. They aren't even about spooky stuff or morbid irony but they have this sitting in the middle of their couch. I think that'd be fun.
Lowe's Pumpkin Critters
Lowe's offered two different animatronic, rubber-skinned pumpkin monsters this year, and I'm surprised that isn't something we've really documented here before. We've seen countless animated pumpkins, pumpkin people, and a few pumpkins with arms, but never little talking pumpkin guys with arms AND legs! It's just too bad these were forty bucks each.
Two Pals Hanging Out
These jiggly-eyed plastic masks, a blue-skinned ghoul and an insanely delighted dracula, both came from the Japanese dollar store chain Daiso, which we now have here in Oregon as well! I got both of them, since they were only a couple bucks, and they just looked like they belong together. Put them next to each other and it just looks like dracula has told his friend the new worst joke he's ever told him, and from the look on the ghoul's face, that's a record broken multiple times a day.
Krang Soap?!
Sold by Lush, this isn't technically a Halloween item, but their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cross promotion happened during fall, and Krang, a malevolent alien brain, is as Halloween as anything else. Your first assumption from the tin may just be some pinkish shower jelly "themed" around Krang, but no...the shower jelly is actually molded in the shape of Krang, an entire jiggly gooey pink Krang nestled in the tin, waiting to be smeared all over your wet and naked body. How can you even have the heart to do it, though? Then he's gone!
Lowe's GIANT Scarecrow
Another Lowe's decoration was this gargantuan, scythe-wielding scarecrow. Lowe's seems pretty jealous of Home Depot's success with the big giant skeletons, but even though neither skeletons nor extremes of size can be copyrighted, they don't seem to want to counter with big bones of their own. The scarecrow is unfortunately nowhere near as versatile as a bare skeleton can ever be, but it certainly looks badass!
Styrofoam Eyeball Pumpkin
Joann fabrics puts out paintable styrofoam pumpkins and monster heads every year, but 2024 was the first year this included a pumpkin with a giant eye on it. I just thought it was cool I guess.
I DON'T EVEN KNOW!
Oh my god...it's beautiful. An online acquaintance with access to Tkmaxx sent this photograph of a positively mesmerizing pumpkin-being. Pale pink, with a pair of skeletal hands clutching its sides, big round white googly eyes and a simple, toothless Pac-Man style slice for a mouth, all of which would just be innocently cute if the mouth wasn't full of bloody guts?! Either brain matter or intestines, it's hard to tell in the simplicity of the sculpt, but definitely not vegetable innards. I can't begin to express how in love I am with this little muppety gourd full of horrible gore. Is it even his own, or is he just enjoying a mouthful of his favorite meal???
Skeleton GUITAR
I don't think this is actually brand new for 2024, but it is brand new to my knowledge. It's also the new zaniest skeletal entity we've seen since last year's Sewing Machine, and of course this is an entity! Of course it's not just an inanimate guitar made of bone! It's obviously a guitar-shaped skeletal creature, because it does the singing for you:
2024 remains the shortest, shallowest year we've ever had in terms of actual new Halloween items, and as retail chains continue to be bought up and devoured by one another, this trend will likely continue for years to come...but we certainly had a few good hits this year, didn't we? The skeleton centipede, the baby headed spiders, surely there's always going to be something worth posting!
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