Spirit Halloween Superstores

Known for its pop-up stores — and its army of seasonal workers — Spirit Halloween will try its hand at a longer run and a bigger holiday.For many fall enthusiasts, the season’s start is marked by the arrival of autumn leaves and apple picking. For others, it is marked by the emergence of the Borg-like retail empire that is Spirit Halloween, a Halloween goods purveyor that opens more than 1,500 locations across North America, only to shutter them in the days after Halloween.The script has remained constant: Spirit Halloween outlets appear in strip malls, and just about any abandoned storefront, selling vast inventories of costumes, wigs, vampire fangs, fake blood, devil pitchforks and ghoulish animatronics. Year after year, its stores create a dependable seasonal economy for thousands of workers before disappearing as quickly as they materialized.But this week, Spirit, which was founded in 1983, announced that it intends to test the waters of the Christmas season, too, with the introduction of a new retail concept, “Spirit Christmas.” Ten test locations will open across the Northeast, starting on Oct. 18 with a store in Mays Landing, N.J., which will be followed in November with outlets in locations like Albany, Poughkeepsie and Erie.At these locations, Spirit’s Grim Reaper-like mascot will be replaced with a winking Santa, and its stock will be replaced with gingerbread houses, wrapping paper, ugly sweaters, elf hats, reindeer ears and stocking stuffers. Locations will also offer family photo ops with resident bearded Santas.“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us, and we’re hopeful it will resonate with our customers,” Kym Sarkos, Spirit’s executive vice president, said in a statement. Her statement added that customers will be able to wander through a “life-sized gingerbread village, where you can mail your letter to Santa at the North Pole and find out whether you’ve been naughty or nice.”The storefronts change, but the Spirit Halloween signage remains the same.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn recent years, as Spirit Halloween’s seasonal retail empire has grown, the ephemerality of its business structure has made it the subject of endless parody. In the recent season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” the sketch show aired a prerecorded spot that poked fun at Spirit Halloween’s impending, yet ultimately temporary, emergence.In the skit, an employee played by Heidi Gardner walks through the aisles of a busy Spirit store while she tells viewers about the company’s seasonal aid to depressed local economies around the nation.“Since 1983, Spirit Halloween has been helping our struggling communities by setting up shop in every vacant building in the country for six weeks,” she says. “And then bouncing.”After the skit aired, Spirit shot back at “Saturday Night Live” in a post on X.“We are great at raising things back from the dead @nbcsnl,” Spirit’s social team wrote alongside a photo of a Spirit costume package titled “Irrelevant 50-year-old TV show.” The package’s description noted that the outfit came with “Dated references,” “Unknown cast members” and “Shrinking ratings.”The joke landed well online, and now the company will find out if its customers are interested in having Spirit stick around through the holiday season. More