not buying-in to plastic Halloween

[mrsscoob]

At a time when we are all being reminded to recycle and take more care of our planet, reduce our carbon footprint etc why are people buying tons and tons of plastic crap at Halloween?

Halloween used to be a few kids trick or treating on the actual night, now it goes on for days, with parties, offices and shops being decorated, adults dressing up and shops pushing their Halloween junk for over a month before.

We hear all the time about people finding it hard financially at the moment and concerned about fuel prices and the cost of food, yet they can find the money for a flashing plastic skull.

It's all such a waste of money and so very bad for the environment. The stuff is shipped over here from all across the world, used for a day and then chucked in the bin.

Am I being unreasonable to feel that the only purpose of Halloween nowadays is to make people spend money? It sickens me how much rubbish there is in the shops, knowing that on the 1st November it will all be heading for landfill or the sea. Why can't we settle for carving a pumpkin? Why do we need all this plastic crap?

I don't do teacher's day, or Grandparents day, valentines, or any other day really (though I do have some sprigs of blossom in the house around Easter)...

Love Halloween, in all its glory, from all angles, from the pagan stories to the plastic crap. Its the only time of year you can legitimately decorate your home in orange, purple and black

I'm selective and make a few purchases after the event for the following year similar to Xmas decs. I wait for it all to be reduced by 75% and then swoop in for some selective bargain hunting. I only buy the stuff I had an eye on but deemed to be overpriced and if there weren't any left, well - c'est la vie!

It's like decorative cushions on a bed - if there's a pic of it in a magazine, on the TV or just in front of you at the shop, sheep-consumers will just think it's the done thing, they have to have it, their lives will be incomplete without it & buy it without really engaging brain. The subconscious instant hit of a purchase. All part of the consumerist, materialistic, capitalist, credit crisis inducing snowball. For the people who seem to be buying it as an investment, it is still condoning the whole process of manufacturing crap & exporting it worldwide with all the associated energy waste & rubbish produced, & yes ultimately it will end up in landfill.

Maybe Ms Allsop should do Kirstie's Homemade Halloween? (not really)

I have every bit of Halloween stuff I have ever bought/made, not counting real pumpkins of course. We re use it year after year.

I don't know why you have the impression everyone bins the 'plastic tat'. I may be State-side, but I have seen the same Halloween items out on display for five years on neighbourhood houses. I think it is lovely - they go all out, with some houses even having haunted gardens/teenagers dressed as zombies in the trees, dry ice - the works. I've spent a month so far on my family's costumes (daughter wants us all to be Narnia characters) and actually enjoy Halloween more than any of the other holidays. I particularly love the trick or treating when some homes have cheese and wine goodies or vodka jelly shots for the adults in costumes...

I get the impression because of things I have seen and heard. To be fair the things I have heard about decorations being binned are usually from offices and shops as they dump the stuff because they don't have the room to keep it. Although I also have got the impression judging by the sheer level of stuff in the shops, people must be buying it every year as if people didn't buy it the shops wouldn't stock it.

I am not against Halloween itself, I think trick or treating or guising is great and homemade costumes too. It is fun. I just don't understand why people can't have fun without the cheap plastic crap, it shows a lack of imagination, is tacky, sends a very poor message to the kids and damages the environment. It is or course better if people reuse it every year (if it lasts that long), but even then, it has still been made in a factory half way across the world, probably by a child and then shipped over here. It must have an impact on the environment and no matter how many times it is reused will still eventually end up in landfill.

When I was a kid (70's) Halloween was duck apple (on string) / bob apple (in a basin) and dressing up as a witch with your mothers clothes and green eye shadow. Trick or treating was not done here.

We buy a small amount of plastic tat that we bring out every year. Same with masks, etc. Only thing we buy new every year are halloween themed chocolates for kids. If people buy and throw out this stuff every year YANBU. But if they reuse it YABU.

ha ha yes green eyeshadow, we used to do that too! Lot more fun than a shop bought costume and a plastic lantern.

Shops sell lots of xmas tat, but most people still reuse decorations.

I prefer home made costumes, although tbh when my 4 kids were young it would have been much easier just to buy them. In terms of landfill, I think thsi must make little impact - nappies will have a much bigger impact for example. Although I don't like the idea of the conditions for workers making them.

I agree with what you say about the Christmas decorations, nappies too. The reason my particular problem is with Halloween though is because it just seems to be such a recent phenomenon. Traditionally people have been buying decorations at Christmas for years but it only seems to be the last few years that people have been decorating their homes for Halloween. In a time which coincides with us becoming more environmentally aware he seems rather odd to me, thats all.

tbh I think all it proves is that most people don't really care about environmental issues if it means its going to have any impact on their life. I also think people are morte willing to buy decorations because they are so cheap. If you could only buy stuff made in uk it would be more expensive and less people would buy it.

I love Halloween... I don't buy the stuff from the UK(China) though, it's not good enough. I hate plastic tat. I love the Americana Halloween stuff though, particularly vintage.

If there are UK handmade items on Ebay, I'll buy them - I'd prefer to buy from anywhere in the world but China.

halloween is bullshit though isnt it?

in the 70s we decorated the house and bought plastic tat, just cause you didn't celebrate it doesn't mean others didn't either

There is no way that you can tell me there was the amount of plastic shite in the shops for Halloween in the 70s as there is now, thats bollocks. We did celebrate it, we dressed up and went trick or treating, had toffee apples, apple bobbing, green jelly, things like that. People were celebrating, but they weren't buying £50 butlers.

mrsscoob - "but they weren't buying £50 butlers."

He costs a bit more than that.

Duckdodgers - it is the one I have seen then. Yes, my son loved him, he'd laugh and talk to him. But Santa, far too scary!

aldiwhore - "I can safely say that none of my plastic crap will end up in a landfill, at least not until I'm dead."

Maybe not then. When my granddad died we were all allowed to ask for things from his house. I was the only one who thought to ask for the Christmas decorations and I love them, plastic crap and nice glass alike. Cousins all wish they had thought to ask for them now too late So if you have a good collection and your family are fond of it because of the memories it brings back you never know who might be asking to keep it and continuing your tradition.

maybe there wasn't the same amount of plastic crap but it still existed. you could argue the same for christmas etc if you wanted to - not to mention the amount of other cheap plastic items

it seems op is just picking on halloween as she doesn't like it rather than looking at the amount of plastic crap around everywhere nowadays

I love Halloween - maybe even more now I get to share it with the children than when I was a fancy free goth with a fab excuse for a night out :)

We don't have plastic tat though and everything we have bought over the past few years goes in a special box to be brought out year after year.

I couldn't afford to start from scratch every year

My plastic Halloween crap goes in a box in the roofspace and comes out next year, why would I throw away perfectly good things when they can be used again next year?

The plastic crap certainly was around in my young day (1980s) there is probably more of it around these days and people buy more of it because it is cheaper. Generally in a recession, people like to cheer themselves up sometimes with inexpensive treats, it's q bit of fun for their dcs.

Huge amounts of plastic halloween tat is not 'American' per se...when I was younger (and I'm only 39), there weren't many of us that wore store bought costumes and all that; we invented our own. People didn't 'decorate'...just bought candy, and occasionally had a home made spooky set up in their yards to scare trick or treaters.

I don't even think trick or treating is done the same in the US; now parents drive their kids all around, or take them to trick or treating in the Mall or some crap, instead of letting them run riot through the neighborhoods on a major sugar high!

southeastastra, if you read the thread you would see that I haven't once said that I don't like Halloween, I have said I like it and that it is fun.

What bothers me is that this once nice simple tradition has turned into billions of pounds worth of imported plastic. Yes there is a lot of plastic crap around nowadays and I am quite aware of that. I am certainly not "picking" on poor old Halloween. The reason I have mentioned Halloween in particular is because it is October and the Halloween stuff is in the shops right now.

I was wondering if anyone else finds the 'wandering ghost' as grotesque as I did when I was in a branch of Asda last week. I'm a 62 year old grandmother and I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw this motorised figure that looks like a child with a sheet on. I can't help agreeing with those of you who find this year's Halloween products totally OTT.

hallgreenmiss - I saw the boxes but haven't seen the product out of the box.

However I have complained to them about another item, called a Zombie Baby, that is really grotesque. It's oddly realistic but is grey and has empty eye sockets and a row of fangs.

I found it strange that a company who supports Tommy's would stock a decoration that is at best described as a dead baby.

It upset me to see it and it scared my son. He's only 2 1/2 and they had it set out on the lowest shelf with one of those "follow the path" floor sticker things alongside it for children to play on. He came back to me saying "I don't like that boy" and he was upset. When I looked it to see what had upset him it was horrible.

I might be oversensitive but I've lost two babies, I held my daughter while she died and I don't want to find ornamental dead babies in my local supermarket, halloween or not. It was so unexpected too and with LO upset I felt really vulnerable, like I'd let him down by not seeing it first.