5 Tips for Shopping for Halloween Costumes for Kids

What does your child want to be this Halloween? A fairy princess? A vampire? The mad hatter? With all the choices available, he can be anything he wants!

But that’s just it: there are too many choices. It’s hard enough to decide on a theme (‘okay, I want to be a pirate!’). Then you have to figure out which of the thousands of pirate designs to get, and from what store. Here are some tips to help you find the best one for your buck.

1. Is the Halloween costume comfortable?

Your child will be wearing it for a whole night, while walking outdoors, and occasionally elbowing their way through a crowd of kids to get to the best candy first. It’s not going to be fun for him if the costume is itchy, constricts circulation, or has too many complicated features that get in the way.

2. What’s the weather?

Will he be too cold, or too hot? Nothing like collapsing on the pavement from heat stroke to put a damper on the Halloween fun.

3. How easy is it to go to the bathroom?

That bee costume may look absolutely adorable on the Halloween costume website. But it probably won’t be that cute when your toddler—who isn’t completely toilet trained—suddenly shrieks, ‘I have to go wee wee!’ in the middle of the street, and you have about 30 seconds to get her out of five zippers and a giant black-and-yellow striped butt before she has an accident in front of everybody.

4. Do you want the Halloween costume to be used more than once?

We’re not sure what kind of parties your family attends, but chances are, your son not be attending any events that say ‘Dress code: Mythical Beast’ on the invitation. Some parents don’t mind. ‘It’s Halloween! Let’s go all-out!’ But if you’re watching your clothing budget, you probably want to avoid spending all those dollars on a Halloween costume that he will wear just once.

You have the option to rent a Halloween costume, or you can assemble one from ‘regular’ clothes. For example, you can just buy a pirate’s hat and then put together a striped shirt, black pants, and a red handkerchief—items which your child owns, or even if he doesn’t, can be bought and worn again. Other great ideas: gypsy costume (you just need a white blouse, a flowing skirt, and a tambourine), flower child/hippie (kind of looks like a gypsy, actually, but get retro shades instead), rock star (denims and a torn shirt).

5. Do you want to buck the trend?

You can guess what the popular Halloween costumes will be. Just think about the blockbuster films, popular TV shows, plus the typical vampires, clowns, etc. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but you may want to think out of the box and put together something unique. You can just pick a pop culture reference, like the typical tourist (floppy hat, camera, flip flops) or do a visual pun. For example, you can hold a bloody knife and then attach little cereal boxes on your clothes. You are… a cereal killer! (Parum-pumpum.)

The cool thing about picking unique Halloween costumes is that they can be incredibly cheap (to be a Fried Egg, you just need to wear a white shirt and stick yellow felt in the middle) and still be a conversation starter.