Mrs. S. here: I’m trying to conceptualize some sort of chute or track or roller coaster contraption for distributing Halloween candy from 6’/2m away from the door, to make at least one magical night of this wretched year special for the wee kiddies. My brain swirl is to make something to whoosh multiple fun size candies to kids where they would put their bag at the bottom and it would be gravity fed and visually interesting, while keeping everyone at a proper distance. Maybe it has a crank and gears?
I would like your creative help to propel me into something I could design & prototype. I really don’t know where I’m heading from a design standpoint, I just know my goal is to add JOY to this dismal tire fire of a year. Willing to share whatever I/we cobble together.
A haunted train car with magnetic tracks and a magnet on the car to keep it in place when it makes a hairpin turn releasing the pencil sharpened candycanes? Or something like that?
I am not sure that distribution of candy is the safest thing this year, as anyone could be an asymptotic carrier. So maybe project something on white bedsheets, and make a drive by Halloween village?
What about a simple chute? I bet the little kids would like watching their candy slide down into the bag. You could dress up your arm all ghoulish to make it more scary and make a medical glove part of the costume. That might reassure some of the parents.
Perhaps a clothesline apparatus or a rope and pulley mechanism. You could prepare individual treat bags that are delivered after being pinned to the clothesline.
Thank you all so much! Just the sort of genius input I needed. My current thinking is acrylic ghost sleds and some sort of 2m teeter totter chute. I’ll cogitate (obsess) and update you as I get a working prototype.
How about a modified version of a flying crank ghost.
With some practice you could switch the motor on and off so that it only ran between 3 points. Stop it when it was between 2 of the pulleys for the kids to remove the candy from a hanging bucket thats being held by the ghost.
Manual control lets you can make sure of its speed and that the candy has been taken and kids are out of the way before it returns .
The only thing that may be a problem is the effect of the weight of the candy to pull the ghost off of the pulley.
One alternative would be for the whole setup to be only between 2 points and the ghost/candy stops at the end of the run and is then pulled back to your house/garage; kind of like a dog using a dog run.
Make the ghost disappear into a window or garage for refills. Cover the opening with a black curtain that has been cut up to allow easy pass through.
2nd idea would be to modify or create one of those t-shirt cannons used at sporting events to launch your candy packs into the air and make them chase the candy down.
Thematically the whole six feet thing makes sense, as the six feet under came from a previous pandemic. We generally do interpretive themes with no iconography. Here are two different years to give you some context. I like to do a new installation each year.
They actually make a fluorescent “ball” that was not intended to look like coronavirus (last halloween who knew) that was selling for 80% off last November.
