Buy Halloween: Costumes and Halloween Supplies

More and more often you are hearing individuals calling Halloween their favorite season of the year (and most of these individuals are grown ups). While kids still enjoy a fun party, adults love to throw scary bashes with creepy decorations that look, well, chilling. We’ve come across three “types” of Halloween Supplies: fun and festive (great for kids), gory and grisly (perfect for those wanting a frightening good time), and season or harvest based (good for just about everyone else).

While you can find generic supplies in a lot of stores, save some time by checking out any of our recommended Halloween retailers. These companies are known for their fast, lost cost shipping (most of them ship internationally as well) and will offer a better variety than your local drugstore.

Buy Costumes

They offer low prices and some unique items, but their selection gears towards the “Friday the 13th” crowd. You won’t find many pumpkins or smiling witches here. Instead, expect blood, skulls, pirates, and severed body parts. Some of our favorite items include the soda and beer bottle labels, the In My Veins drink dispenser, and the inflatable skeleton drink cooler.

Costume Express

These guys are extremely similar to Buy Costumes, though there are a few differences in stock. They also excel in Halloween decorating, with both indoor and Halloween outdoor decorations. They have exceptional party packs that help you buy all the themed party supplies you need at once. Other fun items include test tube or syringe shot glasses of the infamous candy bowl with an animated skeleton hand dying to attack the first person daring to grab a sweet.

Party City

This is a fantastic spot to pick up generic Halloween supplies or Halloween party supplies for kids party. Their designs are colorful and festive, and their site is extremely well organized, helping you find exactly what you need. We’re in love with their Haunted House gingerbread cookie kit, themed cupcake stands, and clear skull drink pitcher.

We all know about the hot Christmas toy each yet. In 2009, it was the ZhuZhu Pets. In years past, it was the Wii, the Nintendo DS, Furbys, Cabbage Patch dolls, etc. While it doesn’t get as much press, there are also hot Halloween costumes each year as well. When looking at what’s new for 2010, there are definitely some stand outs that you’ll want to take note of. If you’re looking to buy Halloween costumes at a local store, don’t expect to find these because if they’re expected to sell out online, they’ll sell out even faster on store shelves (just another reason why we also recommend you buy Halloween costumes online).

Costumes from Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland has had an almost cult-like underground following by teens and young adults, particularly over the characters of Alice and the Mad Hatter. They only increased in popularity with the 2010 release of Tim Burton’s live action Alice in Wonderland film. He’s signature stylistic touch led to a number of intricate new costumes, with an elegant gothic twist to our favorite animated characters. When searching Buy Costumes, we’ve found an Alice costume, a Depp Mad Hatter Costume, and a Queen of Hearts costume – all replicas from the Burton film. Buy Costumes also carries a variety of accessories, such as the fantastic costume boots we see Alice wearing in the picture to the left and a vibrant red wig similar to the one that was part of the Johnny Depp Mad Hatter Costume. Pre-Orders are already being taken, so buy Halloween costumes like these quickly before they run out of stock!

Super Mario Bros Costumes

While Halloween is celebrated by both adults and kids alike, it seems like the 20s and 30s set seem to have the most fun. Year in and year out, the most popular costumes always seem to be those that have an ’80s or ’90s twist to them. And what is more ’80s the the Mario Brothers from the classic Nintendo game?

While Mario and Luigi costumes have been around for a few years, new versions have been released for 2010 including a Mario Princess costume (properly known by fanatics as Princess Peach), Toadstool costume, and even a Yoshi costume for boys. The Mario Bros costumes come in both child and adult sizes, and the adult sizes also come in a plus size.

Toy Story Costumes

With the blockbuster release of Toy Story 3 this year, costumes from this popular series of movies will be in more demand than ever. Toy Story 2 came out over 10 years ago, meaning this 2010 release in introducing a whole new generation to Buzz, Woody, and Jessie. You’ll find that just about every principle Toy Story character has a costume. You can be Buzz Lightyear, dress as Woody the Cowboy,  try a Jessie costume, or even pretend to be Rex, Hamm, Bo Peep, a Pizza Planet Alien, or one of the Green Army Men. No age range is left out. There are infant Toy Story costumes, Toddler costumes, kids, adults, and even a plus size Disney costume or two.

