Thursday 8 October 2015

Countdown to Halloween: Poundland Does Halloween!

I didn’t take nearly as many pictures in Poundland because their isle was in full view of the cashiers and they kept looking at me funny and it was making me self-conscious.




Our Poundland in Liberty 2 The Mall Mercury has given over the entire isle as you enter to Halloween, a huge long green and black phallus laid along the most noticeably part of the store. They do this for each every set of seasonal stock I’d imagine but the paler shades of Easer and Christmas ware just don’t give it the same ‘holy fuck look at this’ appeal as neon green and jet black. Most of their stuff is being produced by ‘Fright Nite’, by the looks of the packaging it’s a company rather than an own-brand label but I couldn’t swear to that (and really, do you care that much?)  And they have made EVERYTHING – anything you can slap a bat or skull or pumpkin on, anything even remotely horror-themed you can repackage and sell, it’s in this isle in Poundland. I was particularly impressed with the lack of shame they showed in repackaging the plastic knives that are on sale all year ‘round as army toys, now carded up as Halloween costume props, and the bags for the beach with skulls on them, which are probably sold all year round as ‘goth’ but are now being slid in under the trick or treat pails. They’re not saying you should use these bags that are obviously just normal bags for trick or treating but you could couldn’t you?


For all my mocking in the above paragraph, Fright Nite have got a whopping selection of unique Halloween lights in their range, including a few styles you don’t see nearly often enough – the pumpkins and skulls are commonplace but I can’t remember the last time I saw a light up spider in a web or full body skeleton lights (who do, admittedly, look like foetus skeletons but lets try to unsee that shall we?) which might say more about my nearby shops (and attentiveness) than anything else,  and I think those ones in the top right hand corner are hanging bats? If they’re not they should be, someone should make hanging bat shaped fairy lights. I didn’t want to leave this paragraph without mocking their Halloween Tee Lights – which are just regular tee lights with different casings (the black ones have little badly resized cobwebs on them in a pathetic display of trying to make them ‘halloweeny’ that I don’t doubt someone was probably really proud of) but, to my dismay, I’ve ended up with the opinion that tee lights look really good in neon green (but then doesn’t everything?)


Actually their unique Halloween items are pretty good all round, but then I think a lot of them may be recycled stock from someone else, I bought the two glove-puppet looking hanging decorations (the pumpkin man and the skull in the top hat) last year and the bride and groom skeletons below them were in The Range, and I don’t’ remember either being made by ‘Fright Nite’. Of course I could be wrong and if so I apologise to you Fright Nite but I do get the feeling you’re sticking labels on stuff someone else couldn’t sell last year and selling it as your products, or you’re a new name for that company. Of course that doesn’t diminish the excitement in you being able to get all of these kooky hanging decorations for a £1 each, this is the sort of stuff I just hang around my rooms, my two evil glove puppets just chill out by my DVDs, looking as though they’re plotting sinister fates for my NCIS box-sets. Was a bit disappointed with their plastic skeletons though, one looks like it’s made out of papier mache, the other looks like it’s made out of fromage frais; I consider myself a connoisseur of cheap plastic skeletons, they’re always the first thing I look for in a Halloween isle and often they disappoint, what I’d like to know is what’s become of the little rubber skeleton, you know exactly what one I mean because everyone used the same mould, about six inches, firm, matt-finish rubber, came in a variety of colours, a little bit stretchy - did someone finally loose the mould? I hope not, I relay liked those rubber skeletons and hope to one day find a new version of the red and black and green and black ones I had as a child.


The above picture was taken just so I’d have a picture that included a disco skeleton, a giant glow-in-the-dark skull, dancing stick-on skeletons, evil glove-puppets and rubber hats with spiders moulded onto them on my blog. If you can argue against why this is a thing I should want – don’t.


Their masks weren’t as good as the fantastic selection in Asda but they had a charm to them, especially their half-masks, I like it when I can’t tell exactly what type of monster the mask is supposed to represent and that yellow and red half-mask is just baffling, it’s bright yellow, has a split open head, no eyes and a big hooked nose, leading em to conclude the only thing it can possibly represent is a background character in Aaagh!! Real Monsters. In other mask news their Frankenstein’s monster looks like that little fat kid from Akira, they have HUGE shiny metallic Skeletor looking things that look more like the belong on the hood of something and the most adorable little Franky kids mask. I think that was the cutest thing I saw in all the shops, he’s so sad and so confused, he isn’t saying “I will throw your child in a lake” or “give me fun size Milky Ways or I’ll toilet paper your whole world” he’s saying “you just knocked my ice-cream on the floor, why would you do that?!”


Finally the isle was capped off with a huge selection of really cheap Halloween candy at both ends, all of it guaranteed to contain no nutrients and half of it guaranteed to contain no actual food. Most of it was by these Fright Nite people and they had at least put some effort into it – eyeballs being the big thing because it’s very easy to repackaging spherule things as eyeballs and spherule comes up a lot in sweets – Christmas tree decorations, lollies, chocolate footballs, all spheres, all easy to coat in an eyeball wrapper, not that I don’t like big hollow chocolate eyeba…wait a minute... Hold on a fucking second, is that…? It is! That is GHOSTBUSTERS HALLOWEEN CANDY!! Sandwiched between gummy eyeballs and gummy fangs, two different types of Ghostbusters Halloween Candy, that I’ve never seen before!! Holy shit, the pound shop has brand new Ghostbusters Halloween Candy, two different brand new Ghostbusters Halloween Candies, Ghostbusters! FUCK. YES.

I bought some, obviously:



I also totally bought that disco skeleton:


You're judging me aren't you?

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