Skeletons in the Closet

This year Walgreen created quite a stir when it offered a pretty realistic looking bucky skeleton for just $30. It wasn't the highest quality, but it was pretty darn good and it made itself available to all sorts of corpsing techniques, including the "plastic corpsing" method StiltBeastStudios popularized.

Walgreen got their skeletons from a company called Pitini Enterprises, which a lot of haunters found had a pretty scarce website. Skeletal, if you will. If you contacted them about getting more skeletons, no doubt you should have found an email in your inbox today saying they're taking orders for them. You have to pay up front in January and they'll ship your order in June. In addition to a new higher cost for the skeletons -- $35 (hey, supply and demand at work!) -- you'll also pay shipping costs, which they'll determine at the time (though you can get a ballpark figure by going to the FedEx site).

For me, I'll just take my chances at Walgreen again, assuming they get them in, and save on the shipping costs. I can't imagine they wouldn't order them again, considering the response they had last time. I wonder if they'll be charging $40 though to make a profit on them?

I had a chance at one point to buy six "Wuckies" all at once, but then thought, "Do I really want to spend $180 on skeletons?" My haunt wasn't up to where I wanted it at the time and six skeletons wasn't going to bring it there either. I did end up buying four over time but I barely utilized them as it was with all the other projects I had going on.

Right now I'm corpsing two of them, one using StiltBeastStudios' method and the other a more traditional technique. I'll be ready for them when they hit the stores again and while I'll have to pay a few dollars more, there's no real benefit to buying them early and in bulk from Pitini.

What are your thoughts on buying them early directly from the company?

UPDATE: Pitini Enterprises sent out a second email to clarify the first. It says the skeletons it's offering are NOT the same ones sold at Walgreen, but rather the better quality ones (screws and such at the joints) sold at stores like Spirit Halloween and costing upwards of $70 or more.

This sounds like a much better deal now and one I'm likely to take advantage of, either individually or as part of a group buy as suggested by wicKED.

Don't Fear the Reaper

I was able to finish my Secret Reaper gift yesterday so it was boxed up and shipped off to my Halloween Forum "victim." Because I was waylaid by my illness last week I was unable to add some finishing details that I wanted to include, such as gothic windows and a detailed verdigris-charged door.

Still, on the whole I was pleased with how it turned out, though I would have liked a little more time to work on the painting of it. Yet as I was over the Saturday-deadline for shipping I had to let it go as is. I hope my victim likes it.

I was also pleased to discover a big black box on my front porch yesterday with a lot of eyes looking out at me. Obviously it was my own secret reaper gift, but because I was running out the door to ship my gift before the post office closed, I had to wait to till later in the day before I could open it.

I'll be posting pictures over on Halloween Forum, but it was a nice assortment of spider-themed gifts include a large posable spider, one which my wife had actually wanted to get last year, tow homemade spider sacks, a bag of "bloody" spider wedding, and a handmade jack-o-lantern. All in all a very nice assortment. Thanks very much AmFatallyYours for the thoughtful gifts. They will be a terrific addition to my decor this year.

I also checked with my local Walgreen again, and they finally had one 5-foot skeleton in stock. They were actually pretty good about checking the boxes they had literally just wheeled onto the floor to begin unpacking and I have to say these skeletons have some nice detail to them compared to your typically blucky. I can see some good corpsing potential with it. It's funny how people react to you when you're walking around with a skeleton in your hands.

Unfortunately today I'm traveling to Virginia for a two-day conference so I'll be unavailable to make the go rounds up here, but I'll check in with my rebel brothers and see if they've begun stocking them there yet.

Below are some of the final pictures of my completed mausoleum mailbox, though because I was hurrying I was unable to take more pictures of the construction and finishing process.

No Skeletons In The Closet

Or at Walgreen. Like any good haunter would, I stopped at the local Walgreen on my way home from the hospital yesterday to check if they had any skeletons in stock. Okay, I had to put my prescription in at the pharmacy too, but I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone.

The manager gave me some hope when he offered to go in the back and look, but alas and alack! no skeletons were found. He did helpfully add that his next shipment was coming in on Tuesday and he thought they'd be on that truck.

I hit two other pharmacies in the area, also with no luck. Both said they had come in yet, which was hopeful, because it means they haven't run out of stock yet. So I still might be able to round up some yet.

The offerings were actually pretty meager at two of the three stores. The third one, a larger Walgreen in Paterson (the site of all that awesome flooding after Hurricane Irene, and "awesome" being used in the correct sense of inciting awe in someone) actually had quite a lot of props on their shelves. I picked up the two resin skulls for $6 each, which I thought was a good price for the detail and durability they showed. My wife also wanted a scene-setter so we got one of those too (and she picked up two small witch dolls today while out; boy, she sure does like her Halloween "cute").

I'll also say I was in a Wal-Mart today and I thought its Halloween section was pretty dismal. It had a bunch of costumes, row upon row of candy, a few foam tombstones, but not much more. Sure it had a couple of foggers out (and one nice skull fogger that I was tempted to pick up) but not much more. Truly slim pickin's. Maybe more will be coming in soon, like at Walgreen, but I recall there being a lot more last year.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be heading back out to the local stores and seeing if the new shipment's arrived.