Hello and welcome back to picsandportraits.
Here we are, nearing the end of the Halloween season.
Long time viewers know that this is my favourite time of year.
I love making content around this holiday. Hugely nostalgic for me, as I’m sure it
is for many of you.
Now this video is not about how much I love Halloween, but rather the transformation that
society has gone through this time of year, specifically retail stores.
Over the past few months, we’ve looked pretty extensively at dying retail, zombie retail,
if you will, and this is going to be an extension of that. We are going to be covering stores,
other establishments, like fast food places, malls, and how they celebrated Halloween.
Before we get into it though, this video was requested by one of our patrons over at patreon.com/picsnportraits.
We do not run ads. We are 100% viewer supported and in exchange offer a ton of exclusive content,
and benefits, so if you like what we do, and want to help make it happen, please consider
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With that plug out of the way, let’s get spooky.
Here in North America, Halloween is one of the few times a year when the world around
us changes.
Decorations go up. The holiday has its own iconography, the Jack o lantern, skeletons,
ghosts, black cats.
Entertainment switches. Seasonal specials. Horror movies. Everything gets spooky.
The days get shorter. Depending on where you live, nature even changes, the temperature
drops, the colour of the leaves.
The year is ending.
It’s a reflective time where we are confronted with some pretty horrific stuff, including
death, be it our own or others, and what comes after.
Sounds heavy, but it’s presented and packaged in such a celebratory way, where we gather,
dress up in costumes, socialise. We get candy.
Because of the association with childhood, trick or treating, I feel like people have
a ton of nostalgia for Halloween.
The fact that it’s a major cultural event also means that quite a bit of marketing material
is available, media, memories, so let’s look back on some Halloweens passed.
We are going to be starting in 1980, with Toys R Us, which still exists where I live
here in Canada and is apparently being resurrected in the states.
We covered that in our retail graveyards video.
The ad I found for Halloween has this great piece of animation where a Toys “R” Us
turns into a Jack o lantern. It advertises a couple costumes, Big Bird, Yoda. I believe
this was a few months after the Empire Strikes Back came out, so that was new, relevant.
Toys “R” Us would reuse this ad’s animation five years later. The costumes are updated,
with I believe Garfield and Optimus Prime, but I may wrong about that. This was when
costumes were just a mask and branded smock.
Toys “R” Us’ marketing campaigns also used to include print. Here we are seeing
a a flyer or newspaper clipping from 1980.
Yoda is here but we do get more variety in terms of costumes, Spiderman, Barbie, Snoopy.
There are also decorations, monster action figures. Customers got a free treat or trick
with every costume purchase.
A quick eBay search shows a similar bag going for about $20 USD. So if you’re interested
there is still time before Halloween to grab that.
Now admittedly, this was all before my time. For a look into my childhood, my Halloween,
we have this clip here from 1995/96.
I love looking at clips through time and seeing what changes and what stays the same.
Aesthetically, the ‘90s is much faster. We see inside the store, some generic costumes,
as well as Superman. Star Wars is still relevant, just like I’m sure it is here in 2022.
When Toys R Us went bankrupt, many locations were taken over by Spirit Halloween.
Spirit is a seasonal retailer that was founded in 1983 and sells Halloween related merchandise,
obviously costumes, decorations, some very elaborate ones, with motorised parts, flashing
lights. Fog machines, basically everything needed to turn your home into a haunted house.
Spirit Halloween has been a meme for years. Their presence usually suggests that a mall
is dead or dying.
Because they only operate from the summer through October, Spirit usually leases empty
retail space. Selling Halloween products is not a year round business, so there really
is no need for permanent locations and in this era of dead malls, there is certainly
no shortage of places where Spirit Halloween can set up shop.
Horror movies are a Halloween staple and looking for spooky video store media lead me to this
commercial from the mid-80s for a store called Video Biz.
Some pretty great special effects here on the ghosts. Pretty terrifying too. This is
promoting the VHS release of Ghostbusters, so I think its from about 1985, and gives
us a great look into an independent video store of the time.
