Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 It was announced today that all Party City stores are going to be closing, very soon. I can't say that I didn't see this coming from miles away.  For the last several years, I've noticed much of their Halloween stock has been the same, save for the animatronics, which still seemed to be a very new thing to the company. The hanging ghouls, the skeletons, the cutesy, family-friendly stuff...they've basically just been recycling it all since at least 2019 or so, with a couple of occasional new additions thrown in. I can't remember the last time I went to Party City expecting to be "wowed", save for the Terrifier release.  And from what I hear, those that preordered the animatronics this past season, generally got shafted. Preorders being cancelled, items not actually coming in stock until a week or two before Halloween...I heard so many stories around the community. Not to mention the fact that the product that almost put them back on the map, Rattles the gr...

 As an adult who lives a perpetually spooky lifestyle, and whose main hobby is collecting decor and the like, I sometimes forget that there are people out there who go Halloween shopping, solely to find themselves a costume. However, after a trip to Party City and Halloween City, the former of which is still exactly where it's always been since I was six, I started remembering the days when I was none other than that eager little costume shopper.  Party City was the Halloween go-to in my childhood, at least in my area. I can probably count on one hand how many of my costumes over the course of a decade and then some didn't come from there. Long before Spirit Halloween, even before the smaller scale pop-up shops like Halloween Express, Everything Halloween, and Halloween Adventure, Party City was the place to go for all things Halloween. I actually was once asked, if I could go back to any store I visited as a child and experience it exactly as it was, what I would choose, and ...