Why Aren’t There MLB Halloween Costumes?

The other day I was in Toys R Us getting a birthday present for one of my son’s friends. On our way to find a toy, we walked through the Halloween aisle. 

If you wanted a costume, it was available. Woody and Buzz from Toy Story. All of the Ninja Turtles were available. Star Wars characters old and new:

  
Then there were the superheroes. All of the Justice League and the Avengers were available. Most notably, there is a Thor costume. No, not the real one:

That’s right. No Noah Syndergaard costume.  Also, no MLB costumes of any kind whatsoever. This seems like a missed opportunity. 

Now, I realize MLB can’t necessarily do player costumes. If this was the 50’s you could, but not in today’s game. With the frequency in which players are traded, you would have to continuously change costumes year to year. At some point, it becomes cost ineffective. 

That leaves you with a few options. First is the generic player jersey. Yes, I’m aware there are kid’s uniform sets, but have you seen them? 

  
They’re terrible. They look nothing like the player jerseys. The other issue is they’re hard to find. Another problem is these are only made for five year olds.  That eliminates a wide range of children. MLB has to do better than this. 

Since MLB can’t do player jerseys and can’t do whatever the above is supposed to be, there are a few options. 

The first would be to do an all time player for each franchise. Since these are young kids, you want it to be a player of as recent vintage as possible or a player everyone knows no matter how old they are. Here are some suggestions:

The benefit of these is you can use them in perpetuity. The downside is these players are more iconic for the parents. That may entice the parent of a toddler to buy it, but an older child has no real attachment to these players. That coupled with the inherent issues with the current players means you need to go with something more basic. 

There are two solutions to this, and they both should work well. 

The first is to create mascot costumes. If you think about it, the mascot was created to entertain young fans. Generally speaking, it works as kids love team mascots:

   

There will be many little Mets fans who would love to be Mr. Met for Halloween. Same goes for the other popular mascots across baseball. 

For teams without a mascot, baseball could go with standard face like the one on the bobbleheads. In fact, if baseball wanted, they could make them all “Bobblehead Costumes.” 

For those that say, they may not sell, give it time. The same exact costume my son wore last year was still for sale a year later. And guess what?  It wasn’t the only one. 

With that, you help foster a child’s interest in baseball. For the child a little less interested in baseball, perhaps they get more interested due to the Halloween costumes. Kids get interested in things for far less. 

Not having MLB Halloween costumes overall seems like a lost opportunity. It doesn’t give the fan a chance to be a player, a mascot, or a bobblehead for Halloween if they so choose. It also allows the kid to move on from baseball a little more after the baseball season is over. 

That’s not a good thing.  Accordingly, MLB needs to create Halloween costumes. 

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