Spirit Halloween 2026: The Kotaku Review

Saturday is Halloween, and woe unto thee if you have not yet assembled your costume, because all the good stuff has been thoroughly picked over and is rapidly rising in price. I’m going as a lazy Luigi (regular overalls and green shirt, actual Luigi hat) to a Trunk or Treat this weekend where I’ll be handing out candy and tiny plastic skeletons to kids. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to care too much. For those that do, though, there’s always Spirit Halloween. I hadn’t been to one of these in a few years, so my resident Halloween enthusiast colleague Zack Zwiezen graciously showed me around one earlier this week. Together, we took a zillion photos, and we’re here now before you with a presentation of the weirdest, worst, and most notable things we saw there. Most of it’s costumes, some of it’s other stuff, all of it is…well, I guess representative of Halloween in the U.S. in 2026. Come take a journey with us into Spirit Halloween, three days before that sacred night: © Kotaku Yoshi Figured I’d start us off with something fairly innocuous. There was, naturally a lot of Mario at Spirit Halloween. The adult section was (weirdly) mostly Luigi, but the kids’ section had more variety. That said: I don’t know what a normal-looking Yoshi costume, to me, would be. But this specific one upset me for some reason. “Carapace gonflable incluse!” -RV © Kotaku Toad Again, I’m not sure what a normal one of these would be. You’re probably not gonna let your kid run around in just a vest on a chilly Halloween night. But this still looks wrong, somehow. -RV © Kotaku Mushroom Queen The kids’ section had an actual, branded Peach costume, so it was sort of goofy to see this unlicensed option in the adults’ section in lieu of a real Peach costume. I guess Nintendo was one of the few (very few, as we will see) companies to draw the line on licensed “sexy” versions of its characters. -RV © Kotaku Joker Wall Zack has led me to understand that a wall like this is mandatory in every Spirit Halloween store. -RV © Kotaku Harry Potter aisle My original pitch for this article was “The 10 Worst Things We Saw At Spirit Halloween” and this was going to either be top of the list, or a Dishonorable Mention at the bottom (because, while “worst” is accurate, it’s unfortunately not very fun/funny, which the rest of this list is intended to be). -RV © Kotaku Pikachu or Saw Just some environmental storytelling. -RV © Kotaku Lazy Pokémon Okay, but speaking of Pokémon, is this what passes for Pokémon costumes these days? Just a onesie and a hood? Come on, guys, we can do better than this. © Kotaku Lazy Spider-Man Now this is just flat-out lame. Where are his pants??? This was right next to an actual, full Spider-Man suit on the rack. -RV © Kotaku “Spider-Man” Look, anyone can be a Spider-Man if they want to be, gender be damned. But I just find it funny that this was two feet away from a similarly-shaped costume of a different superhero entitled “Ladypool.” -RV © Kotaku Chewbacca Lovable Star Wars furball and loyal hero Chewbacca is not an easy character to recreate at home, but even I didn’t expect the Spirit Halloween version to look so bad. At least this version looks better than the hard mask Spirit used to sell. -ZZ © Kotaku Discount Vader “25% off Helmet won’t stay shut” -Spirit Halloween © Kotaku Inflatable Dinosaur An all-time classic returns. No complaints, no notes. -RV © Kotaku Big Freddy I’m not a fan of where FNaF has gone since like, the first game, but even I have to admit this is a damn good-looking real animatronic version of a fictional animatronic. Unfortunately, it would not turn on while we were there at around 7:30 p.m. Probably should have tried again around midnight. -RV © Kotaku Retro Jason Over the many years I’ve been visiting Spirit, I’ve begun to notice a trend of famous killers getting more variants. Perhaps the oddest one I’ve spotted in recent years is a purple Jason inspired by his appearance in the infamous NES game based on the Friday the 13th Movies. It’s cool, but how many people under 30 will even care? © Kotaku Officer Dick Udown I’m not going to linger here but wow there sure are a lot of costumes like this (cops, lewd, lewd cops). -RV © Kotaku Green Oogie Boogie Okay, so. Did you know this is a thing? I didn’t. I always thought Oogie Boogie was like, tan. A burlap sack guy. I learned last night, in the Spirit Halloween that he has effectively been rebranded in a lot of merch and even in Disney Dreamlight-freakin’-Valley as a green dude because I guess he glows under a blacklight? This is controversial and many people disagree over whether or not his greenification is a good thing. I’m joining the war on Team Burlap. -RV © Kotaku 20s Gangster It’s literally the ’20s RIGHT NOW?!?!?! -RV © Kotaku Big weird inflatable guy Someone please comment on this article and explain to me what this is supposed to be because I have no idea. -RV © Kotaku Buster Sword There was a big section of weapons that included several swords not officially branded as any particular thing, but were definitely intended to read as swords from stuff like Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy. -RV © Kotaku The Backrooms