I am looking at Halloween decorations and costumes on Amazon. Halloween used to be about scary. Jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, bats, spiders, witches, etc
Then it went to being more adult and sexy. But at least not for decorations.
Now it has turned to horror- bloody knives, oversized wall posters of bloody handprints and blood.
Maybe I am getting into “get off my lawn!” mode, but we like decorating for Halloween. We love handing out the best treats (last year it was full sized candy bars, this year it is gonna be glow lights),
What search terms are you using? I typed ‘Halloween decorations’ into Amazon just now and all I’m seeing is Jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, bats, spiders, witches, etc. No bloody knives, bloody handprints, or any blood whatsoever (except for a sign saying “NO TRESPASSING / WE’RE TIRED OF HIDING THE BODIES” with what looks like a few splatters of fake blood).
I think the thing is that stuff like your examples may exist, but there are still plenty of kid-friendly Halloween decorations out there. I do agree that those examples are pretty extreme to be used for public Halloween decorations, but I don’t think that’s the norm. When we’d take the kids out trick-or-treating (it’s been a few years but not all that long ago) houses were all decked out with kid-friendly stuff, not like a party at Rob Zombie’s place.
I think the mainstream positioning of horror films in pop culture in the last few decades along with millennial adults taking a more active interest in celebrating Halloween for themselves than Gen-x does/did (and certainly more than boomers did) leads to a proliferation of Halloween accoutrements like the OP notices.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I know at least three grown-ass adults my age who are obsessed with Halloween. It stands to reason as they take up a larger share of the market, things are gonna skew more adult.
I was a child who trick or treated from about 1963 onwards. Halloween was a child’s event. When I hit about 12 or 13, it was still considered just for kids. You might take out younger sibs on that night (as I did), but you didn’t costume up. The scariest thing I recall seeing was maybe a skeleton hanging outside on the front porch. Jack O Lanterns were also a thing. I only ever wore a mask bc they were cheap and my parents did not spend money on stuff like that. Many kids did likewise. Ours was a working class neighborhood, so people were thrifty, but maybe in more affluent places, it was different. I think once adults began to enjoy Halloween (about 1990??), that is when the more horror themes emerged. Elvira might have spearheaded this movement, she was often on TV in the 80s.
I would say it’s at least as far back as the late 1990’s. I remember taking my kids to Frightfest at Six Flags and thinking that they had toned it down after 9/11. Which means the guy chasing us with the chainsaw had to be in 2000 at the latest.
The Home Depot displays over the last few years have definitely skewed horror. There’s lawn inflatables that are on the cute side, but the most prominent stuff, especially the motion-activated figures, are hideous creatures shrieking the terrible things they’ll do to passers-by.
And yet…that doesn’t seem to be the trend in the actual neighborhood decorations. My theory is that the adult Halloween fanatics like the edgy, gory stuff, which costs the most $$$, so the retailers cater to them. The plastic Jack-o-lanterns are in the back row, so you can still buy stuff that won’t give the kids nightmares.
Very young kids are terrified of this, and sometimes they are scared of even more milder decorations (my grandson found Jack O Lanterns upsetting when he was 2). Of course, toddlers and preschoolers need more toned down stuff, with their parents in attendance. A nice little party is good for them, with big cuddly ghosts and smiley faced witches.
