Salon Money | Halloween's hollow spree

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A view of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
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The geology of investing
By Dave Zgodzinski
What investors can learn from sedimentary rock
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Hedging their butts
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While the world's mega-players bail out a wrecked hedge fund, one befuddled reporter tries to figure out just what these arcane vehicles actually are
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Rooting for the crash
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Retirement fund be damned, this market watcher is looking forward to the end of the Wall Street boom
(10/02/98)
The grueling world of work
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Bagels on Fridays, teammates and jovial bosses can hide the ugly truth
(09/25/98)
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[ T H E_.R E L U C T A N T_.C A P I T A L I S T ]________
Halloween's hollow spree
With the reluctant maturation of Gen Xers, the season of candy-eating, sheet wearing kiddies has exploded into a monstrously lucrative holiday for the retail industry.
money
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BY HEATHER CHAPLIN
It started in the beginning of October, before the leaves on the trees had even begun to change color. One day, there was a cut-out Frankenstein taped to the front door. And the next, there was a graveyard of plastic headstones spanning the front lawn. By the time Halloween actually rolled around, hardly a blade of grass or an inch of house paint could be detected on my neighbor's property. Electric orange pumpkin heads blinked along the driveway; a fake skeleton stuck his head through a blow-up coffin; cardboard goblins held "Happy Halloween" signs; fat, glow-in-the-dark monsters sat on the lawn, their bellies glowing.
While I didn't have the nerve to ask my neighbors what they'd spent on their decorations, I know the price tag must have been hefty. On the afternoon of Halloween, I too joined in the holiday spirit and bought a string of pumpkin lights and four bags of bite-size candy bars. I was horrified to find myself handing the supermarket cashier about $30.
Halloween is big business. In just the last few years it has crept up through the holiday ranks, kicking out Valentine's Day and knocking over Mother's Day to lodge itself firmly in the No. 2 position, second only to Christmas in terms of consumer dollars spent. The holiday season used to start in November and kick into high gear in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the starting line has been redrawn. Now it's firmly on the other side of Halloween, thanks to our apparently unquenchable thirst for holidays.
Projected sales figures for Halloween were more than $4 billion this year, at least double the amount spent five years ago. We spent $1.8 billion on candy this year and between $1 billion and $1.5 billion on costumes, according to projections from the National Retail Federation. We also bought over 50 million greeting cards and, although exact figures aren't available, decorated our homes with holiday tchotchkes in record numbers.
It's the boomers and the Gen Xers, a spokeswoman at the International Mass Retail Association told me. They don't want to let go of their own childhood fondness for Halloween. They want both to pass it along to their kids and to retain it for themselves as a kind of second New Year's Eve. A survey by the National Retail Federation found that 73 percent of adults planned to participate in some kind of Halloween activity this year, 67 percent planned to wear a costume and 72 percent planned to decorate their homes. One in five people surveyed said they planned to spend as much as $100.
"It's a stress-free holiday," explained a spokeswoman for the IMRA. "There's no extended family, no traveling and no cooking." All good points, although I would add another one to the list: You get to dress up in funny clothes and eat candy.
As the public's enthusiasm for Halloween rises to new heights, retailers and manufacturers are doing their best to exploit the excitement. Getting in on the act are global corporations and small manufacturers you've probably never heard of. Wax companies pump out candles with ghosts on them, computer supply companies produce computer paper with pumpkins on the border and eye-wear companies sell prescription contact lenses colored red.
On the other end of the spectrum, retail giants also took advantage of consumer fever with products that doubled as costumes and walking advertisements. Officially licensed M&M costumes made their debut last year, as did McDonald's shakes, French fries and characters from McDonaldland. (Although I couldn't imagine who would actually choose one of these costumes -- for $39.99 in New York, no less -- I actually saw a couple of blue M&Ms roaming the streets last Saturday.) Newly added to the marketer's cannon were licensed characters from the TV show "South Park" and the movie "Austin Powers."
Mass-produced French fry suits don't really excite me, but I can't help feeling the pull of certain other special holiday products. This year it was a tempting strand of iridescent skeleton lights. It's hard not to be seduced when every store shelf is filled with bright, once-a-year-only gadgets gussied up in holiday colors: orange and black for Halloween; russet and dusty yellow for Thanksgiving; red and green for Christmas. Now in the era of holiday micro-marketing, we can tell what time of year it is without ever stepping outside. Any day now, Dracula's image will disappear from all those napkins, cut-outs and paper cups, replaced by Thanksgiving corn husks. Then, in December, we'll have ho-ho-hoing Santa Clauses, soon to be eclipsed by hearts for Valentine's Day, bunnies for Easter, soft-focus gardens for Mother's Day and firecrackers for the Fourth of July. To think, there was once a time when we marked the shifting of the seasons by the changing of the leaves.
