Hooray for Halloween nights! That slight chill! The sounds of crickets who refuse to admit that they’re out of season! Dagger-shaped clouds bathed in moonlight! Ahhh, the only thing missing is the knowledge that I can enjoy it all night and then sleep until 3 PM. Would Halloween nights be a valid reason for quitting my job?

Earlier, we stopped at CVS on a spooky hunt. CVS never has too much great stuff, but they do have the biggest Snapple selection I’ve ever seen, and this helps compensate for things. Below are tonight’s finds.

Halloween Window Silhouettes: You’ve seen these cheap, plastic Halloween window “covers” for years, in every conceivable style. If you’re like me, you’ve probably avoided them. They seem bulky, tacky, messy and kind of pointless. No matter what a company prints on an enormous plastic window cover, it’s still an enormous plastic window cover, and it’s probably going to look like shit taped over a window.

Or so I thought!

I got a pair of skull-themed Window Silhouettes, which admittedly look pretty badass — like an x-ray of a skull with alien red eyes tacked on. Problem is, they’re not window-sized…they’re door-sized. I can understand why the makers of Halloween Window Silhouettes didn’t want to limit their potential market to people with full-length glass doors in their homes, but a spade is a spade. These are Halloween Door Silhouettes.

The package claims that you can “trim” the plastic to make the things fit in windows, but I’m having a hard time seeing how this is possible. The entire silhouette is almost 5.5 feet tall, and even the skull alone is well past 4 feet tall. In a standard window, you’d only be able to fit the left side of the skull’s jaw. I should’ve known something was up when I saw the “buy one, get one free” banner over these at CVS.

But! If you’re lucky enough to have a full-length windowed door, you are in for glory and prestige of unfathomable heights.

That’s our back door — it’s a sliding one, featuring glass panels with Venetian blinds trapped inside. Not the ideal scenario for a Halloween Door Silhouette, but it absolutely works.

The picture does not do this thing justice. We taped it on the door from the inside, shone a light through it, and up above is how it looks from the outside. A humongous, disembodied glowing skull surrounded by pitch blackness. Really awesome, and the effect improves with distance. I heard some kids a few house away roaring their approval, which both filled with me with pride and made me realize that the families who live behind us can see what I’m doing in the yard. The more I think back, the more I’m concerned.

In short: They’re one of the most inexpensive Halloween decorations ever, and they’re everywhere. Even if you can’t find these wicked skulls, you’ll have no trouble finding the plastic window/door covers in a multitude of other spooky styles. If you’ve been passing ‘em up, it might be a good idea to reconsider. So long as you have really, really big windows to work with.

Halloween Bubble Tape: Hmm. Not too impressed. It comparison to 2006’s “Mummy Tape,” this is not a big event. For 2009, Hubba Bubba’s unleashed a new type of Halloween Bubble Tape, in a sleek black case with a neat vampire sticker on the front.

That’s all well and good, but the flavor? It’s original. Plain old original! No black raspberry! No blood orange! Not even a ghoulish grape! Sure, a closer inspection of the label while at CVS would’ve confirmed this and saved me some disappointment, but who would expect plain old original bubble gum to come out of a package like that?

I absolutely hate it when companies only dress up their products’ packaging for Halloween. It’s so chintzy and illegal. The only saving grace is that Hubba Bubba reportedly has an assortment of monster stickers available, so even if you aren’t chewing anything extraordinary, at least you can collect gum cases with vampire, mummy and other monster sticker labels on them. The downside? To open the packages, you have to tear right through the middle of the monsters’ heads.

I hate being forced to decapitate monsters. I feel that doing so is a decision I must come to on my own terms.

Dangling Spider Lights: Niiiiiice. A box of ten Dangling Spider Lights only cost me 7.50, and it can easily be argued that a ten-pack of large, plastic spiders would be worth that price even if they didn’t light up. But they do!

