The Halloween Aisle, Part 3

Happy Halloween Eve! Family, work, and other responsibilities left me little extra time for updating the blog this month—my apologies!

However, the holiday has been on my periphery over the past few weeks. I actually stopped at CVS with my sons in early September to see what Halloween items were in stock. So here is this year's entry in my Halloween Aisle series.

First off, this was my first CVS visit specifically to evaluate its Halloween offerings. In my last two installments (see Part 1 and Part 2), I profiled the Halloween aisle at my local Walgreens. This time, it was plainly obvious that CVS, at least the store closest to me, had much less to offer. There were only a few packages of grease and cream Halloween makeup, and a couple of different fake tattoos. What was there seemed overpriced. 

For example, CVS is selling one 0.7-ounce tube of white cream makeup for $4.99 this year. Last year, Walgreens sold a $5.99 cream makeup kit that included a 0.75-ounce tube each of white and black cream makeup, along with three smaller tubes of red, green, and metallic makeup. Have prices seriously inflated that much in one year?

Cans of colored hairspray actually seemed more reasonably priced. Seeing these always brings back memories of dressing as the Joker, with sprayed-green hair, for Halloween in 1989. 

Unfortunately, the cream makeup, fake tattoos, and colored hairspray were the store's only available options for dressing up. Well, I take that back—there was one "ghost face" mask inspired by the Scream movie franchise. Almost all the other items in the Halloween aisle (really only half an aisle) were related to decorations. There were a couple of different pumpkin carving kits.

These kits with paint, stickers, and other push-in/stick-on applications allow younger children to decorate pumpkins without having to carve them. For the same age group, CVS also had a couple of Halloween-themed magic ink activity books.

The fake cobweb fluff—which we sometimes put up by our front porch for Halloween when I was a kid—seemed reasonably priced.

The next several photos show the miscellany of other Halloween items for sale—knick-knacks, candles, themed blankets and accent pillows, and candy buckets.

Here are a couple of animated Halloween decorations that the store was selling (please pardon my blurry photos). One item I didn't get a picture of was a skeleton hand that, with the push of a button, "walked" on its fingertips. My sons enjoyed trying that one.

At least in early September, CVS's selection of Halloween candy was small, compared with what Walgreens stocked in the past couple of years, though I've seen worse prices.

Judging by what's available near me, I would definitely choose Walgreens over CVS if those were my only local suppliers for Halloween costumes, makeup, decorations, and candy. Maybe CVS stores in other locations are better stocked. 

Even so, my sons and I enjoyed checking out the Halloween aisle that day, back when we were still anticipating the official arrival of autumn.