No clowning around — clown masks are flying off the shelves, as a rash of “creepy” clown sightings and incidents continue to make headlines across the nation.
A spokesman for costume retailer Halloween Express told TheWrap on Tuesday that its online clown mask sales have risen approximately 300 percent over last year, with “evil” or “scary” clown masks gaining traction over last year.
This Halloween season, Brad Butler of Halloween Express told TheWrap, “evil” or “scary” clown maskes account for eight of the top 10 clown masks being sold, as compared to last season, when they accounted for five of the top 10 clown masks sold.
Butler didn’t go so far as to attribute the rise in sales in the recent epidemic of creepy clown sightings.
“As to why we’re selling more clown masks this year than last, I could speculate but frankly my opinion doesn’t matter,” Butler said. “Truth is, I don’t know.”
Overall, online sales for the retailer are up nearly double from last year, an overall boost that would at least partially account for the rise in clown masks. And as Butler notes, such masks are a perennial Halloween favorite.
“The reality however is that scary clown masks have always been a popular Halloween mask,” Butler noted. “As a retailer we try not to over-analyze why an item is selling better from one year to the next. Consumers can be fickle in that regard.”
The public has been inundated with media reports of “creepy” clown sightings and incidents involving people dressed as creepy clowns in recent weeks, though some reports have turned out to be hoaxes. As recently as Monday, a handful of clown-related incidents were reported, including an incident in North Carolina in which a hatchet-wielding man in clown makeup was arrested for trespassing on a store’s property.