In September 2020, songwriter Nick Lutsko wrote a catchy little jingle called "Theme for Spirit Halloween," a sort-of love letter to Spirit Halloween stores. Here's how he describes what happened next:
This is the Spark Notes version. And the whole, I guess, kind of joke about that song was it's a theme for Spirit Halloween, but really it was more just a ploy for them to pay me for writing. The song was about my payment for the theme.
So, they reach out and they actually did pay me some money and they were really cool about it. And then they got in touch, said they wanted to do another one. So then after the unsolicited first entry, I did a sequel that they paid for. I guess technically they own it. And then they reached out early this year and made it pretty clear they wanted to do something again this year and they wanted to up the stakes. I think the language they used was, "How do we top last year?"
Now the Spirit Halloween Theme Trilogy is complete, and you can watch the entire epic saga of Nick Lutsko trying to get Spirit Halloween to give him money, and then find a way to top it in the video above. Warning: it's delightful.
Lutsko also put out a 5-song Halloween-themed comedy music EP.