Saturday Night Live apparently has a new enemy and it’s everyone’s favorite seasonal Halloween pop-up shop empire Spirit Halloween. After a recent skit joked about the company’s low-quality items and six-week stores, Spirit fired back online and called SNL an “irrelevant 50-year-old show.”
Last week, NBC’s long-running comedy series Saturday Night Live returned for its 50th season. During the milestone premiere, it aired a pre-recorded sketch about Spirit Halloween. The sketch joked about how the company takes over failed, abandoned stores to support communities… for just six weeks then it “bounces.” It also made fun of the store’s knock-off costumes and low-quality items.
Here’s the full sketch from Saturday in case you missed it:
I thought it was a pretty funny poke at Spirit Halloween, a store chain that I’ve already visited three times this Halloween season even though it’s barely October. But Spirit Halloween wasn’t laughing. On September 30, the official Spirit Halloween account on Twitter posted an image of an “SNL costume” containing some insults about the show.
“We are great at raising things back from the dead” posted Spirit while tagging SNL on Twitter and quote-tweeting the sketch. In the image, Spirit called SNL an “irrelevant” show and said it includes “dated references, unknown cast members, and shrinking ratings.”
It should be noted that it’s weird to call a show “irrelevant” when you are reacting to something it recently did. In that case, it seems very relevant, in fact. Also odd to call out its “dated references” when I can walk into a Spirit Halloween in 2024 and still find unsold costumes from Marvel and DC movies released a decade ago.
Maybe David S. Pumpkins, a previous SNL character played by Hanks who famously wore a skeleton-themed suit you can find at Spirit, will help broker peace between the two aging giants?
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