Tis' the season

With three months to go, 2023 is already shaping up to be quite the doozy, with a seemingly endless barrage of crazy news every day. While this may not be the healthiest thing for our collective society and mental health, it at least provides some pretty solid Halloween costume ideas.

Remember that spy balloon the U.S. shot down back in February? Well, nothing says horror better than one of the most powerful countries in the world sending outdated technology to spy on us. And hey, perhaps the costume could double as a submissive for all you multi-day partiers.

Also, can you believe it was only in March that ChatGBT launched, quickly becoming part of our lexicon and saving us hours in writing emails we don’t want to write? We’re not sure how to pull off a ChatGBT costume, but you could always dress up as those creepy humanoid prototypes in Will Smith’s “I, Robot” and call it good. (Too soon for Jada jokes?)

Or hey, Beetlejuice trended this year. So there’s always that.

Turns out, however, none of our brilliant ideas topped NPR’s most popular costume list for 2023.

According to NPR, people are dropping more money than ever on Halloween, a record $12.2 billion, which is about $2 billion more than in 2022. I thought we were all, you know, struggling with inflation and stuff?

As for the most popular costumes, of course you have your go-tos. NPR (citing National Retail Federation stats) said 5.8 million people are planning to dress as a witch and 2.4 million plan to dress like a vampire.

New onto the scene – which comes as no surprise – this Halloween is poised to be the Year of the Barbie. And not just classic Barbie. We’re talking Western Barbie, Skating Barbie, Britney Spears Dancing with Knives Barbie. Hey, we had to sneak one in there.

In all, NPR estimated 1.8 million people plan to dress as Barbie.

But it’s not all Barbie-apocalypse. Wednesday and the Addams Family, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are other favorites. This year, Spirit Halloween added a hippie-themed section (which means you can double up on a Halloween costume AND your garb for this winter’s “Peace, Love and Snowdown.”)

For children, expect a lot of Spiderman and something called Bluey. We had to Google that last one, and upon realizing what it was, quickly exited out of the tab so it wouldn’t mess up our algorithm.

As for pets, NPR reported the top three costumes for pets are pumpkins, hot dogs and bats. Pet costume spending has gone up by $200 million during the pandemic.