Within the mix are three different spider styles with three different light colors, and my camera really didn’t want to portray them in a positive fashion. Trust me, they look much cooler than that. The lights perfectly straddle the line between being “creepy lights” and “party lights,” so depending on your intent, you can either make you home look like a haunted crypt, or like a place where people go to do the Charleston with flasks of gin in their free hands.

Before I retire, how about a Halloween survey? [more]

I decided to be social this weekend, hence, no posts. Remedy: New post now. I: succinct.

By the very late ’80s, a mix of goofy one-liners, pop songs and Nintendo references turned Freddy Krueger into something, dare we say, child-friendly. And it showed in the merchandise. Nearly every horror icon has been immortalized with some kind of toy, but most of those things were really meant for the older crowd. Not so with Freddy. He actually had toys that were marketed to kids!

LJN, a company perhaps best known for its Thundercats collection, snagged the license and put forth a ton of Freddy-related dolls and playthings. I’ve already covered their official Freddy Figure, as well as an odd thing known only as a Freddy Spitball. Today, a third relic from LJN’s attempt to make Freddy as benign as Barbie finds its way onto X-E: The Freddy Squish’Em!

Gotta love the Freddy Krueger promo shot that LJN used on the packaging. This is a more gregarious and inviting Freddy, complete with presidential smile and #FF0000 outer glow.

The idea with the Freddy Squish’Em was that it’d revert to its normal shape no matter what you did to it. You could twist, bend and crush him, and Freddy would pop right back into his original crazy position. I’m not completely sure what LJN was trying to convey with Freddy’s pose, but I feel like I’m being solicited to bet on a curbside round of Three-Card Monte.

The lame gimmick of “does not break when you throw it” notwithstanding, this Freddy Squish’Em was at least a cool way to spice up a kid’s bedroom display shelves. Baseball trophies and ceramic Rose Tea animals could’ve only sparked so many conversations when friends came over, but Freddy was a guaranteed icebreaker.

I worry about this new Elm Street movie. I worry that it’s going to give the next generation the impression that Freddy cannot temper his desire to kill small children with his desire to just hang out and shoot the shit. It’s easy to forget a time when Freddy was our buddy, but this foam figurine reminds us. So long as you rooted for him, Freddy was on your side.

Freddy was also a yo-yo.

Also from 1989, it’s Spectra Star’s official Freddy Krueger Yo-Yo! Freddy was just one in a huge assortment of franchises given the yo-yo treatment, ranging from Gumby to Garfield. It’d be hard to argue that Freddy hadn’t become a kid-targeted character considering the company he kept in this weird yo-yo collection. When you’re shortpacked in a shipping box full of Donald Ducks and Super Marios, you’ve kinda lost your adults-only edge.

You’ll notice that Spectra Star added a string graphic over Freddy’s glove, to insinuate that he was actually playing with the yo-yo. Thank God Freddy isn’t real, because he never would’ve signed off on that.

The shame of being a yo-yo is clearly etched onto Freddy’s face. It’s almost as if he’s trying to shield himself from our judgmental view. Freddy is in complete and total disbelief that he has become a yo-yo, or maybe that’s just what he wanted us to think? It could’ve been a face-saving measure, because no one who is a yo-yo can also be the object of our gravest nightmares.

How much did Spectra Star pay you, Fred? Was it worth being the laughing stock of Hell?

I’ve been reading Halloween cocktail recipes for years, and since drinking heavily was most certainly in the cards after the week I’ve had, it seemed like a good time to stop reading and start making.

I found the recipe over at this site. I wish it had a cool name like “Agent Orange” or “Sunshine Reaper,” but the site only refers to it as a “Halloween Cocktail.” Am I allowed to rename cocktails if I swiped the recipes? Let’s pretend I am. This is an “Agent Orange.” It’s wonderful.

Combine two ounces of bourbon, three ounces of orange juice and the juice of half of a lemon in a cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a glass full of ice. Top it off with some ginger ale. (The recipe doesn’t specify how much ginger ale, so let’s just say “to taste.”)

