Halloween costume shopping brings concerns for germs

LONGVIEW, TX (KLTV) - With October comes Halloween and the great costume search for trick-or-treating, but some parents worry about sanitary conditions when searching for costumes for their children.

The busiest place in Longview for Halloween costume shoppers is Parties Plus.

"Over 20,000 costumes to choose from. It's the biggest time of the year for us. It lasts about six weeks and it gets progressively bigger," says worker Brandon Stringer.

With the amount of people visiting Halloween stores, there are many kids touching the merchandise.

"Without this virus that's going around, either way you have to watch what your kids are doing, what they're putting in their mouth and what they're touching," says parent Bianca Perez.

With virus scares, the business does everything possible to protect customers and kids.

"It can be stressful in here when there's hundreds of people shopping. If we think someone is not feeling well, we try to keep them from putting anything on, spray everything down with Lysol, try to keep it as clean as possible. We even wash our costumes," Stringer says.

The hot items most often filtered through are costumes from the Disney movie 'Frozen', ninja turtles, and super-heroes.

And germs? Parents say common sense should prevail.

"It's a scary thing, But I think if you're a clean person you'll be ok," Perez says.

Parties Plus workers say they have a policy that any costume that is tried on and not purchased is cleaned afterwards, and have staff that is in close watch of all customers and what items may be touched, so that they can be sanitized afterwards.

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