On Halloween, our greatest fears become playthings, cheeky options for dress-up and candy. But who's seriously afraid of vampires, zombies and werewolves anymore?
Our fears have changed. And the World Wildlife Fund of Canada thinks costumes should, too. With help from Sid Lee Toronto and the Sid Lee Collective, it's getting into the holiday spirit with a line of masks that depict—wait for it!—blood-curdling environmental issues.
The "Real Scary" line includes masks for Factory Farming, Overfishing, Pesticides and Oil Spills. Here's the promotional video, with quick cuts and jarring music torn straight from American Horror Story.
"The damage humans are doing to the planet is much scarier than any imaginary monster," says executive creative director Jeffrey Da Silva of Sid Lee Toronto. "Kids seem to know this better than adults, and Halloween night felt like the perfect time to spark a conversation about what they are truly scared of."
Along with the masks, posters and social posts will be shared far and wide. A pop-up exhibit took place Wednesday at Rally in Toronto, with all proceeds going to the WWF.
Check out the masks and posters below. Can you guess which of the four evil environmental horsemen is which?
If you can't, we'll walk you through it. Meet Oil, the terror of fish, sea fowl and now your uptight next-door neighbor, whose daughter is "a pretty ballerina" every goddamn year:
Below is Factory Farming, a colorful monstrosity of efficiency that resembles the remains of a food fight whose only fuel came from the dollar menu. (It also presents an excellent pretext for refusing candy corn. What is that stuff, anyway?)
This gleeful horror is Pesticides, whose blatant disregard for bees is half of what fuels the appropriately terrifying finale of Black Mirror season 3. (The other half is cybershaming. In case you wondered.)
And there's Overfishing, whose fruits (or lack thereof) will make you wish you could catch something this creepy to eat in 50 years or so. All that's missing is a hook!
A final poster features all four:
Happy apocalypse trick-or-treating!