Four Awesome Halloween Decorations

Halloween is my second-favorite holiday, only losing out to Christmas. Both were truly magical times of the year for me when I was a child. Now they aren't quite as awe-inspiring, but they are still great changes in atmosphere and an excuse for spooky things/presents.

One of my favorite aspects of Halloween was decorating. It was always great seeing the house transform into a gallery of rubber spiders and fiberglass pumpkins.

Here are four Halloween decorations that were among the most beloved of my childhood.

The Jointed Skeleton: Simultaneously super cheap and super noticeable, the jointed skeleton is a great way to decorate your wall on a budget. They're like what you'd get if you crossed an action figure with a poster. I always loved the decorations that could be played with and not just looked at.

My family has several jointed skeletons in the Halloween storage box, including one that looks pretty much the same as the one above and another one that's plastic and glows in the dark, but the jointed skeleton that has the most fond memories, and the one we've had the longest, is a truly unique and interesting one. At five feet high, he's easily the largest. His bones are tinted green, and he has a cartoony look to him. Most notably, his body is crawling with insects, rodents, tiny ghosts, and a few other critters, running the gamut from realistic to silly-looking. He's a rare breed, and although this decoration is made of paper and probably as old as I am, he's still kicking, albeit a little bent.

The Plastic Light-Up Pumpkin: This is my absolute favorite Halloween decoration. Every year, the green jointed skeleton and the light-up pumpkin, those were my Halloween bros. In my elementary school days, the pumpkin replaced my traditional night-light for October, and I loved it. It was things like this that ensured the holiday was special.

In recent years, my pumpkin has sadly not been treated right. A mishap while we were moving in 2006 caused him to get a nasty dent, and it has yet to be repaired. We could always buy another because they are miraculously still making these after twenty years, but it wouldn't be the same.

The Pumpkin Tower: While the skeleton and pumpkin were present from my earliest Halloween memories, I recall this pumpkin tower coming a bit later, around fourth grade. Essentially the light-up pumpkin's darker and edgier brother, the pumpkin tower features six jack-o-lanterns in a great variety of expressions. Cheerful, goofy, sinister, and even a sarcastic-looking pumpkin are all represented, and there's an even ratio of nosed to noseless faces. As a kid, I always carved my pumpkins to look like the fourth one up - angry, toothy, and a little bit scary.

The Halloween McNuggets: And here's the unconventional entry! This old McDonald's promotion gave my family some neat decorations to go with my Happy Meal. We had the Frankenstein, the pumpkin, the vampire, and the witch, plus a fifth one not pictured here - a punk-rocker-type with neon green hair and a leather jacket. Like Mr. Potato Head, there was a lot of potential for mix-and-match costumes, so you'd get the sinister Dracula nugget wearing the witch robe and pumpkin hat. Despite the potential for lost pieces, the set stayed intact for a shockingly long time, and even now I'm pretty sure we still have most of the parts.