When Halloween rolls around in October, there will always be certain costumes that will be more popular than others.
Sometimes, the motivating factors behind the popularity of the costumes are not always very clear.
In other instances, the popularity will be readily transparent. For example, in the 1970s, the sale of Richard Nixon masks skyrocketed after Watergate. Weird as it is, sometimes even national scandals can sell a few masks.
Generally, a spike in popularity will launch sales of a Halloween costume. Other times, a costume will remain popular year after year without ups or downs. Throughout the years, some costumes have remained more popular than others.
Probably the most popular Halloween costumes have been Dracula or vampire-related costumes.
The reason for this is fairly obvious: Halloween is most associated with monsters and vampires that have long since been the most popular monster in pop culture.
Now, granted, some folks may prefer The Wolfman, Frankenstein, or The Mummy, but all those costumes are more expensive and more elaborate.
So, Dracula or a generic vampire will simply achieve a relatively higher level of popularity than the other costumes.
For females, vampiresses will be exceedingly popular as well as will the old standby, the witch costume.
Again, these two costumes are relatively easy to put together and are so associated with Halloween that they are perennial sellers year after year.
Another type of costume that is popular year after year is the superhero costume. Granted, superhero costumes suffer from peaks and valleys of popularity depending on how popular comic books are.
In the 1960s, superhero costumes saw significant spikes in popularity as Marvel comics saw their sales skyrocket.
Also, the Batman TV series helped spike sales quite a bit. In the 1970s, the costumes went into a general decline as comic books were nowhere near as popular as they had been in the 1960s.
This lack of popularity existed through the 1980s until the Batman movie franchise kicked sales again into high gear.
Then, there was another brief decade of decline until the recent boom in comic book-inspired movies created a resurgence in superhero costumes.
One in a while, there will be a spike in the popularity of costumes that seemingly have fringe popularity.
That is, their sales lag behind vampires, witches, and superheroes but they seem to chug along year after year in small numbers.
Space aliens, for example, seem to have a level of popularity that exists and sales remain consistent, but never in numbers that are gigantic.
This is probably because science fiction is not really associated with the supernatural which is the true core of Halloween.
The devil is a weird character in the fact that the devil seems to have minor popularity, but not too many people jump on the devil suit bandwagon. This is probably because the devil is just downright unnerving.
Also, some people in certain sections of the United States will probably blame an unsolved murder on someone wearing a two-dollar devil mask sending him to the electric chair while letting the real murderer go free.
Oh well, that is the price of doing business in the United States. So pick your Halloween costume wisely!
