As Halloween approaches, some costume companies are hoping to scare up sales based on current events.
First, HalloweenCostumes.com tried to capitalize on the popularity of Jasmine Tridevil -- the 21-year old Florida woman who claimed to have had a third breast inserted between the two she was born with.
Now BrandsOnSale.com is finding a way to sell last year's "Breaking Bad" costumes by marketing them as "Ebola Containment Suits."
The $79.99 costume comes with a face shield, breathing mask, safety goggles and blue latex gloves, but boots are not included. The costume's web page promises buyers calls the Ebola outfit the most "viral" costume of the year and say the wearer is "sure to be prepared if any outbreak happens."
Outbreak? Maybe. Outrage? More likely. But no matter how you feel about the costume, it is only that. The suits are not in any way meant to protect the wearer from disease.
Because people have died from the virus, media outlets like the Atlantic have dubbed the Ebola Halloween getup as the worst costume of the year.
BrandsOnSale CEO Johnathon Weeks insists the costume is in the true spirit of the holiday.
"You can go on any website for a zombie mask for an eight-year-old with cuts and scars all over their face," he told the Atlantic. "It's Halloween, it's one day, if people are that serious about it, they don’t know what Halloween is about."
However, some people like Philadelphia physician’s assistant Maria McKenna think the Ebola costume is sick -- and not in a good way -- since two fellow medical practitioners have tested positive for the disease.
McKenna, who works with post-surgical patients at a hospital, told the Associated Press the idea of riffing on the crisis for Halloween “definitely rubs me the wrong way.”
“Normally I think that irony and humor is funny, but this thing with the costumes, is it really that funny? I mean, Ebola’s not even under control yet,”
New York Post columnist Kyle Smith is suggesting people not be so deadly serious about the Ebola costumes.
"Since everybody dies, when we make fun of Ebola we’re just mocking our own fears of death," he said. "Pretty much the whole purpose of Halloween is to whistle past the graveyard, to score one small point against the Grim Reaper by having a quick giggle before he cuts us all down with his mighty scythe."
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