Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Boo!

Last night was Trick-or-Treat night at the local shopping mall. Don't worry, I'm taking Elizabeth on a for-reals street haunting tomorrow night. We just did the mall thing as an additional fun Halloweeny activity. The mall had a pretty good gig going, with lots of candy and carnival games and some circus performers from the currently touring Cirque de Soleil troupe. Elizabeth liked the juggler dude.

I always like to see what all the kids are wearing for Halloween. At night on the streets its not easy to identify all the costumes, but the conditions here were ideal for ghost-watching.

Superheroes looked to be the favorite choice for the boys. Spider-Man, in both traditional red-and-blue and edgy black variants, seemed to be most popular, but Batman was also well respresented. Power Rangers of various stripes also appeared in numbers. Only three or so kids had Superman costumes, which underlines the weakness of the recent movie I think. I also saw a single Robin and a lone Wolverine (yellow and blue version).

The girls seemed about evenly split between princesses (including my daughter) and witches, at least if you lump the various nebulously defined scary and/or gothy girl's outfits in with the witches. Some of them might have been intended as vampiresses and at least one otherwise witchy costume had fairy wings.

Wolfmen, mummies, and white-sheet ghosts were pretty thin this year, but skeletons and grim reapers could be found in solid numbers. Plenty of Draculas, too. My wife got sick of me calling out "Look, another Dracula!" but I just couldn't help myself. Something about kids dressing up as Dracula just warms my heart. I only saw a single Frankenstein, a teeny little toddler in facepaint with his shirt stuffed for 'muscles'. Too cute.

I could spot only a couple knife/axe/etc wielding maniacs, unless you count the Scream costume. How many kids got that costume because it was a ghost outfit rather than a serial killer from a movie franchise? I dunno. One dude was dressed up exactly like Jason Voorhees Michael Myers from Halloween. He was big enough to be a small adult or an adolescent, was not in the company of anyone, and had no bag for candy. He just wandered around the mall, creeping me the hell out.

Only saw one Darth Vader this year and two Clone Troopers. Just a couple years ago at another such event there were several Vaders and a Yoda or two. At least two kids went as Optimus Prime, one of whom had switched out the cheap mask for the cool voice changer helmet toy. Ninjas remain popular, as all good children know that ninjas are awesome. I saw at least four kids in army guy camo outfits, which made me kinda sad as my first thought was to wonder how many of those four kids had a parent on deployment.

One of the coolest things in kids' costumes this year? The pirates. Not only were there a lot of swashbucklers on the loose, but they were pretty evenly split between boys and girls.

5 comments:

  1. Dude... you get a big ol' strike on your horror movie icon knowledge.

    Jason Voorhees was from the Friday the 13th movies. Michael Myers is the nigh-unkillable antagonist from Halloween. Not a huge difference, I know, but crucial to us slasher buffs.

    peace... Dave

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  2. Crap! I knew I should have looked that up before I posted! I'm not really a slasher flick guy. The original Halloween is about the only installment of either franchise that I like.

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  3. When I was a department editor at IE back in the day (a computer-games magazine) the guy in the cubicle across the way was named Voorhees. This provided no end of amusement, unless you were him.

    The only Friday the 13th movie I've ever even remotely liked was one of the far-later ones and one of the least popular, Jason Goes to Hell, which is self-conscious parody done with remarkable intelligence (which is, presumably, why it's one of the least popular). I particularly like the opening bit, where a Jason-hunting hot-chick agent takes a shower in order to tempt him to attack, so she can then run through the woods wearing a magic stay-on towel in order to lure him into a high-powered artillery ambush.

    That and the couple selling "Voorhees burgers and Jason fingers" complete with the 2 for 1 special ("I LOVE YOU POOKY!"), and of course, Erin Gray, who otherwise had no career by then (snif).

    I'm not ashamed to admit I once based a characteron Creighton Duke, even though I'm not sure I want to understand that line aboug the donut.

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  4. I wandered into the mall last night (looking at fancy-schmancy coffeemakers - they didn't have the one I wanted at Art Mart, so I was checking out Kitchens).

    Not knowing what to expect, I was properly terrified... albeit by hordes of children rather than by their costumes...

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  5. Anonymous4:26 PM

    Hey I was there with O as a pirate. The wife was a witch. I was just me. The kid had a blast , but the masses of people and kids was a bit Overwhelming.

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