Level Up Trunk Or Treat for the Adults
The kids continue doing exactly what they came to do. They show off their costumes, visit the decorated trunks and collect an amount of candy that will eventually require negotiations with their parents.
Meanwhile, the adults have another reason to watch everything happening around them.
A Bingo card changes the way people experience the event because players start looking for details. They notice costumes they otherwise might have missed. They keep an eye out for funny situations. They compare what they have marked and start conversations about what counts for a particular square.
It can also create some friendly competition. Once someone announces that they only need a pirate for Bingo, everyone suddenly becomes remarkably invested in finding a pirate.
Turn the Costume Parade Into a Game
Trunk or Treat Bingo gives adults something fun to do while the kids make their way from car to car collecting candy. Trunk or Treat events are designed around children, as they should be, but that often leaves the adults standing near decorated trunks, holding extra candy bags and watching the parade of costumes go by. With a Halloween Bingo game running on their cellphones, all of those costumes, funny moments and little surprises become part of a game that keeps adults watching, laughing and talking throughout the event.
Instead of simply waiting for the kids to finish their rounds, adults can start looking for the things on their bingo cards. A tiny superhero walks past. Someone spots the third Wednesday Addams of the night. A toddler decides that wearing a costume was a terrible idea after all. Suddenly, everyone is paying a little more attention because almost anything that happens could be the square someone needs for Bingo.
Everyone Can Play Right From a Cellphone
With MyEventBingo, players join the game from their phones using a game link. There are no paper Bingo cards to print, hand out or keep track of during an outdoor Halloween event. Players can keep their cards with them as they walk around, sit near a decorated trunk or follow the kids through the event.
The game creator can customize the Bingo game in advance with costumes, situations, Halloween sights and anything else that fits the particular Trunk or Treat. A neighborhood event might include inside jokes or references familiar to the families attending, while a school, church or community event can keep the squares more general.
The result is a game built around what is actually happening that evening.
Add the Things Everyone Knows Will Happen
Costumes are only half the entertainment at a good Trunk or Treat. Anyone who has spent an evening surrounded by excited children and giant containers of candy knows there will be plenty of unscripted moments, too.
Those moments make great Bingo squares.
Mix costume sightings with things players might see happen during the event:
- Toddler starts crying
- Kid takes more than two pieces of candy
- Mom takes costume to extreme
- Someone drops their candy
- Parent carrying child's costume accessory
- Kid says "Trick or Treat" twice
- Someone has a full-size candy bar
- Child tries to go back for seconds
- Costume malfunction
- Kid running from trunk to trunk
- Parent wearing a costume
- Someone spills a drink
- Child refuses to say "Trick or Treat"
- Candy bucket is completely full
- Someone asks, "What are you supposed to be?"
These squares turn ordinary moments into part of the game. A parent wrestling with a giant set of costume wings is no longer just another scene in the parking lot. Somewhere nearby, someone may be quietly celebrating because it completes a row on their Bingo card.
Make the Bingo Cards Fit Your Trunk or Treat
The best Trunk or Treat Bingo cards combine predictable Halloween sights with squares that are just uncertain enough to keep everyone watching.
Include plenty of common costumes so players have opportunities to mark their cards, then mix in some less predictable possibilities. Add funny things children and parents might do. Include decorations, candy and other things that might appear around the event.
For a larger community Trunk or Treat, squares might include fog machine, decorated golf cart, giant spider, Halloween music, carved pumpkin, orange lights, spooky sound effect or someone dressed as a food item.
For a smaller neighborhood event, the game can become more personal and playful. The creator already knows the crowd, which makes it possible to customize the cards around the kinds of things everyone will recognize and appreciate.
The goal isn't to make every square difficult. The fun comes from having enough possibilities that players keep checking their cards and watching the event to see what happens next.
Get the Adults involved in a Friendly Competition
Trunk or Treat will always belong primarily to the kids. They're the ones wearing the costumes, collecting the candy and racing toward whichever decorated trunk looks the most promising.
That doesn't mean the adults have to spend the evening simply standing around waiting.
A game of Trunk or Treat Bingo gives parents, grandparents, volunteers and friends their own layer of fun. Every costume becomes something worth spotting, every funny moment could complete a square, and every new group of trick-or-treaters might bring the sighting someone needs to win.
Everyone is still enjoying the same event together. The adults just have a little more reason to watch closely.
This Halloween, create a customized Trunk or Treat Bingo game with MyEventBingo, send the game link to the adults and see who can spot their way to Bingo first.
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That flexibility works well because no two schools are exactly alike. An elementary faculty meeting has a different personality than one at a high school, and a district-wide professional development session has a different feel than a small department meeting. A customizable card lets the organizer decide what belongs on the board instead of forcing every school into the same format.
