6 Ghastly Reasons Why Halloween in the 90s Was Spooktacular
Are you old enough to remember Halloween in the 90s? If so, you must be a millennial or older. I was born in 1981, the year generally regarded as the beginning of the millennial generation, although it’s right on the borderline with the end of generation X.
I’m either an elderly millennial or an extremely youthful gen-X’er. I’ve always identified with the millennial generation, although I do enjoy the early ’90s Seattle grunge music that enthralled many gen-X’ers.
The 1990s, especially the late ’90s, will probably be remembered as the peak of American world prominence. The economy was booming, jobs were plentiful, inflation was mild, crime was low, and terrorism caused little public concern (although it should have).
But I digress. Back to 90s Halloween. What was this holiday like in an era when most middle class Americans enjoyed a relatively cozy and comfortable lifestyle? It’s a nostalgia cliche to say we lived in simpler times, but in many ways, this was true.
There were no smartphones or social media apps. Nobody was trying to impress their Insta followers with elaborate, expensive costumes and/or decorations. There was also less commercialization. Local costume stores, not Spirit Halloweens, were the holiday hot spots in most communities.
Let’s start our journey back down memory lane, or, for you gen Z folks, a history lesson. Here are my six ghastly reasons why Halloween in the 90s was spooktacular. For context, I was 8 years old when the decade started and 18 when it concluded.
6. The Commercials
90s Halloween commercials had spooky, cozy charm. As a kid, you knew the spooky season was getting underway when these would pop up on the TV. The best were often for seasonal candies and cereals like Count Chocula. McDonalds also had some fun commercials that promoted their line of spooky trick or treat Happy Meal buckets.
.Along with the well known brands, local shops often had charming and cheesy low budget commercials promoting Halloween sales and merchandise.
YouTube has numerous collections of 90s Halloween commercials. Here’s a huge compilation of classics!
5. The costumes
Some of the most popular Halloween in the 90s costumes were the same as they are today. Ghostface from Scream, Super Mario, Ninja Turtles, and timeless generic monsters like witches and vampires were ubiquitous both then and now. Freddy and Jason were too, of course.
Personally, I always preferred the scarier costumes. I remember wearing a Freddy Krueger mask for Halloween in ’93 or ’94. I also had years with Jason’s’ hockey mask, a generic red-faced demon, and an executioner’s helmet.
The ’90s did have plenty of era-specific costumes, with people dressing up like like Bill Clinton and Brittany Spears and pop culture characters like the Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead.
Of course, the way that people purchased costumes was different back then. Indy costume shops and strip malls were common spots. Many people also made homemade costumes.
Today’s vast selection of costume choices didn’t exist back then. It’s not like you could order ’em online. 90s Halloween masks tended to be simpler and less comfortable. Still, the style and uniqueness of that era’s costumes were more distinctive than what you often see these days.
4. The decorations
90s Halloween decorations were built to last. These days, there is widespread concern about decorations that are wasteful, fragile, and designed to need quick replacement. The concept of planned obsolescence existed long before the 21st century, but Halloween is just one example of how it has accelerated in recent years.
Pictured here is one of my favorite Halloween decorations, a plastic jack-o-lantern with a tiny bulb inside. I purchased it around ’96 or ’97. It still works just as well today as it did back then. In contrast, I have Halloween stuff from last year that is already broken. As much I love buying new decorations, I’m not feeling enthusiastic about adding much to my repertoire this year.
3. The candy
Say what you will about Butterfingers, but I’ve been a fan of them since I was a kid. Back in 1992, Nestle created BB’s, little circular candies that were supposed to be Butterfinger’s answer to M&M’s. I loved ’em! These candies were popular for a few years, but they didn’t have the long lasting appeal of M&M’s.
Other popular ’90s candies were Shark Bites, Warheads, and Gushers. Honestly, I don’t remember much about any of these. Maybe they weren’t widespread in the Seattle area. In any case, Halloween in the 90s had lots of fun, quirky candies for trick or treating. Candy is more homogenized these days with a small number of major brands dominating the market.
2. The movies and Shows
Horror shows and Halloween specials filled the television airwaves during the ’90s. The Simpsons was already well known for its Treehouse of Horror specials. Famous sitcoms like Home Improvement and Roseanne aired Halloween episodes.
Even the kid-friendly Disney Channel would dive deep into the spooky action. Goosebumps, based on the hit R.L. Stine book series, premiered in October 1995 and quickly became a hit.
As a teenager, my favorite spooky series was The X Files. The show technically never had an official Halloween special, but there were episodes that fit the atmosphere of the season perfectly, including the controversial “Home” and the darkly comedic “Bad Blood.”
Popular ’90s Halloween movies included the first two Scream installments, Halloween H20 (basically a Michael Myers version of Scream), The Witches, and Hocus Pocus. Blockbuster Video would often run special Halloween campaigns offering guaranteed availability for renting popular horror movies on VHS during October.
1. Trick or Treating
Buckle up, because this is going to be a long one! Trick or treating was widespread in the ’90s, and it wasn’t the bland, sanitized version that exists today. Forget “trunk or treat”, whatever the hell that is. ’90s children were pounding on every door in the neighborhood, whether we knew the people that lived there or not.
As older kids, we would often journey through the sprawling suburban landscape without parental chaperones, making sure to score all the best candies.
Today, paranoia and a weakening sense of local community have led to a decline in trick or treating. It certainly still exists – my nephew and nieces have participated in it. But many parents are paranoid about strangers giving their kids poison.
This will shock some people, but there are virtually no documented cases of strangers randomly poisoning children with Halloween candy.
An infamous case initially thought to be one such incident was perpetrated by a Texas man named Ronald Clark O’ Bryan on Halloween 1974. He gave poisoned Pixy Stix to his son and daughter to collect life insurance money.
This psychopath also attempted to give the candies to three of his kids’ friends to make it look like a random poisoning. His son consumed the Pixy Stix and quickly passed away. Luckily, none of the other kids ate them.
O’ Bryan told police that the Pixy Stix had been given to the kids by his neighbor. If his plan had worked, five children would have died and an innocent man would have been im prisoned (and likely executed). Instead, the police saw through the ruse. O’Bryan was convicted and died by lethal injection in 1982.
Urban legends about poisoned Halloween candy have been around for a long time. We were certainly well aware of them in the ’90s. I also remember hearing horror stories about kids who had supposedly been injured by razor blades hidden inside apples.
But the heightened fear and paranoia of today was at a lower ebb back then. I’m not sure if the world was actually safer back then, but it certainly felt safer to me. I think most folks who grew up in that era feel the same way.
I Still Love Halloween
Some aspects of Halloween have lost their luster since the ’90s, but it’s still my favorite holiday. The spooky season continues to be the most fun time of the year.
These days, we have countless options for streaming horror movies and shows, which is a major advantage over the ’90s, when we were limited to what the television schedule and local VHS rental stores offered. We also have countless options for ordering costumes and decorations online.
Every era has its positives and negatives. Halloween has changed, and many of those changes are unfortunate, but there’s still plenty that makes this a gloriously spooky time of year.
