Pokemon Trunk or Treat Decorations for Halloween

This halloween season, why not try a Pokemon Trunk or Treat (or driveway display!) to celebrate the spookiest night of the year? These ideas work great for a smaller area (like right behind the best trunk in the parking lot) or if you have a small space in front of your house to set up your Pokemon Gym on halloween night. And really, if you want, this also makes a great Pokemon birthday party backdrop if you want an update on the party ideas here.

While our family didn’t make it to a trunk or treat event (again) this year, we did all have a great time sitting out in front of our house handing out halloween candy. The inspiration was Pokemon Go in all honesty, not the game that needs booster packs and cards, and a little was taken from the Pokemon TV shows with the addition of our Ash character. Even though this was our driveway set up last year, for these pictures I did get an actual car in on the design. Behind all those balloons and characters there is a small SUV! If you don’t have an SUV, this idea could still work, you’ll just need shorter team banners.

The Pokemon Gym

Last halloween, I was in school full time getting another degree and working at an internship. This all meant that whatever Pokemon magic I managed to pull out, I had to do it in a manner that didn’t take much time. Yup. Everything was quickly slapped together in this trunk or treat trunk! There are a few Pokemon DIYs, but I promise the time commitment is minimal–I am more Amazon mom than Pinterest mom these days!

When you play Pokemon Go or any of the Pokemon video games, the critters always go battle it out in a gym. There wasn’t anything better to mark out the gym limits than with a small piece of astroturf I found at Home Depot. I painted on a Pokemon ball into the Pokemon center to make it official.

Team Banners. The Pokemon teams Valor, Instinct, and Mystic were represented by some red, yellow and blue banners. I used a few cheap table runners, some stitch witch to glue/iron them together and my Cricut to apply a temporary logo with some vinyl. In hindsight, I could have done without the logos because with us standing in front of the trunk and the balloons, you couldn’t see Pokemon logos at all. I used a few super magnets to stick the banners to the hatch of my open trunk so they draped down nicely. It’s covered up in the pictures, but there is a 2×4 running along the bottom of the banners to keep them from blowing away!

Balloons. Balloon arches are really all the rage now. I can totally appreciate why–they don’t take much to assemble, are inexpensive and fill up A LOT of space. It was probably an hour to put both columns together that you see in these pictures. I bought a few balloon kits from Amazon; I find one usually isn’t enough to make an actual arch. To make it more Pokemon themed, I added a few mylar Pokeballs to the display I got on Amazon as well. As for how to put them together? There are SO MANY tutorials out there. I do recommend looking for the ones that use balloon animal balloons and big rubber bands to put the balloon arches together as I find they are much easier and faster to create than using the balloon tape that is included with many balloon kits.

Pokemon Characters. No Pokemon trunk is complete without the addition of a few DIY critters. You can use all sorts of things, tissue poufs like in my Mario Bros trunk or treat, or paper lanterns like in the Bad Unicorn trunk or treat as the base. Round is really what you’re looking for! Lucky for us, Pokemon has lots of round-ish characters. My favorite is the jigglypuff. Pink and cute! You can score the giant pink lanterns on Amazon to make these. The paper lanterns came in packs of two, so I made cut outs for both jigglypuffs and put them at the front of our astroturf. It was a little windy that day, so a pair of hand weights are inside them keeping them in place. On halloween night, I put some lights on in the inside to illuminate them so they were easier to see in the dark.

On a smaller scale, the ghost type Pokemon called gastly was also perfect for a little DIY project. He just required a black beach ball (again, Amazon is my savior – the delivery time is great!) and some cut outs. On halloween, I nestled the gastly into the balloon arch, but the day of the pictures, our Pokemon Trainer carried him around.

The Most Important Part: Costumes

I have yet to put together a trunk or treat where the costumes were not the most important part!! The costumes you wear are just as much a part of the halloween decorations as what you put on your car/SUV. There were a few I created for this night: charizard, squirtle, espeon, pikachu and Ash. The easy ones were the Ash and pikachu costume–both adult costumes were delivered by Amazon. In years past, I had to make the whole costume from scratch, but these days, companies have so many things already made for you you don’t have to the DIY work. (whew!)

But, my kids do have high expectations after the Steampunk trunk or treat from a few years ago when it comes to halloween costumes, so I put forth a little effort to do one or two cool costumes and all the costume accessorie. For the charizard costume, I used some yoga mats and a roll of thin foam to make wings. I scored an orange dress at Goodwill, bought some cheap orange hightops, a corset from Amazon that I embellished, and an orange wig I added some horns to. MOST of the charizard was already made, the wings were really the hard part.

After choosing espeon as the her Pokemon character, my daughter bailed on us for Halloween, so we threw a friend into the costume at the last minute. Again, an easy costume! Purple (fancy) dress from Goodwill, purple wig, a headband with ears and a forehead crown I added a large red gem to to get the perfect espeon costume style.

It was a last minute thing to make the squirtle costume, but I’m so glad we did! The shell was made out of EVA foam, and I had picked up a squirtle beanie cap at the thrift store (what inspired it all to start!) Added some gym shorts and a shirt in squirtle colors and viola – a squirtle costume. I did make the kids help cut and paint the shell, so that reduced a little time on that effort. I got the pattern and instructions from Lost Wax and painted it to look like a squirtle shell.

If all this looks like to much effort, you can make a cute DIY Pokemon costume with a tshirt and a Cricut machine. You can see the post with the patterns in my DIY Pokemon Costumes for a Group post.

If you’re in an I just want to buy it mood, here are a few sources:

Charizard
- Charizard kit (buy it here)
- Charizard hoodie (buy it here)
- Charidzard full costume (buy it here)
Pikachu
- Pikachu kit (buy it here)
- Pikachu hoodie (buy it here or here)
- Pikachu full costume (buy it here)
Evie
- Evie kit (buy it here)
- Evie hat (buy it here)
- Evie hoodie (buy it here)
- Evie full costume (buy it here)
Bulbasaur
- Bulbasaur kit (buy it here)
- Bulbasaur hoodie (buy it here)
Squirtle
- Squirtle kit (buy it here)
- Squirtle hoodie (buy it here)
- Squirtle costume (buy it here)
Jigglypuff
- Jigglypuff kit (buy it here)
- Jigglypuff full costume (buy it here)
- Jigglypuff hat (buy it here)
Other characters that will make your trunk or treat fun:
- Inflatable Pokeball (buy it here)
- Ash hoodie (buy it here)
- Vulpix cape (buy it here)
- Umbreon hoodie (buy it here)
- Piplup onesie (buy it here)

Pokemon Treat Ideas

Halloween celebrations are not the same without a few treat ideas. Something I started doing a few years ago was giving out toys in addition to candy. I have some food sensitivities, and I know there are tons of kids out there with them as well. I’m constantly surprised how many kids choose a toy over a full size candy bar. Pokeballs just go with Pokemon, so I scoured the internet for affordable Pokeballs well in advance. I found these at Temu, but if you want to DIY, I’ve got a tutorial for DIY Pokeballs here. We also gave out a random assortment of blinky rings and other treats (check out my 24 Candy Alternatives for Halloween post for more ideas!) For Pokemon-themed favors, here are a few ideas: