Among the Wednesday Addamses, Barbies and Yodas at a Spirit Halloween store in New York City this week, there it wasn’t: the “KPop Demon Hunters” official costume.
Characters from the breakout Netflix film are among the most coveted ensembles this Halloween season, but limited supplies have sent people scrambling to find the costumes. Online searches for Rumi, Zoey and Mira — who make up the movie’s fictional, demon-fighting K-pop group, Huntrix — have peaked again (months after it became Netflix’s most-watched film ever over the summer). On social media, people are sharing tips and tricks on how to make your own D.I.Y. outfit.
Alberto Morles, 32, a seasonal worker with Spirit Halloween for the last two years, said the costumes sold out at his shop in Manhattan “like hot bread.”
“When we opened, we had two shelves of it,” he said, but the costumes were quickly claimed. Even items that could conceivably be used to make a costume from scratch, like black wigs and purple hair spray, can be hard to keep in stock, he said.
Despite his status as a Spirit employee, Mr. Morles said that he was unable to procure a costume for one of his daughters.
The costumes, he said, are “more popular, I think, than when Jason and ‘Scream’ came out, to be honest.”
The characters from “KPop Demon Hunters” rank ninth among the most popular costumes for children, according to the National Retail Federation, coming in just ahead of vampires but behind Spider-Man and Batman.
The five most searched-for costumes this season are all from the movie, according to Google’s “Frightgeist,” which tracks Halloween search trends.
Netflix, which partnered with Spirit Halloween for the official licensed costumes, said in a statement that it “worked closely together to produce the costumes in record time and deliver as many units as possible in time for the Halloween season.” But the demand has been overwhelming, and the streaming service is encouraging fans who want to be, say, the Derpy tiger to craft their own costumes “with character-inspired apparel” from the Netflix store.
There is a reason for the scarcity, according to Netflix. The company said it “approached licensing partners and retailers 12-18 months ahead of the film’s release,” but interest was “soft.” That is in keeping with industry standards, Netflix said, as retailers tend to commit to products “with a built-in audience” rather than gamble on something new.
Still, the company said it was “exciting” to see the surging interest, adding that it was working to “bring products to market as quickly as possible.”
But with just days to go before Halloween, people were getting creative.
For Nancy Sy, 37, the hardest part of making her daughter’s Rumi costume was replicating the character’s bright purple braid.
She had never French braided her 4-year-old daughter’s hair before, but since she decided to create a D.I.Y. Rumi costume for her, tutorials on how to use purple extensions to craft the character’s signature look have overtaken Ms. Sy’s social media feeds.
Ms. Sy, who lives in Philadelphia, was hopeful that her daughter, Audrie, would want to dress up as another character from the film with simpler hair. It took weeks to perfect, but she managed to create a braid from the extensions that attach to Audrie’s ponytail.
“Dealing with the extensions was so, so hectic,” she said. “It was just hair everywhere on my floor.”
Most of Audrie’s costume is made up of items that were already in her closet, Ms. Sy said. She also looked in thrift stores and shopped online for inexpensive gold and black glitter, chains and fake jewels that she could sew onto her daughter’s clothes.
“We really wanted to support it, but we also didn’t want to spend a ton on the costume,” she said. “We repurposed a lot of things, and we just bought the trinkets to add onto it.”
In Mesa, Ariz., Rebecca Butler, 28, carefully crafted a Jinu outfit for her 4-year-old son Rusty.
The movie is often playing at their house, up to twice a day. “Our projector lens is burning out, assuming for related reasons,” she said. The film’s soundtrack is also in heavy rotation.
Ms. Butler said she never considered buying a costume because the movie is still fairly new and “doesn’t have a lot of official merchandise yet.”
“I’ve seen some bootleg stuff online, but it’s hard to judge the quality,” she said. “I prefer to support a creator over a cheap knockoff. I was afraid a costume would be really expensive.”
This year, for the first time, Ms. Butler made a costume for her son. She noted that she turned to the internet to help her complete the project, which came together in five hours. She used round leather place mats from Walmart to make Jinu’s instantly recognizable hat, she said.
The fever for “KPop Demon Hunters” costumes is global — even in places where Halloween is still growing in popularity. In Säkylä, Finland, Irita Mäkelä, 28, handmade a costume for her 7-year-old daughter Eevi.
Ms. Mäkelä said she considered purchasing a costume, but found that they were expensive and shipping was also an issue. So she got crafty instead, finding a secondhand yellow dress and buying boots and a black T-shirt for her daughter’s Mira costume. The duo will pair the outfit with spray-on hair color that washes out.
Back in New York, Mark Allayn was ready to put his Jinu demon costume to bed, having already worn it to Comic Con and a few Halloween-related events. Mr. Allayn, 29, is a cosplayer, and his experience putting together elaborate costumes made assembling this year’s outfit easier.
He said he pieced together his outfit using items he bought online and at boutiques in the city, noting that by doing so he managed to achieve “kind of a higher-quality look and more of a look that’s personalized towards what I was going for and leaning more into that Korean and Japanese streetwear grunge look.”
For anyone scrambling to pull together the perfect “KPop Demon Hunters” costume at the last minute, Mr. Allayn had some advice: Check local costume shops, check online retailers and, “if all else fails, go to an arts and craft store.”
“Use those scissors and use that sewing machine,” he said. “There’s always something that you could do and improvise last minute.”
Hannah Ziegler contributed reporting.
Aimee Ortiz covers breaking news and other topics.
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