Halloween means big bucks for ‘pop-up stores,' local haunted houses and corn mazes

Unemployment, recession, terrorism.

Or spiders, vampires and Charlie Sheen.

There’s more than enough to be afraid of in the real world, so given the option, America is choosing Door No. 2.

We’re turning fear into fun, and this Halloween we’re spending money like never before.

According to the National Retail Federation, American consumers in 2011 will spend $6.9 billion on the holiday – on costumes, candy, parties, decorations and such. Compare that to spending in 2005, when Americans spent a mere $3.29 billion.

This isn’t Eisenhower’s Halloween, with a pumpkin on the doorstep and candy corn atop a cupcake.

This year, Halloween means money.

Zombies awaken

“Halloween has become one of the most popular events of the year,” said Kathy Grannis, NRF spokeswoman. “Before, consumers got away with a scarecrow, a pumpkin and some cobwebs. Now, they have a pumpkin as large as their yard. People are spending money on having fun. It might be the one time they can forget about the economy – and they don’t have to buy gifts.”

One of the places consumers are spending is the “pop-up store,” the brief-season storefront that specializes in a single event.

“Retailers wouldn’t revisit this idea if they didn’t have success in the first place,” Grannis said.

The traditional pop-up store is the Christmas tree stand, the vacant lot that suddenly appears after Thanksgiving and empties a week before New Year’s Day.

Tuesdee Messer is spending her second year as manager at Tacoma’s Halloween City, one of nine such outlets in the state. Hers is located just off South 38th Street in a former music store.

“From this weekend to Halloween, we’ll be slammed,” she said a week ago.

This year she’s seeing “a lot of matching costumes, say daughter and mom both looking to become princesses.”

Superheroes – Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern – seem to be gaining popularity, Messer said, as are characters born of video games, including Halo, Pac-Man and the brothers Mario and Luigi.

“We’re hearing that there could be a lot of Charlie Sheens walking around this year,” Grannis said.

Lady Gaga looks to be fading, and characters from “Jersey Shore” may not be a popular as they were last year.

Meanwhile, some scary characters just won’t die.

“Zombies are the new vampires this year,” she said.

Family values

Alongside the traditional tricks and treats, two relatively new retail phenomena – haunted houses and corn mazes – have become Halloween traditions.

One of the larger South Sound haunted houses is the Black Lake Asylum, which comprises space otherwise unoccupied inside Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square.

“Last year, we had 4,700 people. This year we’re hoping for at least 6,000 visitors,” said Black Lake partner Robin Clark

For 2011, Clark has added Hillbilly Haunt, an adults-only scream-fest featuring, he said, “blood, gore and scantily clad women.”

Clark said the actors within both venues are volunteers, and proceeds from the gate will be donated to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.

“I’m hoping to raise $10,000,” he said.

Three years ago, he raised $3,000 and 3,000 pounds of food that was donated to local food banks.

Freightouse, itself embroiled in scary bankruptcy proceedings, receives a percentage of the profits as rent, Clark said. Last year, the facility earned $8,000.

Clark of Roy also makes his own donations.

“I spend my yearly earnings doing this,” he said.

During the day, and the rest of the year, he works as an emergency medical technician.

“Every year at the end of the season I say I’m not going to do this again,” he said. “But this is my family. I’m lucky if I get out of the red. If I have to take it out of my paycheck, Mary Bridge is getting their money.”

Maris Farms offers another veteran South Sound attraction with its corn maze and some two dozen activities.

“This is our 12th year at our current location,” said marketing manager Steve Templeman last week.

Attendance at the farm reached 36,000 in 2010, he said, and the gate so far this year is up ”about 15 percent.”

What began as a simple pumpkin patch has grown into a 25-acre theme park that lasts for one month only and features, along with those pumpkins, a corn maze, haunted woods, pony rides, hayrides, corn cannon, pumpkin catapults and pig races, among others.

“We invest up to $300,000 a year,” Templeman said, and although he could not provide revenue numbers, he did say that most years have produced a profit.

“Our numbers have not gone down with the economy,” he said. “They’ve stayed steady, or increased. There doesn’t seem to be the impact economically, the negative impact.”

Perhaps being frightened has become one of the core family values.

“I think people really like to make memories,” Templeman said. “They like to share experiences with their families. There’s not a lot of things a family does together where they can spend a day, or a half-day, together.”

It’s a cousin of the Buy Local movement.

“We’ve taken a commodity – agriculture – and turned it into an experience. Look at Starbucks,” he said. “They’ve taken a commodity – coffee – and turned it into an experience. You put in the family factor, and it increases.”

Diminishing demons

Along with pop-up retail outlets, donation stores are also using Halloween as a way to increase sales.

The website for Value Village, while offering advice for costumes, make-up and decorations, promises revelers that they can “stand out from the crowd without breaking the bank.”

At each of 27 stores in the nine-county Tacoma Goodwill region, look for “Boo-teeks,” where employees will help customers customize costumes.

“We’re projecting $375,000 in sales for Halloween,” said Goodwill CEO Terry Hayes.

“Halloween is one of those fun, lighthearted celebrations,” she said. “People seem to need some sort of outlet to relax.”

Or maybe it’s more than that.

Gareth Barkin, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Puget Sound, said the classical interpretation of such a holiday calls it a “ritual of inversion.”

“Especially with repressive societies, or with a strong religions proscription in everyday life, one needs these kinds of rituals where people can do whatever they want, or the opposite of what they are required to do.”

He offered an example: “Kids extort candy from neighbors, which would be ridiculous when you think of it.”

And today, he notes, the event “has taken on different characteristics. It’s becoming much more popular with adults. In the ’70s and ’80s, it was a kids’ holiday, and it was all about the candy.”

Now, he said, increasingly, it’s becoming more about pop culture – salted with a tingle of sex.

“The implication would be that we’ve become more sexually repressive, but I feel it’s in the other direction,” he said. “Instead of a reaction to the puritanical, people are allowing themselves to do more at Halloween not because of some repressive societal norm, but just because you feel more comfortable doing it.”

He adds, “It sort of seems Halloween has moved from scary spooky. It’s been taken away from the world of devils and demons.”

But you can still visit the “burning flesh tanning salon” at Black Lake Asylum.

Or find a patch and pluck a pumpkin, or pick a porker in the “Pigtucky Derby” pig race at Maris Farm.

Or dress up like a princess or a pirate.

According to the National Retail Federation, those will be two of the most popular costumes worn for Halloween this year.

Osama bin Laden?

Forget it. He’s so 2010.

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535
c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com