SALON | Nov. 6 , 1998




T A B L E__T A L K You've just won $195 million bucks ... Indulge your fantasies in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The greatest gambling hall on earth By Heather Chaplin A view of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (10/23/98) The geology of investing By Dave Zgodzinski What investors can learn from sedimentary rock (10/16/98) Hedging their butts By Heather Chaplin While the world's mega-players bail out a wrecked hedge fund, one befuddled reporter tries to figure out just what these arcane vehicles actually are (10/09/98) Rooting for the crash By Dwight Garner Retirement fund be damned, this market watcher is looking forward to the end of the Wall Street boom (10/02/98) The grueling world of work By Heather Chaplin Bagels on Fridays, teammates and jovial bosses can hide the ugly truth (09/25/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Reluctant Capitalist archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		[ T H E_.R E L U C T A N T_.C A P I T A L I S T ]________ Halloween's hollow spree With the reluctant maturation of Gen Xers, the season of candy-eating, sheet wearing kiddies has exploded into a monstrously lucrative holiday for the retail industry. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY HEATHER CHAPLIN It started in the beginning of October, before the leaves on the trees had even begun to change color. One day, there was a cut-out Frankenstein taped to the front door. And the next, there was a graveyard of plastic headstones spanning the front lawn. By the time Halloween actually rolled around, hardly a blade of grass or an inch of house paint could be detected on my neighbor's property. Electric orange pumpkin heads blinked along the driveway; a fake skeleton stuck his head through a blow-up coffin; cardboard goblins held "Happy Halloween" signs; fat, glow-in-the-dark monsters sat on the lawn, their bellies glowing. While I didn't have the nerve to ask my neighbors what they'd spent on their decorations, I know the price tag must have been hefty. On the afternoon of Halloween, I too joined in the holiday spirit and bought a string of pumpkin lights and four bags of bite-size candy bars. I was horrified to find myself handing the supermarket cashier about $30. Halloween is big business. In just the last few years it has crept up through the holiday ranks, kicking out Valentine's Day and knocking over Mother's Day to lodge itself firmly in the No. 2 position, second only to Christmas in terms of consumer dollars spent. The holiday season used to start in November and kick into high gear in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the starting line has been redrawn. Now it's firmly on the other side of Halloween, thanks to our apparently unquenchable thirst for holidays. Projected sales figures for Halloween were more than $4 billion this year, at least double the amount spent five years ago. We spent $1.8 billion on candy this year and between $1 billion and $1.5 billion on costumes, according to projections from the National Retail Federation. We also bought over 50 million greeting cards and, although exact figures aren't available, decorated our homes with holiday tchotchkes in record numbers. It's the boomers and the Gen Xers, a spokeswoman at the International Mass Retail Association told me. They don't want to let go of their own childhood fondness for Halloween. They want both to pass it along to their kids and to retain it for themselves as a kind of second New Year's Eve. A survey by the National Retail Federation found that 73 percent of adults planned to participate in some kind of Halloween activity this year, 67 percent planned to wear a costume and 72 percent planned to decorate their homes. One in five people surveyed said they planned to spend as much as $100. "It's a stress-free holiday," explained a spokeswoman for the IMRA. "There's no extended family, no traveling and no cooking." All good points, although I would add another one to the list: You get to dress up in funny clothes and eat candy. As the public's enthusiasm for Halloween rises to new heights, retailers and manufacturers are doing their best to exploit the excitement. Getting in on the act are global corporations and small manufacturers you've probably never heard of. Wax companies pump out candles with ghosts on them, computer supply companies produce computer paper with pumpkins on the border and eye-wear companies sell prescription contact lenses colored red. On the other end of the spectrum, retail giants also took advantage of consumer fever with products that doubled as costumes and walking advertisements. Officially licensed M&M costumes made their debut last year, as did McDonald's shakes, French fries and characters from McDonaldland. (Although I couldn't imagine who would actually choose one of these costumes -- for $39.99 in New York, no less -- I actually saw a couple of blue M&Ms roaming the streets last Saturday.) Newly added to the marketer's cannon were licensed characters from the TV show "South Park" and the movie "Austin Powers." Mass-produced French fry suits don't really excite me, but I can't help feeling the pull of certain other special holiday products. This year it was a tempting strand of iridescent skeleton lights. It's hard not to be seduced when every store shelf is filled with bright, once-a-year-only gadgets gussied up in holiday colors: orange and black for Halloween; russet and dusty yellow for Thanksgiving; red and green for Christmas. Now in the era of holiday micro-marketing, we can tell what time of year it is without ever stepping outside. Any day now, Dracula's image will disappear from all those napkins, cut-outs and paper cups, replaced by Thanksgiving corn husks. Then, in December, we'll have ho-ho-hoing Santa Clauses, soon to be eclipsed by hearts for Valentine's Day, bunnies for Easter, soft-focus gardens for Mother's Day and firecrackers for the Fourth of July. To think, there was once a time when we marked the shifting of the seasons by the changing of the leaves. SALON \| Nov. 6 , 1998