Great stuff.
I also found some Blockbuster spots from the mid-90s. If you wanted to make it a Blockbuster
Fright. That was their marketing campaigns. A play off of their slogan, make it a Blockbuster
Night.
Nothing too exciting with this commercials. The first has a bat couple watching a horror
movie, treating it like a romantic comedy.
The other is a promo for horror movies the whole family can enjoy. We see the Blockbuster
presents version of John Carpenter’s Halloween, as well as Friday the 13, Scooby Doo for the
kids.
If you wanted to stop for pizza on the way home, Pizza Hut was offering free reflective
Halloween safety bags in 1986.
In the early 90s, Pizza Hut introduced Pizza Head, a talking slice of pizza who usually
got itself into dangerous situations.
This was created by comedy writer Walter Williams, who created a similar character, Mr. Bill,
on SNL.
These commercials ran until the end of the decade, and were branded as the Pizza Head
Show. Naturally, they had Halloween themed episodes
or “specials”.
This one here is from 1995, promotes the then-new stuffed crust pizza. This involved putting
cheese in the crust and encouraging people to eat their pizza backwards.
The first Pizza Head Halloween, he just visits a haunted house.
In 1996, Pizza Hut had a tie in with Goosebumps, the TV show adapted from the books by RL Stine.
They offered a glow in the dark spoon as well as masks based off characters from the show.
The following year, another Pizza Head short was also made, similar to the first, only
it’s a different haunted house, a graveyard at one point, and different Goosebumps products,
a cup and something called a story card set. I don’t know.
If pizza is not your thing, you could always go to McDonalds.
The burger chain ran a pretty iconic promotion for Halloween pails, beginning in 1986. They
began as a standard pumpkin design, though they all apparently had different names seen
here.
Four years later, in 1990, we see some new designs, a green pail, a witch, and a white
one, a ghost.
These promos were often paired with short scenes taking place in McDonaldland and the
buckets are closely associated with chicken McNuggets.
McDonalds has resurrected these multiple times throughout the years, most recently this year,
in 2022.
McDonalds’ competitor Burger King celebrated Halloween with the Simpsons.
The Simpsons had had a working relationship with Burger King since 1990, with the plush
dolls.
In 2001, we got this great set of spooky light ups, small plastic decorations with several
characters decked out in Halloween costumes. Some original animation as well, taking place
in the treehouse, Treehouse of Horror.
In 2002, they ran a similar promotion, only instead of light ups, the toys featured a
moveable screen shot from the show.
Now this was new to me. A decade after the first promotion, BK once again offered a set
of Simpsons Halloween toys in 2011, which is pretty wild, just the staying power and
popularity of the show.
The last thing I’d like to look at is Malloween.
I’m sure events like this still exist, maybe by different names, but this was more or less
trick or treating at the mall.
Shop owners and employees dress up and hand out candy. Instead of going door to door,
kids go from store to store.
That was awful.
There are several benefits to this over traditional trick or treating. Safety, for one. The mall
is well lit. There are cameras.
Also weather. I remember a few times trick or treating in the snow or the rain.
Some people also live areas where homes are spread out and not really conducive to walking.
For some towns, the mall is a community hub, or at least they were, where special events
took place.
Easter with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus at Christmas, so why not Malloween?
Malloween was not limited to just trick or treating. Other Halloween related events like
movie screenings, horror movie screenings. Costume contests were also big.
And yeah, that’s about it for today.
What are some of your favourite Halloween memories? Did you attend Malloween? Let me
know in the comments.
Huge shout out to Nate and Kristin over on Patreon for requesting this video.
Requesting a video is a perk of the highest tier but you can get access to a ton of exclusive
content for as little as just $5 a month and help keep these videos coming out regularly.
So if you like what we do and have the means, please consider supporting us. patreon.com/picsnportraits.
Now I still may have a trick or a treat for you this year but if this is it for the seasonal
content, happy Halloween everybody!
Thanks for watching.