Trick Or Treat On The Cheap - halloween day - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Oct, 2001 by Elizabeth Razzi

HOLIDAYS | HALLOWEEN has gone grown-up, and tacky chic is a big part of the reason why.

WANT TO know the real reason Halloween has become a holiday enjoyed as much by grown-ups as kids? It's the screaming doormats--and the loads of other kitsch that just didn't exist back in the day when adults' role in Halloween was limited to scraping soap off windshields.

The availability of immature but hilarious tricks has turned Halloween into a holiday that appeals to the tacky side in us all. "People want the chintz," says Tony Bianchi, who owns Halloween Adventure, a New York City shop where it's Halloween every day of the year.

But tacky doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Second only to Christmas, Halloween is our biggest holiday for retail spending, with sales that now approach $6 billion a year. In recent years, households have spent between $80 and $100 on costumes, candy, decorations and parties, according to surveys by American Express. Costumes, at $27, consume the largest chunk of the budget. And it's not just kid stuff: More than one-fourth of adults are shopping for themselves.

Whatever your kids want to be this year, here's a tip: Hide the costume on a high shelf until October 31. "The big secret of the industry is that a lot of times children buy costumes twice," says Bianchi. "Their parents make the mistake of letting them try them on and play in them. Then they want a new one for Halloween."

To get your money's worth, first check out a Web site run by FabricLink, a textile-industry group (www.fabriclink.com/closet.html). By clicking on the "Haunted Houses" link, you'll be connected to enough sites to furnish a first-class habitat for inhumanity. Among the links: Terror By Design.com, which sells a $90 web shooter that attaches to your power drill. It can cobweb a whole room in a few minutes.

Also check out Christmasdepot.com. Enter the keyword "Halloween," and you'll pull up a variety of Halloween decorations at low prices: You can buy a 50-light string of orange icicle lights for $4.95--or buy a pack of 24 sets for $80. And don't forget the illuminated foam tombstones for your (grave)yard, at prices ranging from $16 to $25.

If you insist on being tasteful, Martha Stewart's Spooky, Scary Sounds CD can greet trick-or-treaters at your door for $9.98. Scarier, though, is the price of her Ultimate Pumpkin Carving Kit: $75. Both are at www.marthabymail.com.