Video-Game-Themed Jack-O-Lanterns 2017

[Nz17]

Seen any good video-game-themed jack-o-lanterns this year?

[Niku-Sama]

I didn't hardly see any sort of carved pumpkins this year. is this something I just missed or did any one else have something similar around them?

[WulfeLuer]

I don't know if something's going on this year. I saw very little decorations, but I have a LOT of road construction around where I live so I wasn't too surprised. But I can also state that the place I work for makes a big deal of selling holiday decorations, and usually does well enough that we get stuck with other store's unsold Halloween stock and it's still all gone the week before, but this year we had wads of stuff left, even with huge discounts, so maybe nobody felt like it this year.

[Aussie2B]

I saw one single carved pumpkin in my neighborhood (not game-themed, obviously). A fair number of smallish uncarved pumpkins though. But Halloween in the city has never been like in the suburbs for me. Trick or treaters don't even go to the residences around here, and definitely not after dark. They just go to the businesses in the middle of the afternoon.

[Nz17]

Here in Utah, trick-or-treat has been "ruined" by Trunk-or-Treat and the Mayor's Walk.

On or before Halloween, the Mormons (the majority of people around here) gather their children in their wards (church buildings) or their wards' parking lots and tell the kids to go from stand to stand or car to car and collect their candy, school supplies, and cheap toys. (Thus why it is called Trunk-or-Treat.) Within 30 minutes the kids have a pound or two of things and the family leaves. So after that, the parents won't take the kids trick-or-treating, "justifying" their stance by saying that the children already have a lot of candy and that trick-or-treating is too dangerous.

On Halloween, the Mayor's Walk sees the children dress in costumes and gather at the community rec centers or in some towns, the main street. The kids then parade around in costumes and get to participate in carnival-style games.

The children have fun, but to me all this goes against the spirit of Halloween and trick-or-treating. On a larger scale, it kills the trust-building exercise that is trick-or-treating and prevents seeing people's cool decorations. On the smaller scale, their approach is like shooting fish in a barrel by removing all the good-work-gets-good-rewards mentality.

Sometimes, I wish I lived in the Midwest during Halloween - I hear they really know how to celebrate the holiday around there!

[YoshiM]

I really didn't see much in carved pumpkins on my neck o' the woods in Wisconsin, either. The arts center my wife works at had carved pumpkins done by our children but of what few pumpkins I did see were painted.

I wonder why there wasn't as many carved pumpkins? No time? Fear of getting them smashed? Fast rotting?

To me it really didn't feel like Halloween this year.