A true mark of the Halloween season happens when Walmart puts out their costume displays. Ranging from princesses to various fruits, the options for a costume seem endless. As a kid, the mass of costumes represents an endless sea of possibilities, while teens tend to grab the first costume and go.

Teens remember the days of browsing the Party City website for hours on end, looking for the perfect costume. They’d settle on an animal or a character from their favorite movie, excited to ask what their friends picked and show it off at school. Trick or treating started at sunset and the infamous king sized candy bar brought unparalleled amounts of joy. 

As time went on, the costume picking seemed to narrow down into two categories: the last minute shoppers and group costume planner. The first group, last minute shoppers, find themselves the night before Halloween wracking the shelves of Walmart with varying levels of panic, just hoping for something in their size. Some search vigilantly for the costume they planned on, disappointed when they don’t have the Cinderella costume of their dreams, while others grab the closest thing and call it a day. The group costume planners, on the other hand, take inspiration from Pinterest or Instagram to prepare for the big day. Group costumes range anywhere from DIY M&M shirts to elaborately dressed devil angel duos, both with varying numbers of people and amounts of effort. 

If there’s one thing that remains the same every Halloween, it’s the need for a good costume. Whether seven or seventeen, costume picking stays on the forefront of the mind during the Halloween season- second only to the mounds of candy offered to anyone who holds up a plastic pumpkin or random pillow case at houses across the city on the night of Oct. 31.