“We’ve got fresh stuff every year,” he said. “A lot of people come to us because animatronics aren’t simple things to make. It’s a lot of specialty work.”
Halloween decorations are on display at Home Depot in Eden Prairie, Minn., on Wednesday. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“They know what factories our animatronics come from,” he said, “and if I have a video with a product we haven’t launched in the background, they’ll notice and ask when it is coming.”
Fallenstein’s website has more than100 life-size animatronics, and though that doesn’t include a certain 12-foot skeleton, there is an eight-foot version that has similar features. Or shoppers can opt for the colossal 25-foot inflatable Beetlejuice.
But if people are just now buying their terrifying clowns, creepy witches and unsettling antique dolls they’re behind, Fallenstein said. Buying from his site typically begins as early as July and August and peaks around early October for decorations. The rest of the month until Oct. 31, most shoppers are just buying costumes, he said.
Gray said she enjoys the commotion in her yard before the big holiday. Recently, two five-year-olds were worried her decorative web might catch real butterflies and asked her how she deterred the web from catching real insects.
“That’s the exciting part,” Gray said of only fielding a handful of trick-or-treaters on the actual day, “is even though I don’t see kids on Halloween, I get to see their reactions to my decorations before the holiday.”