Plaza Midwood resident brings ‘Willy Wonka gone wrong’ to Lowe’s Halloween collection
The creepy creatures lurking on front lawns this Halloween season might just owe their frightful flair to a Charlotte resident.
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Behind Lowe’s Halloween animatronics is a two-year creative process anchored in the local area and inspired by neighbors.
Kristen Dyer, product trend manager at Lowe’s, spearheaded the Mooresville-based home improvement giant’s spooky “Sweet Shop” that went viral on TikTok and other sites.
Dyer described the theme as “Willy Wonka gone wrong,” a dark spin on retro aesthetic trends that taps into millennial consumers’ desire for childhood nostalgia. As interior design shifts away from “millennial gray,” Dyer said vibrant “dopamine bright” colors inspired the collection. The viral “fake food” trend across social media also played a part.
“We look at macro trends constantly,” said Dyer, who lives in Plaza Midwood and draws inspiration from local neighborhood Halloween enthusiasts, trade shows, social media trends and movies. “We try to walk a nice line between what we say is frightful and fanciful.”
Working two years in advance, Dyer gathers insights and builds visual mood boards, storyboards and color palettes. Dyer, who has background in fashion and 16 years in retail experience, then collaborates with Lowe’s designers to bring Lowe’s private brand Haunted Living concepts to life through renderings, scripts and audio effects.
Dyer said her Plaza Midwood neighbors “go all out” and she’s seen the clown and carnival infusion in displays. “Hopefully our pieces are the perfect extension for them to add into their collection for their homes,” she said.
Lowe’s has its own design team for its private brand Haunted Living and works with vendor partners.
The collections are typically designed in small groups of two or three related character, which allows customers to build out a cohesive story or pick individual pieces to add to their decorations, Dyer said.
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This year’s four characters in the Sweet Shop collection blend 1950s soda shop nostalgia with twisted characters wrapped in vibrant pastel hues, including “rotten candy” girl with cotton candy pink hair and the candy-stripe ice “scream” salesman with glowing red eyes.
“Those ones were a little bit more close to the literal version from the mood boards,” Dyer said.
There’s also a motion-activated, jump-scare clown and a swinging clown with distorted ice cream truck melodies.
In total, Lowe’s has 33 Halloween animatronics this year, including a 15-foot-tall Skeleton Watcher and Bluetooth-enabled DJ skeletons.
The 3-foot motion activated lighted Rocker Skeleton animatronic pairs with last year’s The Party Skeleton, designed by Lowe’s employee Amanual Coleman of Charlotte.
The Haunted Living “Sweet Shop” collection features:
Lowe’s declined to provide sales figures. The collection is priced from $150 to $300.
Lowe’s operates over 1,700 stores and has about 300,000 workers, mostly hourly. Lowe’s has about 11,000 employees in the Charlotte region, including 5,000 corporate workers.
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For Dyer, creating the collection is about imagination.
“We want to bring those dreams to life for something unexpected,” she said.
This story was originally published October 28, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
