2024

First blood was at 5:02pm this year, kicking off 4.5 hours of distributing candy to 1,166 trick-or-treaters. It was a briskly cold evening, and at various points the accuracy of our data collection was compromised by the presence of jackets or shivering children and their escorts running full bore to and from the candy bowl.

Our team of six data analysts made our triumphant return to tracking candy containers for the first time since 2019. Pumpkins, be they hard-sided buckets or soft bags, remain a perennial favorite among children. The canvas tote has edged past the pillowcase within the bag category, but plastic shopping bags continue to enjoy popularity due to their accessibility. 

We welcomed a new experimental category this year, using the CDC’s height chart to determine that 3.5’ is the median height for 5-year-old boys, as well as the height of the ruler we were able to jam into the dirt by the front door. Using height as a proxy for age (as it’s gauche to ask a guest how old they are), we estimate 17% of this year’s trick-or-treaters were under five.

Virtually all of the yellow costumes we saw this year were Minions. Color data otherwise remained stable from years past, with black continuing to shroud the lion’s share of trick-or-treaters. Modern costumes (post-1900s) continued to beat out retro ones (pre-1900s) at about a 2:1 ratio. Our researchers are aware that our decision to categorize Star Wars as retro due to its “long, long time ago” setting remains one of our most controversial practices.

Technological advances in costuming have led to a noticeable increase in inflatable costumes. Past years have exclusively featured the tyrannosaurus rex (with and without rider) and alien abductions, but this year we saw nearly twenty different puffy designs, ranging from a capybara to a unicorn skeleton to Teletubby Dipsy.

Science fiction’s share over fantasy continues to dwindle, as does the presence of Disney properties including Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, previously the top priority for youth costumes. While Elsa remains well-represented, most Marvel costumes were from the Spiderverse, with only a handful of Captains America and a single Killmonger to share the load. Marvel Phase 5 and 6 fatigue has now clearly set in and DC is rising in the ranks. We sincerely regret our oversight in not predicting this given the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, and plan on tracking the DC properties as well as the Disney empire in future years.

Prompted by a large number of Chuckys over the course of the evening, our group extensively discussed costumes centered around intellectual property that the costume-wearer is unlikely to have seen. We recognize Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers are considered to be "classic" scary costumes separate from their hard R movies, but were surprised to see that Ghostface and Chucky seem to have also entered that hallowed hall.

We recognize that an apology is a down payment on making things right, and last year we apologized to parents and caregivers for singing "Baby Shark" in response to shark costumes, only to engage in the same behavior again this year. At this juncture, we anticipate continuing to do this on an ongoing basis, so going forward we will no longer be apologizing, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. In fact, we went so far as to customize the lyrics as "cozy shark" to acknowledge how warm these onesie costumes looked. We also sang the Spongebob Squarepants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themes when candy seekers in those costumes stopped by, so the problem will only get worse.

Lastly, as data analysts, we are advised to avoid building relationships with the subjects of our research. However, sometimes a data point is such an outlier in our eyes we cannot help but praise their ingenuity within the data set. While the family of four cranking Double Platinum while striding through the neighborhood in full KISS makeup and attire made us suspect they would rock and roll (our rankings) all night, the clear analyst favorite this year came in the form of a homemade costume: a vending machine, complete with interior illumination of its tasty snacks. It is possible we should leave the lab more often.

We continue to post our findings first in the Alameda Post!

2022

Halloween 2022 marked our triumphant return to data collection after several pandemic-induced years off. Our location changed and, let me tell you, we were NOT prepared for the wildness that is Grand Street on Halloween. This year boasted our largest team of data scientists yet: four clipboard-ready adults and a candy-wrangler. We had first blood at 5:21pm, earlier than we ever saw at our previous location. If this is what Monday looks like in our new neighborhood, we live in fear of the next time Halloween falls on a Saturday.

We smashed our previous all-night records within hours and had to rely on an emergency infusion of candy from our generous neighbors to keep going (thank you!), still withdrawing into the house at 8:41pm while families roamed the neighborhood.

Color data remained relatively stable from years past, with black continuing to dominate the community couture. Most trick-or-treaters were unmasked, but we still saw some COVID protections, some of which were well-integrated into the overall lewk. This year saw a distinct rise in candy bags with a skeletal hand attached at the top, though traditional bags and pumpkin buckets continued to dominate.

We last tracked retro vs. modern costumes in 2018 and percentages there remain stable, though we did see a drop in fantasy costumes as compared to science fiction ones since last looking at those numbers in 2016. Anecdotally, MacKenzie believes this is due to a rise in Spidermen and Spidergwens. One of our data scientists, Laura, owns an inflatable t-rex costume, so we also chose to track dinosaurs roaming the street. There were several. Stay safe out there, that's all we're saying.

Happy Halloween!

Update: Following the posting of this report in the Alameda Peeps Facebook group, the Alameda Post reached out to us to publish our findings!

2018

MacKenzie was teaching on Halloween this year, so many thanks to the team for collecting data in her absence.

There were 170 logged trick-or-treaters and 178 logged candy receptacles. Our data collectors indicated wild rushes of children that interfered with fully accurate data collection. Hopefully, next year's return to 3+ data collectors will support even better data collection.

Like in 2017, we looked at how the trick-or-treater collected their candy, as well as whether the costume could best be classified as "retro" (operational definition of pre-1900) or "modern" (operational definition of post-1900).

2016

The weather gets in the way! Last year, Jon and MacKenzie hosted 261 trick-or-treaters. This year, it was a paltry 167 due to pouring rain. Here's a breakdown of whether the costumes were best classified as science fiction or fantasy.

The hardest costumes to classify were children dressed as food. MacKenzie thinks a hot dog or cookie the size of a five-year-old is a fantasy, whereas Jon rightly pointed out that it could well be the result of futuristic genetic modification, so we placed those five kids with science fiction.