When looking to buy Halloween costumes that are new this year, we suggest you buy as early as possible to avoid your favorite style selling out. In addition to the hot costumes we mentioned above, also be on the lookout for costumes from Family Guy, Avatar, Ironman 2, and The Simpsons as well as a number of new Michael Jackson costumes, Kiss costumes, and even light up costumes. Our recommended online stores when looking to buy Halloween costumes? Try Costume Discounters, Buy Costumes, and Costume Craze first.

No matter if you’re looking for kids Halloween costumes or couples Halloween costumes, you need to know the best stores where you can buy Halloween costumes online. Stores only carry limited sizes and styles, not to mention they never offer sales. Shopping for Halloween costumes online is your best bet to save money, find your size, and find the most original costumes around!

We here over at Buy Halloween have our preferred retailers when it comes to cost and supply. Here we will rank them for you so you can stop searching the web and instead find the best place to buy Halloween costumes quickly!

Top 6 Retailers in Which to Buy Halloween Costumes

#6 – Frank Bee Costumes

We’ve found a good selection of less expensive costumes at Frank Bee’s, but their site is kind of a pain to navigate. Also, all sales are final. Even though this is the case for just about every store selling costumes, it’s kind of a pain when shopping online as you can not physically try on the costumes. Rating: 3.5 Stars

#5 – Costume Cauldron

Costume Cauldron would be one of our top 3, if it wasn’t for the fact that their site is very difficult to search through and navigate. The good news is it looks like they’re in the process of changing things up, so things may be functioning properly in time for the Halloween 2010 rush. What do we love about Costume Cauldron? They have a REALLY wide variety of costumes. We’re always partial to TV and Movie characters, and they offer many styles that we have not seen on any other site. They also get very high ratings for costumer service. If you’ve searched everywhere else and have still not found the Halloween costume of your dreams, check out Costume Cauldron! Rating: 4 Stars

#4 – Costume City

Offering Free Shipping if you spend over $50, we like the layout of Costume City as well as their selection. They also offer a 115% price match guarantee. In other words, if you find a site selling an identical costume for less, they’ll meet that price plus give you an added 15% off. For a webmaster’s point of view, we can only direct you to their site and not a specific costume recommendation, which is a bummer as it makes you do more work on your end. In spite of that, we can gladly recommend Costume City. Rating: 4 Stars

#3 – Costume Craze

With low shipping (currently $2.99 per order, normally $5.99, and free if over $50) and a 115% price match guarantee, we love Costume Craze. Their site is attractive and well organized, plus they have sales on costumes all the time. The seem to carry more sizes in popular styles as well. One of our favorites. Rating: 4.5 Stars

#2 – Buy Costumes

Buy Costumes is one of the best sites online for costumes and party supplies. Their site is attractive, well organized, and we like their newsletters as well. They offer a 110% price match guarantee and we’re quite fond of their costumer service. Great selection, and it’s a one stop shop if you’re searching for birthday party supplies or dress up costumes in which to play pretend (for boys or girls). We love them. Rating: 4.75 Stars

#1 – Costume Discounters

We really do love Buy Costumes and could have easily chosen it as our number one, but Costume Discounters continually has the lowest prices around. If their prices didn’t start off the lowest, they offer a 120% price match guarantee. Their variety of styles seems to be around the same as Buy Costumes and Costume Craze, maybe a little less. Their search feature gives you clean, easy results to read, they ship the fastest, and they ship internationally. The best site is almost a toss up between Buy Costumes and Costume Discounters, but we think Costume Discounters has a bit of an edge! Rating: 5 Stars

As a general rule of thumb, we primarily search and shop from our top three sites when we’re looking to buy Halloween costumes. Occasionally we’ll find one or two unique costumes at Amazon, but since the majority of them are carried by third-party retailers, costumes at Amazon seem to be more expensive a lot of the time. They do have a decent selection of licensed goods (like official character wigs, etc) and carry the same products as The Disney Store, but we prefer them for our books, DVDs, and electronics.

As I write this, it’s the middle of July and we’re seeing all our favorite retailers preparing for you to buy Halloween stuff in 2010. MANY ARE OFFERING BIG SALES if you buy now. Buy Halloween costumes now (or in August) to get the best sizes and prices available!

Welcome to the future home of Buy Halloween.net. We look forward to bringing you information on where to buy Halloween costumes, Halloween supplies, and tips on Halloween decorating.