MBAs ruin Halloween

We live less than a block from a huge mall, and this huge mall was having a trick or treating event yesterday for the little ones. Experts may well yet prove that a critical developmental experience for 0-year olds is being dressed as a chicken and paraded about. So who are we to go against the grain? We get our little chicken and head to the wonderland of commerce.

There are a thousand little monsters and superheroes and barbie princess peacock fairies. Incidental to the story, I am the tallest and palest person there. Immediately as we go in, we see See's Candy! This should be great. They are giving out...some random Hershey's crap they bought at Costco. Oh.. kay.., well moving on.

The Disney store is giving out a Disney DVD or video game or something. Well, they may be insidious, but at least they get the fucking point here. The point is to do a giveaway that will end up being very low cost but bring in business throughout the year because of the goodwill. Disney is almost alone in this brilliant breakthrough concept. Everyone else apparently thought, "What is the cheapest way I can get away with technically saying that I participated?" Most of the stores are out of candy half-way through. Even very kid-centric stores like Gymboree and Build-a-Bear Workshop are effectively giving us the finger with their pennywise lameness.

Godiva is not even pretending to be involved. They seem to be holding their elitist breath and hiding until the population-wide urge to gorge on candy passes. The coup-de-grace though is when the candy store is out of candy. I mean, technically, it's full of candy actually. But the 20 individually wrapped M&Ms they bought from Smart and Final are all gone, so they join in singing us the fuckoff chorus. This makes me pretty mad, and I start to tell them about it, but the girl laughs me off...anyway I realize she just works there and does what she's told - no reason to chew her out beyond hoping she'll pass the message up.

A truly minimal investment could have made thousands of customers think fondly of these stores, but by raising and then dashing hopes, they end up alienating a huge chunk of the population. Maybe childless people will shop at the Lego Store and The Children's Place and Gap Kids. That must be their secret plan.

In the absence of treat, there is only trick. But what do you do, TP the mall? Throw eggs at it?

Anyway, took the chicken and his trusty chicken dog around the neighborhood and met some nice neighbors we didn't know before. Then, as he would actually choke to death on most of the candy we collected, as good parents we had to eat all his candy. Next year my little chicken, next year.