Hazmat suit This was literally the only thing I saw from The Backrooms. I think it’s really funny that they felt the need to sell something from The Backrooms but the only real costume-able thing they could come up with was a Hazmat suit. They should have made a weird chair costume or something. -RV © Kotaku Dead by Daylight ‘Devil Face’ I think this costume looks pretty cool, but I feel bad for any kid or teen who wears it on Halloween night. They’ll be forced to explain its strange origins as a variant of the Ghost Face mask seen in a video game, not the famous Scream movies. -ZZ © Kotaku © Kotaku Definitely not Ghoul from Fallout I pointed the costume in the first image out to Zack early on as a pretty funny attempt at a knockoff Ghoul from the Fallout TV series, only for us to stumble upon an actual branded Ghoul mask later on. -RV © Kotaku Knockoff Mortal Kombat I find it peculiar that I’ve not encountered any Mortal Kombat costumes at Spirit in recent years. It seems like between the movies, the franchise popping up in Fortnite, and the games being good this past decade, Mortal Kombat is bigger than it has been in a while. But if you want to dress up like one of the franchise’s ninjas, you’ll have to settle for a knockoff. -ZZ ©Kotaku © Kotaku Knockoff Call of Duty Your young son can dress up as a knockoff Ghost from Call of Duty alongside his bigger brother, who is also dressed up as a knockoff Ghost from Call of Duty. Yay! -ZZ © Kotaku John Halo This and the next few on the list represent some actually pretty all right kids’ costumes we saw. I’m not sure which kids this age are super enthused about Halo, necessarily, but if they want to dress as John Halo for Halloween, more power to ’em. © Kotaku Sonic Quintessential Sonic the Hedgehog costume. A little weird, but probably cool if you’re a kid. They had Shadow, too. -RV © Kotaku Zero All right, this one is just downright adorable. Great idea for a costume, great pairing with the Jack Skellington and Sally costumes over in the adult section. Possibly the only thing we saw all evening that had everyone in our group genuinely delighted. -RV © Kotaku Lamb Chop Now, all right. I love Lamb Chop. I grew up with her, Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy, and the delightful Shari Lewis. But I gotta know: who, in 2026, is still familiar enough with and excited enough about Lamb Chop to dress up their baby as her for Halloween? My understanding was that Lamb Chop had mostly been (shamefully, regrettably) relegated to infamy as a dog toy. However, writing this is how I learned that apparently Shari Lewis’ daughter, Mallory Lewis, has brought back her mom’s puppets on social media and (seemingly?) has fantastic politics. So maybe it’s time for Lamb Chop to make a comeback: -RV © Kotaku E.T. On the other hand, maybe some retro things just really shouldn’t be kids’ costumes. Or costumes at all. -RV © Kotaku Fall Guys I don’t have anything smart or funny to say about these, I just thought they were genuinely quite cute, well-done costumes. This is what the Fall Guys look like! Yes! -RV © Kotaku Aang Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. Why does it have to have the mask?! -RV © Kotaku Poppy Playtime It would be weird to not see some Poppy Playtime gear at Spirit in 2026. And there was plenty here when we visited earlier this week, though not as much as before, so it seems to be selling. -ZZ © Kotaku Fortnite Wall Over the years, Spirit’s wall of Fortnite costumes has grown and grown. But this year, I didn’t spot too many new additions, and even more damning: It was still filled with costumes this close to Halloween. Have the kids moved on? -ZZ © Kotaku Art the Clown Baby Outfit Look, the babies wearing this outfit have no idea who Art the Clown is and are innocent. But the parents dressing up their kids as a murderous clown from some of the most gory horror movies in recent years should really think about why they are doing that. -ZZ © Kotaku Oompa Loompa Back to the adult costumes for some final cursed entries. I think this one is funny because we all know exactly what it’s referencing. -RV © Kotaku Silly Branded Knife I hate these dumb prop knives so much. They look tacky, ugly, and bad and don’t seem like something you’d want to collect. They also seem like a bad prop for a costume unless your version of some famous slasher is branded like a NASCAR driver. -ZZ © Kotaku Pizza Sorry, is that a pizza delivery box in their hand? Is the pizza…delivering…itself?! -RV © Kotaku © Kotaku Brainrot Characters It’s wild to think that for younger kids, these bizarre AI-generated nightmares are likely more famous and recognizable than a Star Wars hero or DC Comics villain. I’m curious, though, how many kids actually buy these costumes or if this is just dudes in suits chasing trends. -ZZ © Kotaku SpongeBob A big wall of SpongeBob was the first thing we saw when we walked in. Most of these costumes are fine, even mildly funny! Like this Handsome Squidward mask. Great! © Kotaku Sexy DoodleBob But this, on the other hand, is maybe the worst thing we saw in the entire store. It was either this or the next thing I’m about to show you. -RV © Kotaku Sexy Mater I’m just gonna wrap this up here. -RV