I only drink whiskey when I have absolutely no idea that it’s in what I’m drinking, so I had some reservations, but this is delicious. It tastes almost exactly like a Navy Grog, which makes no sense at all since Navy Grogs have an entirely different set of ingredients. The truth is, I just like writing the word “grog.”

Wondering how this drink ties in with Halloween? The official recipe calls for unpitted olives with pumpkin faces carved on as the garnish. YES. YES, YES YES. I’ve never known olives to be a candidate for garnish in a fruity whiskey drink, but I will never, ever argue with an excuse to carve olives up like jack o’ lanterns. Oh, the fun I had.

Unfortunately, you’ll need all of the above to whip up a batch of Halloween Cocktails Agent Oranges. Still totally worth it. I love blaming alcoholism on Halloween enthusiasm.

Your challenge: Raid your liquor cabinet and search online. I guarantee that you’ll find at least one Halloween-themed cocktail to enjoy using whatever you’ve already got. Well, unless you’re fifteen. And you very well may be, since I usually just write about toys and candy. For the rest of you, I can think of no better way to spend this perfect dead leaf evening than with a glass full of something evilly named. Good luck!

Oof. This hasn’t been my favorite week. I want to turn this week into a person and beat it up.

All of your Spooky Die-O-Rama entries have been received, and they are amazing. Seriously, WOW. I’ll be working on choosing winners and showing off everyone’s entries this weekend. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, and stay tuned for another Halloween contest!

Stay tuned? Hrm.

Though lacking the intense production value seen with Halloween Crunch, General Mills has unleashed its own collection of Halloween cereals. (APPLAUSE.)

The problem: The “theming” doesn’t go much further than the box art, and you have to kinda squint to notice that the boxes are Halloweeny at all. It’s as if General Mills was contractually obligated to Halloweenize certain cereal brands, but didn’t really want to.

Couldn’t they have put a bit more into this? A limited edition “Orange and Blackberry” Trix comes to mind. Don’t they care about negative reviews on idiot blogs? Surely the multimillion dollar expense of producing and marketing a wholly new type of Trix would’ve been well worth it to avoid comments like “FUCK YOU, RABBIT” on errant websites written by old people.

But even a half-assed Halloween Trix isn’t without its macabre merits…

The back panel features a cutout “Trix O’Lantern” pattern, thus enabling us to achieve our collective lifelong dream of carving a company-approved likeness of the Trix Rabbit’s head into the side of a pumpkin. Now all we have to do is win the lottery and shoot hoops with the guy who played Samson on Carnivale.

It’s a bogus bonus, but it’s better than nothing. Given that it’s the cheapest possible “special feature” that General Mills could’ve included, the cynic in me wondered if they even expected anyone to bother with this. Surely, no board meeting full of creative execs would’ve unanimously agreed that customers be lining up for a shot at making a Trix Rabbit pumpkin.

I had to know for sure. Was this a real jack o’ lantern pattern, or just some lazily designed bullshit that looked reasonable enough to pass as one? Fortunately for us all, the supermarket where I found this Trix also dabbles in being a crappy pumpkin patch. [more]

My love/hate relationship with spiders is legendary. I must have at least three dozen books about spiders, ranging from grade school picture books to five-pound encyclopedias. I read about them constantly, and they fascinate me.

And yet, I’m an arachnophobe. Not one of those especially crazy arachnophobes who belt out operatic high notes at the sight of the smallest spider, but if they catch me by surprise, I flip. I’m completely aware of how ridiculous this is, as 99% of the time, the spiders I’ve encountered could not possibly harm me, and of all the tiny monsters we correctly and incorrectly classify with the “bug” banner, spiders are the ones who really couldn’t care less about what I’m doing.

Why are so many of us afraid of spiders? According to articles like this, we might be able to blame evolution: A reflexive fear of spiders etched into our souls in response to our ancestors having to deal with the venomous beasts and their naughty bites. If that’s true, I feel better. I only become a five-year-old girl in the presence of spiders because my great great great great great great great great great grandfather used to get his ass chewed off by them.

