Thread: What do YOU want?

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Good luck in you prop business!
Here are some of my wishes.
1. Wall scene setters. The scene setters out there are so lame. I use them extensively but the ones available are soooo cheezy. I believe the wall paper scene setter has been discontinued. That was probably the best one. Inexpensive scene setters that are more believable would be great.
2. I am sorry but the Gemmy props are soooo bad. It seems to me that it would be easy and inexensive to make standing props that are more durable and less cheezy than the Gemmy ones. All you need is some simple head or arm movement and some sound. And motion activited, not sound activited. There ARE some good props out there but for way too much money!
3. Wiper motor kits would be great. I use wiper motors a lot. Simple monster in the box kits using a wiper motor would be great. Grave grabber kits with wiper motors. ETC........

There are sooo many ideas for selling Halloween stuff and do it better than many of the supplies out there.

Make sure you spend time on a good Web site. I have left many sites just because they didn't present their products very good at all. I want to know exactly what I am buying.

Good luck.

Hauntcrazy... I agree on the demos you suggest. Though even video can be put out that is misleading. I needed sound activated dancing lights for the kiddos dance floor in the garage for his halloween bday party. Going by the video demos at halloweeneffects I specifically chose one that in the demo video the spots shown as solid bars, where as all the other demos shown the lamp filament shapes in the spots. When I got it you guessed it... the lamp filaments where what you see. I did some mods to it but never got it to look like their misleading demo video, but I'm somewhat satisfied with it and there was no time to replace it before the party.

BTW they also shorted me 1 gallon of fog juice, so in contacting them I made my attempts for nothing so buyer beware.

Another vote for articulated hands. As Baron Samedi mentioned, they are a pain to make. A hand armature that is posable and durable would be a huge seller IMO. Some sort of sturdy wire wrapped or coated in some material so you could either cover it with some latex monster hands or corpse them on your own. I know I would purchase something like this.

Originally Posted by jdubbya

Another vote for articulated hands. As Baron Samedi mentioned, they are a pain to make. A hand armature that is posable and durable would be a huge seller IMO. Some sort of sturdy wire wrapped or coated in some material so you could either cover it with some latex monster hands or corpse them on your own. I know I would purchase something like this.

I intend to cast my own and others. I plan to make a simple wire armature that I will insert into the mold as it's cast. Granted you could bend it at any point but the intent is to make the bends at the normal joints. The structure I hope will be latex skin with flexible foam core surrounding the wire.

i have been selling my props for a while lol but even i need skulls cheap they are way to much everywhere

Originally Posted by sonicvomit

i have been selling my props for a while lol but even i need skulls cheap they are way to much everywhere

I'll let you know... planning on casting and reproducing them if all goes well with the process I will attempt.

Originally Posted by jdubbya

Another vote for articulated hands. As Baron Samedi mentioned, they are a pain to make. A hand armature that is posable and durable would be a huge seller IMO. Some sort of sturdy wire wrapped or coated in some material so you could either cover it with some latex monster hands or corpse them on your own. I know I would purchase something like this.

I'm sure that if you could do something as jdubbya suggested by providing a basic poseable framework and still leave scope for the haunter to add their own artistic enhancements, and if you could produce them cost effectively in sufficient quantities and sell them for a reasonable price then you would make a small fortune.
Personally, I would be up for ordering a boxfull while they were still warm.
(If you will ship internationally, of course)!

The fun part of all this is that I'm learning as I go, and building up stock for my own haunt.

The first test of making my first mold is almost done of a small tombstone. If that goes well, I will make a few for craft fairs and the like to become practised, then move onto skulls.
There seems to be adequate demand for skulls, so from there I'm going to try and build up a bit of $ for supplies to move into lifecasting.

I have a couple ideas for hands, how rigid should they be? I'm thinking aluminum digits. 1/4" wide X 1/16" thick. Flexible with force, but able to hold onto props, and not prone to corosion.

It's fantastic to have an excuse to work on Halloween projects in November

There has to be something in between cutesy/traditional decor and bloody/rotting decor. I do a bloodless haunt but want it to be scary, not cute. That's why I wind up making everything myself. I can pick up some creepy animals - rats, vultures, crows, snakes, scorpions, etc. - but if I want a premade moving prop, forget it. I wind up having to strip it apart and rebuild it to not be super cute or super gory. I'm dreading the redo of the Michaels trick-or-treat witch prop this year: mine has the hands installed backwards and the bag installed inside out

I can't be the only bloodless haunt on the block, so to speak. Bloody isn't the same as scary.

I like strange. Nightmarish, if you will. The themes I've done thus far: abandoned fairgrounds (the most traditional, but still a bit off: bright purple, orange, and green paint on booths, flyers, signs, and zomie attendants), living garden (pumpkin snakes, giant maneating plants, assorted animalistic plants), deep green sea (undersea haunt: giant squid, electric eel, threatening fish, and if they didn't collapse under a failed giant whale: mermaids, sharks, and fighting sailors), and Jabberwocky (based on the Lewis Carroll poem: various creatures of all different sizes, plants, and a gigantic jabberwocky). So I guess I'm suggesting different monsters not covered in blood. Things that make a ToTer and their family stop, stare, and ask "what's that?" Tradition has it's place, but that's rarely the case in my vision. Sure, I enjoy making my own props, but when I have massive failures the week of Halloween, I'm screwed. It'd be nice to supplement my own output with quality props not covered in blood.

Originally Posted by BallstonManor

This whole dialogue has gotten me thinking - know what this hobby needs, but I haven't seen anywhere? Skellie molds!

Imagine a kit - whether it's an entire skellie or just "groups" (arms, legs, skulls, ribs, etc)...just some reusable molds. Then the haunter could put the required casting medium in the molds, let the suckers cure, and pop 'em out. Assemble and voila! A skellie!

I like that idea! How about a latex foam kit to boot so you can foam your own skeleton parts! i'm in! I like the boogedy skelly but too expensive to be making several. If they would just bring the price to something where one could buy 6+ then it would have "mass appeal" but if i had the molds to do it myself!

ib