How do you fix a broken jack o’ lantern? You use a pumpkin patch. How do you write a newsletter about Halloween? You hire a ghost writer. 👻 How do you kill an entire month’s worth of costumes, cursed snacks and lightly horrifying decor? Easy. Now that spooky szn has been reanimated as a commercial monster, brands are lining up (and teaming up) to make sure you have everything you need to eat, drink and be scary. What a time to be undead!
Of course you’ll need a candle. Always-irreverent Liquid Death partnered with the increasingly up-for-anything Martha Stewart to make you one. We’ll just quote Food & Wine here: “The $58 candle looks like a dismembered hand holding a can of Liquid Death water.” It’s called Dismembered Moments and it’s available on Martha’s website –– which notes, with an appropriately ominous tone, that sales are final.
Heinz’s Tomato Blood ketchup bottle is back on shelves, but if your kitchen still isn’t feeling gruesome enough, Good Housekeeping is more than happy to help. This year’s recipe for fake blood is “especially gory” and looks “just like the real deal!”
Chipotle was one of the first major brands to join BeReal, and this year’s #boorito promotion features an activation with the “anti-Instagram” social media upstart. All you have to do is enroll in Chipotle’s rewards program, put on your costume, go to a Chipotle location after 3 p.m. on Oct. 31, make a potion out of spider eyes and hair from a unicorn’s mane, snap a photo, and then upload to BeReal and your Instagram stories, taking care to tag both Chipotle and #booritosweepstakes (spontaneously).
To us, this is serving Monkey’s Paw vibes more than anything else, but have you ever wished for a bowl of candy that never ran out? Granted, thanks to Kit Kat. Just know that it debuted in Salem, Massachusetts. Invite us over to see. We’ll bring the Ouija board.
If there’s one thing Kellogg’s knows about kids, it’s that they like their “tasty filled pastry bites” how they like their houses, graveyards and dolls: haunted. That’s why Pop-Tarts are now available in Haunted Frosted Chocolatey Fudge flavor.
Isn’t it fun when your seasonal ale wants to murder you? Elysian Brewing thinks so. To celebrate the second season of SyFy’s Chucky, the Seattle-based brewery produced a limited run of CHUCKY: A Killer Wit and enlisted everyone’s favorite homicidal doll for a great promo video. Seldom have pumpkin guts been put to better use.
Speaking of people who want to murder you: we doubt that nightmarishly fussy “secret menu” drinks are a Starbucks barista’s favorite order to receive, but do you, ghoulfriend. Tip as if your life depended on it.
One thing we hope will be a tradition for years to come: candy giant Mars teamed with pioneering waste-reduction company Rubicon to offer a Trick or Trash Bag. They’re already sold out, but it’s an ingenious idea: a bag you use to collect candy wrappers and then drop in the mail to send away for proper recycling.
Not sure exactly what you want to be this year? Just decide how spooky, unique, trendy, classic or modern you want to go, and The Costume Wizard will tell you. It’s part of Google’s beautifully designed Frightgeist site, which will also tell you, via an interactive map, which costumes are most popular in your area and throughout the rest of the country. (Perhaps spookiest of all is the site’s insistence that “rabbit” is the nation’s seventh most popular costume choice. Do you know anyone who’s planning to go as a rabbit? Why?)
In need of still more costume inspiration? Halloween presents an opportunity for people to dress… a little more boldly than they otherwise might. But if you’re not really feeling Sexy Betsy Ross or Sexy Bob Ross this year, take a trip to the other end of the costume spectrum. Go as a Crumbl cookie. Find the wholesome getup –– where else? –– at the eerily omnipresent Spirit Halloween.
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