Whatever the reason, spiders have become a symbol of Halloween. They’re as synonymous with this time of year as bats, witches, and any of the other things that share shapes with the Wilton mail-order catalog’s current collection of cookie cutters. In fact, arachnids have become so closely associated with Halloween that retailers can successively sucker us into spending thirty bucks on giant, fake spiders.

That’s why I’m here!

Man. I love those Spirit stores, but their prices are insane, and not in the cool Crazy Eddie way. I don’t know how I let myself purchase their giant “Hairy Spider” with its ridiculous price tag of thirty bucks, but rest assured, it’s way too much money to be spending on a fake spider, even considering its enormous souped-up pipecleaner legs.

They can only get away with a price like that because it’s so early in the season. By the end of October, it wouldn’t shock me to see these going for a lot less. (And after Halloween? Forget it — they’ll let you walk out of the store with one just for asking politely.)

I can’t recommend the “Hairy Spider” at this price, but don’t take that to mean that it isn’t a quality item. It is. The fuzzy fur is top notch, and it has the cutest little alien cranberry eyes. Oh, and did I mention that its leg span is eight feet? Yeah, there’s also that.

(click here to see the above photo, supersized!)

The legs are posable, and with a little work, the end results are pretty impressive. Interestingly, the size of the spider marks it as an outdoors-only item, but there’s no way you could leave him outside: The fur would get ruined and he’d fall apart. So, if you’re somehow okay with the price, you’re going to be in the odd position of needing to find a spot in your house for an eight foot fake spider. I’m used to problems like these, but for the rest of the planet, it could be a dealbreaker.

The bendable whatevers underneath the spider’s leg fur are pretty strong, and you can effectively pose the thing in any way you see fit. (This is much cooler than the usual gamut of faux spiders, who have zero ability to do anything but lie flat on the floor.) Actually, the more I look at the pictures and write about the spider, the more that ridiculous price tag starts to seem not so ridiculous. On the other hand, I’m an eternal sucker for anything with cranberries for eyes.

Not bad, but you may want to wait for the post-season sales.

We visited our local Halloween Spirit store tonight, where the strobe lights were a’goin and the overpriced disembodied latex heads were a’flowin. Picked up a few things worth writing about — but we’ll save those for another day.

In the same lot as Spirit was a Rite-Aid, and since pharmacies can be good places to find random seasonal crap, I demanded that our adventure continue.

Now, I’ve been hallo-hunting at this Rite-Aid for years, and I’ve always been certain this particular branch was the most depressing Rite-Aid in Rite-Aid history. I really can’t put my finger on it. It’s a little unorganized, but it isn’t exactly dirty. It’s a little stagnant, but it doesn’t exactly stink. There’s just something about this place that sucks the life out of me, and every time I’ve gone there, my splendid Halloween joy was immediately replaced with this really weird sadness. It doesn’t make for an interesting story to relay on the X-E Blog, but I’m happy to report that the streak is over!

This time, Rite Aid had VELVET TREATS!

Oh man. I sooo don’t have enough gusto to properly define my love and adoration for these wonderful Velvet Treats. Like the legendary Trading Card Treats, they’re another type of those rare “non-candy” items intended to be given out to trick-or-treaters.

We could have a long debate on whether or not costumed kids would enjoy these. I know I would’ve. I absolutely loved getting non-candy items in my treat sack. Money, stickers, worthless plastic doodads…they meant nothing on their own, but they just had this incredible ability to improve the worth of our overall haul.

On the other hand, I never received something called a “Velvet Treat” during my childhood trick-or-treatings. I can picture it now. I would’ve put on a big show, balked at the idea, and maybe even thrown the thing down to the pavement before inviting my masked compatriots to join in my stomps of protest. But I only would’ve done that to save face. On the inside, I’d be really pissed that I blew my chance to go home and color in a velvet Dracula.

No such missed opportunities tonight! Tonight I can color my velvet monsters without fear of sliding down the social ladder! I’ve already hit rockbottom! I wear black socks with sneakers! [more]