Companies keep taking advantage of Halloween consumerism by producing low quality costumes at ridiculous prices and they need to knock it off before a competitor like Amazon runs them to the ground the same way it did Toys R Us.

If you head over to a store that actually does sell Halloween costumes, like Party City, you can buy a costume for $30 to 40 that looks great in the picture but once you pull it out you’ll realize the fabric is thin and the costume is held closed by some cheap velcro closures.

Maybe if you’re willing to spend $50 – 60 on a costume you’ll get a slightly better costume, though the fabric will still be lower quality and you’ll need to spend $20 – 30 more to get the wig and whatever other accessories are pictured but not included with the costume.

All this radical pricing occurs because Halloween happens once a year and people may not have many choices when it comes to getting costumes for their holiday events.

Some people might decide to just make their own costumes from scratch since they can ensure their costume will be made from better materials that way.

However, not everyone has the time or the skills to put into making a costume they might only use once and store away until next year or just get rid of altogether.

For people who can’t make their own costume they can go to online sites like Etsy and pay someone else to craft them a higher quality costume tailored just for them.

Honestly, at this point the only benefit of buying costumes in store is that some may allow you to go try them on before you make a purchase.

There are definitely cheaper, more affordable, options online especially with marketplaces like Amazon existing.

And with services like Prime, online marketplaces can be even more convenient than buying in stores because they’ll deliver your costume straight to your door.

Or if someone is willing to pay more for higher quality they can get something even better than what most stores have available from a costume maker on sites like Etsy.

So if stores want to keep the Halloween sales going they need to take a step back and decide whether to give better prices for the costumes they provide or increase the quality so that customers don’t feel like they’re being robbed.

Halloween may only be once a year but that’s not an excuse to up the prices on cheap materials, stores need to either increased the quality of the costumes to match their prices or lower the price.