Stupid Manufacturers

[annuin]

Yesterday I went to the grocery store. They had their Halloween candy out already.


IT'S EARLY AUGUST.


I really hate how manufacturers and stores here put out holiday stuff so far in advance nowadays. It completely ruins my enjoyment by sheer overkill, by the time the holiday rolls around, I'm completely sick of all the decorations and peripheral marketing crap.

I don't want to see Halloween stuff in early August when it's close to 100F. Nor do I want to see Christmas crap before Halloween has actually come and gone, which will inevitably happen.

Comments

[passercul.livejournal.com]

...okay, I have a question. Is Halloween a mega-duper holiday or something over there, like, say, I think the only one we can relate to closely is Christmas? Not that that's any excuse for marketing merchandise, what, over two and a half months in advance (I don't think that happens so much over here; usually for Christmas and the Chinese New Year we get decor and merchandise maybe six weeks? in advance), I can't understand how they might not have noticed that people would be inevitably sick of the holiday by the time it finally does come around.

I ask because while Halloween is gaining popularity here with the increasing European and American population, we don't yet have to deal with maybe more than a week's worth of merchandise and marketing for the occasion.

[tanthe.livejournal.com]

In the US it's definitely one of the big holidays, but it's not as big as Christmas.

In Europe it's not, though apparently it is gaining some ground. It was more well known in the UK and Ireland, but not outside of there. It seems to mostly be a tradition that came over from (I believe) Ireland with the immigrants, and it expanded once over here.

Christmas is the biggest holiday here because it's the biggest commercial opportunity. The Christmas stuff will start hitting stores in September, mark my words. And the massive gift buying push will go crazy just after Thanksgiving (late November), with the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) usually being the biggest retail sales day of the year. The push to buy stuff for Christmas is completely perverse.

With Halloween candy is the biggest seller, and then you have costumes and decorations, but commercially you can't market it quite as much as Christmas. Halloween is often the favourite holiday amongst kids though, because it's a lot of fun... you get to dress up, the holiday is spooky, and you get candy. What's not to love.

Either way, the mass commercialisation of all the holidays is just nauseating. As soon as Christmas is over, you start seeing red and pink crap for Valentine's Day (along with ads on tv for guys to buy their women diamonds... most ads are geared at guys buying women stuff, never the other way around). Then after Valentine's day Easter is the big decoration/card holiday, unless St. Patrick's day falls earlier, but that's also not as widely marketable. Then it goes mostly quiet, but with some patriotic decorations for things like Memorial day (late May) and Independence Day early July is another one where fireworks etc. are sold.

The whole spirit of each holiday is raped by the money grubbing attitude of companies. And it's sad.

[passercul.livejournal.com]

Just a comment, one of the reasons V-day is probably more marketed as guys buying women stuff because diamonds are just way more expensive than... well, almost anything a woman would buy for a guy. It's interesting to note that the Japanese have the occasion marked by the ladies giving the guys chocolates, and the guys repaying the gesture a month later with gifts.

We don't have as much of a holiday craze locally, I think (well, it could be just me, since I'm detached from society on the whole, but I prefer not to think of it as such), I think there's only Christmas and the Lunar New Year as I said before, as the major ones, and maybe Valentine's will start being pushed 2-3 weeks in advance since that one is so profitable. We don't have anything sold for our National (independence) Day--which was just a couple days ago incidentally--unless you count national flags, but no one needs more than one of those, for those who can be bothered to hang one up. But we have lots of patriotic ads on TV and there'll be some banners lining the streets I suppose.

I think it might be better here because we're fairly multiracial and have two days a year for each major racial and religious group (Hari Raya for the muslims, Deepavali for the Indians, and so on), and people just might pay more attention to their traditional celebrations in their respective communities, and just make use of the marketed merchandise when necessary. Possibly it's a politic thing to not push any holiday overly hard either, since it might be construed by some as unfair (ignorantly) if their racial holiday isn't hawked as much. I think Christmas doesn't count because it's a big international holiday, and Chinese New Year gets some leeway as the majority population is Chinese.

Then again, it could be just me being unrealistically optimistic about the whole thing. :")