Just a quick one, but
something that should be celebrated every year if you ask me…
THE RANGE HAS BECOME THE
FIRST SHOP THIS YEAR TO GET THEIR HALLOWEEN SECTION OUT! At least in Romford, I
assume Romford is emblematic of the whole country while simultaneous hoping
this isn’t the case at all. I mean if it was, there’s be a nationwide shortage
of spray tan and track suits, but as I don’t follow the spray tan or track suit
industry this could well be the case, what was I talking about? Oh yeah,
motherfucking Halloween! For a couple of months a year shops that are usually
no more than a necessity becomes fun and interesting and The Range is the first
to strike Halloween o’clock, well technically it’s getting ready to strike –
they were still putting their stuff out (they hadn’t priced anything when I was
there this morning) but that didn’t stop me from taking pictures and out of
pure glee:
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| click all pictures to enlarge |
This is the side you’ll see as you come in the door so it’s got some of the shop’s showiest offerings this year, the Range always has great quality stuff and that ghost prop at the end could have come straight out of a dark ride, it terrifies me (automatonophobia remember?), I waked ‘round the other side. Those black and white things in the middle light up, I’m particularly drawn to the haunted house below the skeletons but I’m usually drawn to old houses, meanwhile the new IT film seems to be turning this Halloween into The Clown’s Year, certainly in the Range, those plastic wall relief clown heads make no sense but do their job – brrr, fuckin clowns. My favourite though is the red-headed bats in the extreme foreground, they’re trying so hard to be scary but they’re just coming off as cute and frustrated.
This is half of the other side
of that display; the other half was just emptiness and boxes – itself creepy I suppose.
The Range loves its fucking canvases, they have a whole section dedicated to
prints of any old shit on canvas, apparently if you buy a picture that’s on a
canvas it’s up-market and stylish, so they have Halloween canvases this year –
they can fuck off. Everything else is win though, while the animatronic demon
clown grabs the eye (and wets the pants) and the animatronic zombie grave
buster is probably the best thing in the whole shop objectively speaking (I may
end up owning one), check out those books above the super jolly metallic
pumpkins, they’re a bit flash aren't they - he says for no reason at all.
Finally I caught their end-cap
mid-build, I don’t think that window with the skeleton coming through it is for
sale – I mean I hope it is but The Range put a nice bit of effort into their Halloween
displays and I’m leaning more towards it being part of a little weird bridal
scene they’re doing for the end-cap, they want to have found a really creepy
rendition of Here Comes the Bride to play.
Of course I bought stuff
and that stuff was Madame Leota and the Necronomicon!
Well the tags call them
Witch’s Light Up Orb and Haunted Halloween Book but that’s not very exciting
and thus totally ill-fitting for these two because they’re so exciting! The Haunted Halloween Book is of course the aforementioned
book above the happy pumpkins but you may notice that the Orbs don’t’ show up
in my photos, that’s because they weren’t technically on the shelves yet, they
were in a box that I probably shouldn’t have rummaged in but I was all
Halloweened up and wanted more, so I nosed in their unpacked boxed and found
the orb, then excitedly asked an employee if I could ‘buy this stuff now?’ she
said yes! I would have done a little
dance but I had my arms full of light up Halloween stuff and still have bruised
ribs. The ‘action feature’ for these two
is the same and are part of the same ‘Haunted Hallows’ line, it can be summed
as: there is a screeching universe full of pain, despair and LED light shows
trapped in each object:
Obviously this doesn’t include
sound (which is a bubbling, screeching, John Carpenter backed nightmare – it’s
so fucking good) but having recorded this in the middle of the night I can tell
you these things are LOUD, as far as I know I’ve managed to avoid waking up the
whole street (the street I live on would let me know instantly so I think I got
away with it) but I but every fox in a three road radius of my house has had a
heart attack.
So as I judge the Halloween
season by commercialism: the Halloween Season has officially begun!
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