The Obscure Halloween Costume

This year my family dressed up as characters from a somewhat obscure TV series called Gravity Falls. It was on for three seasons almost a decade ago, but it has earned itself a bit of a cult following and new comic and chapter books based on the series are still released pretty regularly. When I was in Colombia I found a TON of Gravity Falls translated into Spanish!

Not many people recognized us, even though our costumes were pretty spot on.

VS

At one house they got really excited, and even asked us up for pictures, but otherwise, our costumes didn’t inspire reactions or recognition from anyone.

Last year we went as characters from Star Wars. Is there a more popular series than that? Everyone knew who we were and we saw TONS of other people, and families, dressed as Star Wars characters. We got lots of recognition for being Princess Leia, Chewbacca, Han Solo and Rey.

I was trying to determine last night, if I care about dressing as someone other people recognize. I loved making my daughter’s light-up sweater and that certainly got tons of compliments, and I thought my son was the cutest Dipper a kid could be.

Plus, it was pretty amazing when the one house went nuts, especially when they saw that my husband and I were dressed up as characters from the show too.

I know I have been super excited to recognize a character from an obscure book or movie that I love on Halloween night, and the people who are dressed as those less well-known characters seem thrilled to be recognized as well. That is definitely more fun than seeing the 100th Darth Vader of the day.

The reality is my favorite costumes are the random home-made ones that are puns or represent some super random artifact from the past. Last night someone was a perfect Clippy, the old support icon from the Microsoft Suite Apps of the early 90s.

Next year we are going as whatever we want and NOT coordinating a family-themed costume (thank goodness!). I wonder what I’ll be…