Foy’s Halloween Store | Photo by Monica Brutto | The Wright State Guardian
Foy’s Halloween and Variety Store is a place for costumes, treats, decorations, novelties and other spooky purchases year-round, not just during the holiday season.
How it started
Foy’s is a family-owned business in its third generation. Michael Foy is the current owner whose grandfather started the original five-and-ten store six months before the stock market crash of 1929.
Foy became a partner in 1978 and started working at the store after graduating high school. For 63 years, Foy has lived two blocks away from the store.
“My dad was here his life, and I’m here for my whole life, been here since I was ten. It took a lot to keep me out of here. I love it in here, I still feel like a big kid,” Foy said.
Foy started selling more Halloween items, including costumes, characters, gags, jokes and magic, 45 years ago.
“Everything has changed and given us new life years ago,” Foy described.
The store survived fires on either side of the location in 1957 and 1966.
The store
Along with the Halloween and Variety store, Foy has had an adult costume store for 28 years, a kid’s costume store for 24 years and a haunted house supply store for 22 years.
The Halloween and Variety Store currently has 1,500 masks and 1,200 wigs available for purchase year-round, according to Foy, who sources these items and many more through orders or at trade shows across the country.
“I go all over the United States to the different trade shows to find different things, unique things, things that I like and, and things that other people like. I try to think broadly on items and, you know, it might be incense, it might be a Barbie doll,” Foy noted.
Foy explained that mass collectors come to see antique, distinctive and old masks as well.
“People love to see [the items]. It’s a fun store, and I have fun in here everyday,” Foy said. “Most everybody I’ve talked to just tells me how nice it is to come back into the store after ten years not being here, after 50 years of living in California or somewhere. It’s just crazy.”
Foy’s father constructed the candy cases found at the front of the store after making the crates into a boat and sailing it down the Mad River in the 1930s. There are other items that Foy sees and feels a nostalgic sentimentality.
“Everything I look at in here reminds me of growing up in here, what I used to do and can still do. I’ll see signs that my dad made up in the cases, and I can’t take them out. It just means so much to me, the store does,” Foy described.
One employee, Hope Leggett, described the personal meaning of the store and its impact.
“It makes my Halloween fixation happy. It actually helps my anxiety,” Leggett said. “[Halloween] is the one day when everybody can dress up and be who they want to be.”
The future and store information
To Foy, not only does the store hold meaning, but also the city of Fairborn.
“I like to help Fairborn, whatever I can do to make it better, a better city, a better place to live,” Foy explained. “I plan on being here for the long haul.”
Foy’s Halloween and Variety Store is located at 18 E. Main St. in Fairborn. The store is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 12 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. For special October hours and more information, students can visit the store’s website.
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