Halloween 2025: TKMaxx Weirdos
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
For the first time in something like twenty years, I actually write this while I have a "real job," with legal employment status and taxes and everything, albeit only seasonal through September, and the "work" consists mostly of feeding baby mantises and answering questions about scorpions at the PDX Insectarium here in Portland, Oregon. Between this, Mortasheen's impending release and more, Halloween on bogleech.com is scaling down for the third year in a row...but maybe only in terms of "article posts?" We'll see what I have time for, but I have no shortage of fresh ideas to consider.We'll still do review spooky stuff as it comes, of course...even in light of several more North American business chains closing down in the past year. We even just lost Joann fabrics...a mainstay of our reviews since we first began them!
Thank goodness for the UK's TKmaxx, which has always had a lot of fun additions to its catalog these past few 'WEENS. Let's see what British Halloween has been up to in 2025!
Cat-O-Lantern
First up, this delightful black cat pumpkin with a huge, crescent, saw-toothed Cheshire Cat sort of smile! Looks like both the interior of the mouth and the big, circular eyes are also light-up features. Pumpkins hybridized with other seasonal creatures have become all the rage these days; something that's always been around, obviously, but somehow only recently surged in attention.Dapper Eagle Skull
None of these really have official names per se, so I'm just calling them whatever feels right, but they DO call this an "eagle" skull, oddly. Most Halloween bird skulls are assumed to be corvid or carrion bird, but to be fair, they're seldom accurate and I think the British are still learning what Halloween is all about. A skull is a skull, anyway, and an eagle skull with a dapper top hat and neck ruff is pretty spooky.Octolantern
This is a plush dog toy of an octopus, but it's been reskinned for Halloween so it's all black and orange with a Jack O' Lantern face! If it's not an Octolantern, it's definitely a Pumptopus."Cannibal" Plant
One of this year's new carnivorous plant statues, it's the typical Audrey II kind of model but it's growing from a little concrete column or birdbath looking planter. They did name this one, but doesn't "cannibal" plant imply it's vegan? Even those little beetles climbing on it are safe!Frankenbride Ragdoll
This is part of a series of classic monster statues in a "rag doll" style, and they all basically have the same face; burlap with black button eyes, stitched up the middle with no mouth or any other features, so I don't really need to show you more of them. The Bride of Frankenstein looks the best anyway, in my opinion, with the beautiful pale blue-grey of the burlap.Secret Cuphead Boss
This is a resin candlestick, or something, consisting of a colorful cartoon pumpkin on top of a skull with a clown nose on top of a third pumpkin that says "FREAK SHOW" on it. I love the color gradient from the candy pink pumpkin to the yellow skull to the minty green base! The kooky design style however looks STRIKINGLY like the character designs from Cuphead. Not just the era of cartoons that inspired Cuphead, no; Cuphead definitely had its own underlying design sensibilities, too, and this thing is just the spitting image of it.Pumpkin Gal
Here we have a shelf-sitting figurine of a pumpkin with cutesy, feminine cut-out facial features and human limbs with a pink tutu and neon green stockings. It's just a really cute, really colorful one, and this style of pumpkin character is kind of a rare one in modern Halloween. I'm talking about just full size human arms and legs sticking right out of the Pumpkin, a visual that was a lot more common in old vintage Halloween greeting cards.Funguskulls
Two skulls, stacked atop one another, held together with black stitches (or staples?) and erupting with speckly mushrooms! We actually see a lot of mushroom-encrusted skulls in recent years. Really proud of fungi for their increasing visibility in our horror landscape.Moth Mouth
This little ceramic ghost has a death's head moth where its mouth should be! This is of course a direct reference to the iconic Silence of the Lambs film poster, but I like it even more as its own thing. Just a moth mouth ghost.Who did this?!
Somebody put out this poor skull's ice cream cone right in his face, and his face is almost ALL he has!!! He's so sad about it, his very bone is deforming to communicate the depths of this woe :(Jellyfish Monster
This is actually just listed as a "purple monster," but its anatomy is that of a big jellyfish with eyes and teeth. Maybe they were kind of going for an octopus here, given the dexterity and number of the arms, but the head has a fringe like a jellyfish bell, so I'm going to say jellyfish. A jellyfish with a witch hat!A Pumpkinesque Entity
This thing is COOL. It was first shown to me by my friend Acidshadow, who's contributed to almost every TKmaxx review we've now done! This thing is an off-white pumpkin, covered in eerie black eyes with gold irises, standing upon three pointed, black and white striped legs. I think it's those legs that really make it stand out; it would be unremarkable as JUST an eye-covered pumpkin, but the three striped sock tentacle feet make this a stellar Monster Design!Fangly Plants!
Another, much stranger new plant creature! Each "head" is like a red tomato with a mouthful of fangs, but also covered in small red flowers. I've never quite seen a plant monster body plan exactly like this, except that it's just dimly, vaguely reminiscent of Final Fantasy's Malboros. This is a photo straight from Acidshadow, and this doesn't show up anywhere on TKmaxx's website!A Candle With All the Things
Our last thing sent to me by shadow, this is a candle in a big black glass cup, and its two wicks stick out of two cute little waxen carnivorous plant heads! That's obviously fun enough, but then it also has two SNAILS WITH EYEBALLS FOR SHELLS. Oh my god. How is that the first time I've ever seen that done in a Halloween context, or frankly in any form that made it onto this website?! It works perfectly. It's obvious. A snail's shell already looks like a weird eye.If only these came in some form other than tiny, ephemeral globs of wax!
We're off to a fairly decent start here, all things considered...and I've already spied some really phenomenal additions from some of our other surviving Halloretailers, so expect some pretty fun reviews in the coming weeks!
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