Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9411150018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Short
Retailers and manufacturers say Halloween is bigger than ever before. Sales of Halloween candy - including about 10,000 tons of candy corn -have grown rapidly in the past year, and costumes, greeting cards, and especially home decorations are much in demand.
Halloween has become the biggest holiday for candy. Sales should exceed $784 million at the wholesale level, according to the National Confection Association.|
``If you are a candy maker, you live or die by Halloween,'' said Larry Schafer, editor of Progressive Grocer magazine.
After candy, costumes are - pardon the expression - the lifeblood of Halloween, and business is booming, with sales this year expected to exceed $300 million, helped along by the growing popularity of dressing up among teen-agers and adults.
``We didn't know how good it was going to be,'' said Scott D. Emmerman, national sales manager at Disguise Inc., a privately owned company in Queens County, N.Y. He said sales had doubled from last year, helped by the company's licenses to make costumes of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, this year's blockbuster, and characters from the movie ``The Lion King.'' Among this year's losers are dinosaurs: the cuddly Barney variety and the terrifying creatures of the movie ``Jurassic Park.''
The biggest change this year, several retailers said, is the enormous growth in in-home decorating for Halloween. Ghosts made of old sheets and hand-carved jack-o'-lanterns seem to be taking a back seat in many homes to goods bought in stores.
by CNB