I worked at a video store in the mid-80s, and the horror section was the back left wall, about forty feet of it. From the week the Halloween candy showed up at Kroger until sometime in early November, that wall was the busiest part of the building.
Nobody shelved it right. Frankenstein would end up two clamshells down from Sleepaway Camp because whoever put the returns away that night wasn't thinking hard about it, and nobody ever complained. We had a cardboard Freddy standee near the endcap with a cigarette burn in the brim of the hat.
What I remember most is kids parking in front of that wall while their parents rented something else. Fifteen, twenty minutes, working their way along the shelf reading the backs of boxes. They weren't going to rent any of it. They just wanted to look at it.
I think about that wall every year around now. The video store wall worked because it was crowded and a little random and you'd find something on it you weren't looking for.
If you're putting a shelf together this year, this is roughly how I'd stock it.
Start with whatever's new
Every store put the new arrivals at eye level near the door, three copies deep, and that's still the right instinct. Beetlejuice #1689 does that job now, since the stripes read from across a room. The other one I'd grab is the Werewolf by Night set of three, Elsa Bloodstone, Jack Russell and the Werewolf himself. Marvel made that special as a black-and-white monster movie on purpose, and the figures carry it over. If you only buy one thing off this whole list, buy that set.
The old stuff goes up top
The Universal Monsters set of four, Frankenstein, the Bride, the Gill-Man and Dracula, is the base layer for a horror shelf. We did a whole post on these in July so I won't run through it again, but they're still in stock, and Funko doesn't usually run a legacy set like that twice.
Everybody has one that got to them
For me, and probably a lot of people my age, it's Poltergeist. The second one, where they come back for her, gets less credit than it deserves. Most horror takes you somewhere you'd never go anyway. Poltergeist put a regular family in a regular subdivision house and let the thing find them there. Carol Anne #1583 is on the shelf here. I still don't love TV static.
Don't skip the Disney villains
I'd argue most of what actually scared me as a kid was Disney, not the horror section.
- Queen Grimhilde #1079, from 1937, is the first one and still the template everybody else copies.
- Scar with Meat #1144 is a Specialty Series piece and about as grim as Funko gets with a Disney character.
- Yzma #1521 is funnier than the other two right up until you sit with the fact that she spends the movie trying to kill a teenager over a job.
Leave room for something that doesn't fit
Every store had one shelf of stuff the manager just liked, no theme to it. The Diablo IV set of three puts actual demons on the display. Dr. Zaius #1863 isn't horror by any reasonable definition, but Beneath the Planet of the Apes ends with the planet getting blown up inside a church, so I'm putting him on the wall.
One that survives November
You want at least one figure that still works after Halloween so you're not tearing the whole shelf down on the 1st. Formal Sally #1380 from the 30th anniversary line covers it. People have been arguing about which holiday that movie belongs to since 1993 and I don't think it ever gets settled.
Why I'm posting this in August
Because the horror wall was always picked over by the third week of October. Seasonal figures don't get restocked mid-season, so whatever's on the shelf in September is what there's going to be.
Everything on this list ships in one of our clear protector cases, we look at every figure before it goes in the box, and shipping's free, so what you see is what you pay.
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