As the Criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show once said:
I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.
It begins in the year of our gourd, 2008. It was, if I recall correctly, around the time of July 4th, and a Yankee Candle catalog appeared in the mail. This was shortly before the beginning of the layman's spooky season aligned with the Fourth of July, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when this catalog contained Halloween...featuring a collection of skeletons known as the Boney Bunch.
I was immediately enamored with them (It's probably worth noting that I was also heavy into my Tim Burton, particularly Corpse Bride, era at this point.) and felt compelled to make a wishlist. My mother was holding on for my Aunt Trish, who as you know if you've read previous entries here is the reason I got into Halloween in the first place, to decide what she wanted so we could just place one big order to save on shipping, and this took maybe a week or so.
Now, at this point, it truly wasn't that common for people to be thinking Halloween in July. It never once occurred to me that these items could sell out within a week of the catalog arriving, but that's exactly what happened. My mother attempted to place the order and everything Boney Bunch was sold out. In July. It seemed outrageous, even to me. Weren't people always telling me I was "too early"?
2009 came, and, although I didn't have quite the experience I have now with viral Halloween collectibles, I figured it wasn't going to happen again. We've all been there at this point...an item gains popularity one year, then the next year it, or some similar variation of it, returns, the company learns its lesson about demand, produces enough, and everyone goes home happy, more or less. Right? Wrong. 2009 went the exact same as 2008. All things Boney Bunch sold out immediately, though I think this time my aunt came away with a hanging air freshener. Other than that, the Boney Bunch proved to be a Boney bust.
By the time the 2010 catalogue rolled out, I made my peace with the fact that the Boney Bunch was just out of my reach. I made no attempt to order that year, though I'm pretty sure I just happened to be in the mall on the evening of the in-store launch but the pickings were beyond slim. Three years had now passed with no Boneys...I started to think of them in a similar way to how I thought of Barbies that existed before I was born. Fun to look at, but I'd never own them.
But then came 2011. I went to the mall one day just to check out fall-scented candles, and was presented with a flyer upon checkout:
An in-store Halloween party in early August?! I was elated. Was this finally going to be the year that I got my hands on something, anything, related to the elusive Boney Bunch?
I somehow lucked out and got the day off, I can't remember how now, and on the morning of August 6th, 2011, I set off with Aunt Trish and my then-boyfriend for my very first Yankee Candle Halloween preview party!
To our surprise, the store was stocked extremely well, and the employees were super friendly! Somewhere, probably on my old laptop, there exists a photo of me with the store manager, I believe her name was Michelle, who was dressed up as a Boney Bunch character. We truly had the best time, and this was probably my first real experience as an adult interacting like this with people who were just as obsessed with Halloween, no matter the calendar date, as I was. You might say that first "After Life Party", was sort of a "coming out" party for me into the Halloween community. I just didn't know it yet. But I carried the memory of that day, a Halloween shopping experience for pieces I never thought I'd own, and a true party of sorts with like-minded people, with me into the next year.
Needless to say, once we knew the Halloween preview parties were a thing, it was imperative that they became a yearly tradition. I looked forward to these days like a child on Christmas Eve. There were countless entries in my old LiveJournal/Dreamwidth accounts talking about how excited I was the night, or in some cases, the week, or several, before. I spent ages putting together the perfect outfits, as I was becoming "known", on some level, for how I dressed for the parties, and always seemed to be the person there most in the spooky spirit.
This was a look from 2015,which I believe was the first year they called the preview party "The Witches' Ball". Dressing for the preview parties was definitely a huge prelude to how I now dress on a daily basis. It's amazing how much my Yankee Candle experiences shaped me on my journey to year-round spookiness.
Now, the Yankee Candle preview parties did also come with some anxieties. After 2011, I knew to be anticipating the parties and therefore started reading about other people's experiences. Although 2011 went very smoothly, I was in constant fear of not getting to the store early enough and missing out on a piece I really wanted, or losing out to eBay scalpers/resellers...Now that I'd tasted what it was like to actually get my hands on Boney Bunch, I didn't want to let that feeling go. And so it became my yearly tradition to get to the stores as early as possible and line up outside the door, strategizing.
