on August 28, 2017
Finding the right costume for Halloween is never easy, especially when retailers don’t always want to pay for official licensing. To get into the spirit (pun intended), here’s a roundup of the best bootleg and wholesale halloween costumes for 2017.
Although the latest costume trends tend towards what swimwear manufacturer China — this year it was mostly superhero movies and bizarre politics — we’ve tried to make sure this list has something for everyone.
Sure, there are some questionably named wholesale swimwear and some costumes which may have been intended as generically political but in fact edge into the nightmarish. However, 2017’s costume catalogues also provide ’90s throwbacks, poorly thought out tributes to late celebrities, shout outs to online horror memes, and whatever the hell “Teen Anime Fighter” is. It’s a rich tapestry woven from the purest WTF, as well as a middle finger to copyright lawyers everywhere.
To make it onto this list, all costumes had to be easily recognizable, with no explanation needed as to what the official character or franchise was. They also had to pass a basic offensiveness test, so nothing labeled as “Sexy [Insert Cultural Stereotype Here]” was getting within a thousand miles of this list. Luckily, these criteria still left a lot to work with, which you’ll see below.
There are loads ofwholesale halloween costumes this year. Out of this multitude, the Purple Pain Pop Costume has risen to the top by virtue not only of its bad pun, but of the hopefully inadvertent awful taste contained therein. Tip: don’t put the word “pain” in a costume based on someone who died from a painkiller overdose.
Relive your youth with this outfit from the hit movie Notionless, with its classic catchphrases like “Whenever” and “As but!” This company also sells a Prince hairpiece called the “Formerly Wig,” which kind of sums up their approach to the whole licensing thing.
Another twofer, this time featuring wholesale swimwear, a.k.a. Sexy Dead Assassin. I’m actually digging the name “Ms. Rebellious,” which sounds like the stage name of a very prim female rapper. Sexy Dead Assassin just sounds gross, though. Was she sexy in life, and then she died? Is she sexy because she died? Either way, nasty.
As you can see, there’s a lot of scope for costume shopping this year, whether you’re sexy and dead, trying to bypass HBO’s licensing division by dressing in something their characters have never worn, or fishing wedgies out of your crack in the name of patriotism. Remember, nothing screams “Halloween” like a near-total indifference to copyright.
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