What is the Spirit Halloween Costume meme, and what has Spirit Halloween said about it?

Spirit Halloween is one of the biggest Halloween brands in America. It is also one of the country’s most enduring Halloween memes, with its name being used in all sorts of jokes and viral posts whenever October comes around.

However, Spirit is currently at the center of another meme. And it’s one that Spirit has actually commented on. 

What is the Spirit Halloween Costume meme?

The Spirit Halloween Costume meme is pretty simple. People have been using Photoshop to create fake costumes using Spirit’s famous logo and label style. In many ways, this is an evolution of another popular Halloween meme, where people post pictures of unofficial costumes based on popular franchises, usually to mock the fake non-copyright infringing name the outfit has been given to avoid legal issues. But this year, people are designing the costumes rather than finding them in the wild.

The most viral examples of the meme include costumes riffing on popular characters, like Gerri from Succession.

There are also popular posts poking fun at famous Youtubers and their current issues.

Costumes dragging some famously terrible outfit choices made by some of today’s most iconic musicians.

And some users made costumes to mock their professions and the stereotypes associated with them.

And some really surreal entries that show the internet’s collective consciousness can be weird sometimes. 

Even some celebrities got involved in the meme, posting images of costumes based on them, with musician Diplo and singer-songwriter Kim Petras opting to poke fun at themselves.

Why is this meme controversial, and what has Spirit Halloween said?

However, this meme has sparked several controversies as many people have been fooled by these fake costumes, leading to some people complaining to Spirit about them.

Most notably, Rosie Carnahan-Darby, the wife of the actor Rhys Darby was taken in by a version of the meme that featured an image of Rhys Darby from Our Flag Means Death titled “Gay Loser”.

Rosie asked for more information so she could inform Darby’s team about the costume. After being told it was fake by internet users, she added: “I had unfortunately already alerted Rhys’ team so the Halloween spirit people might get a call. Let’s hope he doesn’t see it, it is mean spirited. (pun intended)”

Spirit Halloween themselves have been responding to several posts on social media, mostly informing customers who tagged them that the costume isn’t an official Spirit Halloween product. One of the most common costumes sent to the company is a “Gay Guy” costume.

Spirit responded to Tweets about this costume by saying: “This is not an officially licensed costume from our company. Photoshopping our packages seems to be trending at the moment. We will be passing this to our review team. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.” 

Though it seems even they decided to join in the fun by posting a Spirit Halloween costume with the caption: “is this too meta?” Eagle-eyed social media users might wonder if this meme is trying to get users to attach the #SpiritHallowmeme hashtag to their fake costumes. Something that would likely reduce the number of false complaints Spirit’s social media manager will have to deal with.