I believe this window was from 2013. I would stand staring into the window, almost always first in line except for one year when there was a very sweet older woman named Mary who waited with us and got so into strategizing with me, figuring out where the pieces I wanted most were located, what the best path would be to grab them all quickly, if I had time to grab a basket, etc. (My mother usually would, on the years she came, then catch up with me once I had an armful.) I would also size up anyone who walked by, wondering if they were going to stop and line up, trying to figure out if they were resellers and were going to try to knock me over, or what. I was always a woman on a mission, and honestly if I'd ever put the effort that I put into shopping for Boneys into other things in my life, I could probably be unstoppable. But I digress.
I don't recall ever actually having an issue getting the pieces I wanted at the store, save for one year when there was a problem with the shipment and I actually wound up hitting another store in the same day and finishing up my list there. It didn't stop me from needing to be first in line each year, though! I guess maybe I felt as though I had a reputation to uphold after awhile. And after those first three years, could you honestly blame me for worrying things would sell out? Yes, I probably took things a little too far sometimes with my anxiety, but I was determined.
Anxieties aside though, those first several Boney Bunch parties remain some of my fondest Halloween shopping memories to this day. As I said, these were really my first experiences really socializing with a group of like-minded people. Over the years I made friends with several employees and repeat customers. One year I won an in-store giveaway and gave a speech as if I'd just been awarded an Oscar. My social anxiety evaporated and I was truly my best self during these events. Sometimes the end of the party felt like the end of Halloween itself and I'd find myself feeling so depressed that it was done for another year. Even now, I find myself wishing I could go back to those days sometimes. They truly magical and shaped me in so many ways. My metamorphosis truly began with those parties.
Sadly, my interest in Boney Bunch eventually began to wane. As the years went on, I began to question if I actually was still in love with the line and the pieces, or if I just was going to the parties out of habit/tradition and buying the pieces solely because I felt like I had to, or was afraid I'd pass them up, change my mind, and miss out. The last party I went to was in 2017, and I was so indifferent about it by that point that I didn't even go to the same mall as usual.
I was still first in line, though, of course!
By the time the 2018 season rolled around, I had so much else going on in my life that the Boney Bunch party seemed almost like an afterthought. (Halloween in general fell by the wayside that year until the very end.) I did have an opportunity to go, but decided against it, as it didn't seem worth the hassle that year, and that was basically that. I never truly had the desire to go again after that, realizing the pieces weren't even really to my taste anymore, and almost felt a sigh of relief about no longer getting so stressed out about resellers and being first in line and which piece would be the most popular and all that. The Boney Bunch was really no longer the spooky, Tim Burton-esque line I'd fallen in love with in 2008. It was really now just skeletons in goofy situations and themes, which didn't exactly say "Halloween" anymore. I didn't need them, especially when there was so much else out there I wanted more. I considered myself officially done collecting Boney Bunch by 2019. But regardless, I always felt that little pang of excitement, perhaps on behalf of my past self, when the preview party dates were announced each year. I felt a warmth in my heart for anyone who was getting just as excited as I once did. And it's always been a beacon of hope that Halloween is on the way.
This year, despite the fact that I haven't collected in six years, it did bring me a great deal of sadness to see that 2023 will be the final year for the Boney Bunch. Even if I no longer attended the parties, no longer got truly excited over the release, it saddens me to think that this huge Halloween staple is coming to an end. It truly feels like the end of an era today, oddly enough, six years to the day and date that I attended my last release party.
I will say, I wish Yankee had done something a little more special for the final Boney Bunch release. They've re-released a few times over the years, and it would have been nice to see the line come to an end with some of the very old favorites coming back one last time, such as the original bride and groom or the black cloak and top hat clad skeletons that made the line so popular in the first place. Instead, the 2023 offerings kind of look like stripped down versions of previous releases.
Makes me wonder if the line is ending solely because someone at Yankee Candle HQ is just simply tired of making them, or out of ideas. They're still cute, don't get me wrong, but I look at them and see why I stopped collecting in the first place.
Regardless, my experiences with the Boney Bunch were so pivotal for me that I believe a part of me will always, always be that girl staring into the window of Yankee Candle on an August morning, plotting out her purchases and hoping she'd be able to acquire everything she wanted. That little spark of excitement will always be there, even if the line itself isn't. And I do look forward to seeing what Yankee comes up with in the future. Maybe someday I will collect some of my earlier wants from between 2008 and 2010 as well.
Rest In Peace, Boney Bunch. Thank you for making me feel alive for so many years.
Picture from Boney Bunch Love on Facebook/Instagram.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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