How to prepare your store for the spookiest season!

As the leaves begin to brown and darker nights creep in, we enter the spooky realm of Halloween. A time for retailers to reimagine their spaces and create enchanting retail theatre displays to charm and delight their customers.

Key colours for Halloween are orange and black with hints of greens and purples. You’ll find an array of trending Halloween toys in our specially curated Halloween product collection to ensure your store makes the most of this enchanting season

How to curate your products in a spook-tacular way

Begin by identifying potential existing Halloween-themed toys within your current range and look to expand the collection with complimenting new toys from our Trending Halloween toy collection.

Some examples of Halloween-themed products:

• Orange, Black, Purple or Green packaging or toys

• Food-shaped toys

• Pumpkins

• Skeletons and Fossils

• Creepy crawlies

• Magic Tricks and Science Kits

It’s always worth checking your YOY sales for seasonal reports to see which products historically sell well during this period and prioritize the ones related to Halloween.

Did you know?

Halloween is thought to date back more than 2,000 years to Samhain, a Celtic New Year’s Day that fell on November 1. Demons, fairies, and spirits of the dead were thought to walk the Earth the night before when the separation was thin between the worlds of the living and the dead. 

During the 1800’s Europeans brought the idea of Halloween to the United States, and over the years the holiday became a time for children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls.

Trick-or-treating became widespread in the U.S. after the Second World War, when rationing ended and candy was once again readily available. In the 1950s, Halloween imagery and merchandising started to reflect that popularity, and the holiday became more consumerist. Costumes went from simple, homemade attire mimicking ghosts and pirates to luxurious costumes of beloved TV and movie characters.

Halloween Fun Facts

• The orange and black colours of Halloween are associated with the holiday’s tradition. Orange symbolises the harvest of autumn, while black is the symbol of darkness, combined, they serve as a reminder of the festival’s origins, signifying the boundaries between life and death. 

• The Guinness World Record for the most lit jack-o’-lanterns on display is 30,581, and it is held by the City of Keene, New Hampshire.

• Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos are not linked in any way. Halloween centres on darkness, death, ghosts, witches, candy, and costumes. In contrast, the Day of the Dead is explicitly focused on the afterlife and the act of remembrance.

• Halloween is the second highest-grossing commercial holiday after Christmas

• The Village Halloween parade in New York City is the largest in the United States. The parade includes 50,000 participants and draws over 2 million spectators

• Finding a spider on Halloween is considered good luck.

How to create a spooky in-store experience

Creating novelty with seasonal in-store experiences is an effective strategy for winning more footfall.

The more magic you can conjure, the more customers will be drawn in and want to take some of it home with them. From window dressings, in-store decorations and lighting to a Halloween soundtrack and staff in fancy dress, prioritise any creative means of making your store a more immersive and unique experience for shoppers.

Learn more about using seasonal events to create footfall and profit.

Keycraft has curated a Halloween collection of our spookiest wholesale toys. They're ideal for making an irresistible Halloween display! These low-cost toys won’t break the bank, will provide bags of imaginative fun for kids, plus oodles of pizazz as creepy decorations.

Here are our top 10 picks!

1. Enchanting plush cats

The perfect friend for a little witch, these Living Nature™ cat soft toy will be a favourite long after Halloween. Made with eco-friendly stuffing, these adorable cat toys not only captivate with their adorable design and cuddly features but also embody sustainability. Ensuring endless cuddles and imaginative play.

2. Vampire bats

Dark creatures of the night, Dracula’s winged companions are about as spooky as it gets! Discover Living Nature™ charming plush bat, the perfect addition to a Halloween collection and is sure to delight customers of all ages. Not only is this plush bat a feast for the eyes, but it's also highly functional. It comes with a handy ring attached to its back, making it easy to suspend from the ceiling and create an immersive and engaging display that will capture the attention of passersby. Make your store stand out with this delightful bat plush toy that is sure to become a customer favourite.

3. Glow in the Dark T-Rex excavation kit

The Magnoidz™ exciting glow-in-the-dark T-Rex excavation set. Execute and assemble your very own T-Rex, and uncover a passion for paleontology, perfect for fans of the Jurassic era, this engaging science kit will provide hours of fun - and a bone-chilling yet educational decoration to keep!

4. Frightful frogs

With wet and slimy skin, frogs and toads bring the skin-crawling horrors of dark and cold places to mind. To name but a few of our slimy delights; frog-spawn slime, squeezy and stretchy frogs, plus our showstopping  Living Nature™ Red-eyed tree frog.

5. Blood-curdling rats

Beady-eyed and furtive rats like to sneak out of their dark hiding places at night to cause a fright! Some of these critters include; Stretchy Beanie Rat and Living Nature Rat with Squeak.

6. Gooey Slime Kits

Have fun with science by creating your very own slime monster. Use a cool chemical reaction to make a disgusting slimy monster, complete with stick-on eyes. This fun science kit is the perfect way to explore chemistry and ignite a passion for science, the perfect activity for a dark and stormy night around a cauldron.

7. Creepy crawlies

These ghastly insect toys are enough to send shivers down the spine - a ghoulish trick to play on unsuspecting victims! Some of our favourites include; Giant Insects, Crawling Spiders, Insect Bouncy Balls and stretchy bugs.

8. Monstrous fidget toys

Boys and girls alike will want these addictive little pocket-money monster toys. Stretchy Squeezy Monster Bubble Mouths, Finger Frights and Googly Eye Monsters.

9. Grow your own Dinosaur

Hatch and grow your very own dinosaur this Halloween. Children engage with the concept of Nurchums from the outset and enjoy nurturing their development as the toys transition through different stages. Perfect for creating a spooky in-store display.

10. Mysterious owls

Every aspiring wizard needs a wise owl companion to see them through the long, ghostly night. Our top wholesale owl plush toys include; Living Nature Baby Owl Mini Buddies, Living Nature SMOLS Snowy Owl and Living Nature Snowy Owl Medium.

We’ve still got plenty of our popular Halloween wholesale toys in stock and can dispatch them with a speedy shipping service directly from our warehouses.

Are you ready to make this Halloween your most successful yet?