The nice folks at iParty sent my family a gift card so we could have some fun Halloween shopping last weekend. The twins stayed home with my parents while my husband, Jake, and I went costume hunting. I normally already have the kids' Halloween costumes by the end of August, but this year I still had yet to buy Jake's.I usually buy my costumes online during the summer. I would know what costume the kids would like ahead of time and then I hunt it down for the best price. This method failed me this year. Jake was mostly sure that he wanted to be the Deluxe Bumblebee from the animated Transformers series. I was only able to find it online at a handful of places, but they were all priced at $40+. This must be a very sought after costume because iParty did not have it either. They did have the same version of Optimus Prime, if you happen to be looking for it though.
I had already warned Jake ahead of time that we might not find the costume that was his first choice. It didn't take long for my husband and Jake to find another costume they were both crazy about (the robot shown below), but unfortunately the manufacturer does not appear to make it in Jake's size. So it was back to the drawing board.
An hour and a half or so later, Jake ended up deciding on this Power Rangers Jungle Fury costume. Aren't the muscles cute? They better be because this costume costs $54.99. I'm not crazy. I know that sounds like a lot, but the reasons I agreed to this costume are . . .
- It is much nicer than the ones selling for $40.
- It comes with two masks (one red and one blue).
- The costume itself is reversible.
- My son can use this for pretend play over the next year or two.
- Jake's younger brother can also get some use out of it after he outgrows it.
We didn't spend the entire hour and a half shopping for Jake's costume. We did a lot of browsing around. Jake and my husband had tons of fun. I think the hat aisle was their favorite out of the entire store.
If we did not live in a townhouse community which has far too many restrictions on what type of outdoor decorations we can use, I would have gone a little crazy picking out decorations. This is what we ultimately ended up with other than the Power Rangers costume . . .
- Two candy buckets for the twins @ $2.99 each
- Double-Sided Carved Pumpkin Cutouts (4pk) @ $3.49
- A clown nose for our daughter @ $0.99
- A pirate hat @ $3.99
- A train engineer hat @ $2.99
Not including the costume, we spent about $17, which I think is great. Everything we bought (aside from the decorations) can be used daily for pretend play by the kids.
Please take a few minutes to watch the following video, which I put together to show my readers what we did and what we saw at iParty . . .
I'm sure that iParty will still be adding to their Halloween selection over the next few weeks. What I would have liked to have seen more of would be matching candy buckets for some of the licensed costumes and some more accessories that go with them as well. We did not pick up a prop for Jake even though there were one or two Power Rangers guns. The reason is that we usually take the kids to go trick-or-treating at a mall in a neighboring town. For security reasons, they do not allow toy guns of any kind during the event, no matter how unrealistic they look. I personally think that he could go without a prop (since my husband or I end up carrying it for him eventually anyways). Try explaining that to a 5yr old though. :)
