Lippman Co 2023

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Lippman is a local Portland party store that hasn't really gotten a review of its own in years, but in 2023, it's stocking a handful of delightful oddities worth featuring...and one of the coolest things I've ever encountered! I keep saying that this year, too, don't I?! I'm doing fewer articles, but also finding greater things than usual!



ADORABLE RATS

These have been at Lippman every year, but I forget if I ever showed them to you. I hope they were worth the wait. They're fake rats much hairier and fuzzier than actual rats. Look at their little faces! Could anything be better than their little faces!? YES!



Look at their little hands!!! They have such long weird pink fingers! Being made with wire, they're also technically fully poseable!



Angel Skeleton

I was sure we saw some angel skeletons at Lippman once before, but I can't remember if they had these lacey plastic bone wings, and I can find no evidence I showed them before!



Bat Wing Skeleton

These other bone guys on the other hand have bat wings, but they're not an "official" counterpart to the angels; as you can see they're a different make of human skeleton, different kind of plastic, and the bat wings are a single piece of grimy looking brown fabric, really very cool looking with a nice hand-made quality to them.



Hanging Wizards

These are those dangly characters with bendy arms, but I've never seen any that were just wizards! We don't really treat wizards as a Halloween "monster" like we do witches. Maybe that's because witches are actually cool and rad while wizards are mostly hilarious.



Pumpkin Skeleton

This is the second or third pumpkin headed plastic skeleton I think I've seen, the most striking of which were Home Depot's "Rotten Patch" skeletons in 2021. This is pretty nice though! A skeleton's upper torso and arms posed like they're rising up out of the dirt, painted green so you know these are PLANT bones of course, and with a gnarly jack o' lantern head!



Succulent Doll Heads

Baby doll heads, but as little planters with fake succulents in them! It's funny just how sad and miserable they look. But why!? Babies love succulents! Don't they? Isn't that what they eat???

Well whatever!!! Now I can show you THE THING I was building up to!



HANGING SKULL MOTH

I've seen more moth items year after year lately, but this is the first time I've seen a spooky moth prop item, other than this year's Crazy Bonez skeleton moth, which is technically a prop item - ie it's meant to look like an actual creature of some kind - but hopefully you know what I mean? Skeletons are kind of their own thing, and not always necessarily supposed to come across as "alive." THIS is a representation of a whole living Lepidopteran made from styrofoam, fur, feathers and cloth, and it is gorgeous! It has a wingspan over a foot and a half, with a fairly realistic abdomen, thorax, and a three dimensionally sculpted death's head mark! The wings are supported by internal wire, so they can also be posed a little.


What's also interesting about this thing is that it doesn't have an insect face anywhere, and its hanging cord is positioned so that its skull looks down, which is all to say that the skull is the actual head and face! I've only seen this done a couple other times in the Halloween moth invasion, but it feels like an obvious stylistic choice, and elevates the design instantly from just an inaccurate insect to a full blown seasonal monster! If you're a fan of these articles, you already know what the means I'm gonna have to do next.



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