Pumpkins on Parade

I've mentioned my toaster addiction.  Another is Halloween.  One facet of that is my plastic pumpkin collection.  I've always loved the cheap plastic Trick or Treat pumpkins and lighted blow mold decorations.  I've been fairly successful finding these at garage sales, not to mention lucky as they command some decent money online.  A lot of the manufacturers like Empire Plastics and General Foam have gone out of business.

My love for Trick or Treat pumpkins goes back to this one:

This was my treat bucket when I was little. It was there for the humiliating year I dressed as a girl as a joke, and everyone thought I was a girl dressed up like a princess. It was there when I did my own makeup to be a werewolf and everyone thought I was a hobo. It was there when I wore my Ben Cooper Spider-man costume that looked *nothing* like Spider-man. It went with me on those long ago dark nights when I really believed ghosts and goblins roamed the land. Back when parents wouldn't let their children leave until 7:00 because "people are still eating." We ran into the night without worried parents watching over us, we ate our candy and homemade popcorn balls while we were still out, and we went into people's houses so the rest of the family could laugh at or act scared of our costumes. Those memories are why I celebrate Halloween so enthusiastically to this day.

I picked these up at garage sales this past summer:

Something's not right about this one:

My affinity for the light-up blow molds goes back to one owned by my grandparents.  It was their sole Halloween decoration.  This isn't the exact one, but it's the same model:

When I was little, I didn't realize that was a cat underneath the pumpkin and thought it was like a midget body with a giant pumpkin head.  Creepier that way.  I actually missed out on getting another of that one this past summer.  Someone picked it up as I pulled up at the sale.

I previously profiled this one.  Kind of a variant of the one on the cat:

Of course, this lead into the larger blow molds.  I picked all three of these up at the same sale a few summers ago.  The cat with jack o' lantern is huge.  About 2 1/2 feet tall.  It has human-like arms which makes it all the more disturbing:

These two little pop-up pumpkins are made by Fun World.  I had the cat one when I was little:

Notice the ghost has eye brows.  What, no tweezers in the afterlife?

I found this for a quarter this summer.  It looks like chalkware, but I don't think it's old.  I like the old world Halloween look it has (update: I later learned this actually does have some age and dates from the 1940's):

A handkerchief (or scarf).  We use it as a table scarf and set other Halloween decorations on it.

And finally, this.  I actually bought this at an antique mall.  By Beistle, cardboard and honeycombed paper: