As Halloween approaches, the anticipation and excitement reach a crescendo. Weeks of preparation, planning and daydreaming will eventually give way to a blissful payoff, but there will be several sleepless nights before that happens.

Enough about the grown-ups ... what about the kids?

Halloween used to be geared strictly toward pre-teens, whose annual candy blast made parents squirm and dentists smile. Over the past generation, though, the holiday seemingly has become more adult-oriented. It's an excuse to decorate the yard and drink heavily at wild parties.

The grocery and discount stores still put out racks and racks of mini candy bars and other confections. The bars and nightclubs seem do bang-up business on and around Oct. 31, selling orange label beers and special shots to costumed patrons. Haunted houses spring up all over the area, with many of the customers driving themselves to the venues.

After driving by Halloween Express' giant inflatable pumpkin at State Fair Park for a few weeks, we made a fact-finding stop on a recent warm afternoon.

A quick lap around the store, which is bigger than it looks, convinced us that we weren't in kids-only territory. The giant pumpkin contained just about every Halloween costume, trinket, decoration and accessory imaginable. There were plenty of costumes for children, but there were considerably more for adults. Many of them were racy enough that you'd probably think twice before walking a toddler down the aisle.

With our curiosity piqued, we contacted Lance Miller, who has spent nearly 20 years as the seasonal purchasing agent for Bartz's, The Party Store -- a family-owned chain of four stores that have been selling party ware, party decorations and costumes for 60 years.

OMC: It seems as though adults have "taken over" Halloween from kids. Do you guys sell more adult costumes than kids costumes?

LM: As with model railroads, collecting action figures and playing video games, our generation has decided that Halloween will not end as adulthood begins.

When I first started with Bartz's in 1988, we had twice as many kids' costumes as adult costumes and over time those statistics have flipped and now adults outsell kids, two to one.

OMC: What are the popular getups this year? Are there some that are top sellers year in and year out?

LM: Similar to the party, toy and just about every other industry, Hollywood sets the trend. It's a pretty safe bet the blockbuster summer movie will make its way onto your block come October in the form of trick or treaters.

So, as you can imagine, for both adults and kids we have a lot of call for the black suited Spiderman from "Spiderman 3," "Shrek" characters and of course "Pirates of the Caribbean" is back in a big way.

We are, however, calling 2007 "the year of the sleeper" as there are several licensed characters that the so-called "experts" in the industry didn't anticipate would give Jack Sparrow a run for his money. For children, we've received a lot of requests for "High School Musical" costumes, "Hannah Montana" and "The Transformers." The sale of Harry Potter costumes had reached a plateau a couple of years ago, but with the release of the last book, we have seen the first increase in interest for Harry in some time.

Hannah Montana is probably the most intriguing of these. If you're not familiar with the show, it's about a teen pop star who like Superman keeps a secret identity so she can live a normal life out of the spotlight.

To look like Hannah, all you need is her blond disguise wig, a microphone and normal clothes. Moms love it because all they need to buy is the wig and kids love it because they get to be a singing sensation. It's the modern day equivalent of going as a princess for Halloween.

For adults, the big sleeper for this year has been costumes from the film "300." Usually, the costume industry knows a year ahead of time what it's going to make but nobody anticipated "300"'s popularity and no one had plans to make the costume. Luckily for us, one of the oldest costume companies in the business, Rubies, snatched up the license and went into overtime this summer to crank them out in time

I've also had to buy extra fake braces and black wigs for all the women who have been asking if we have anything for the character of "Ugly Betty." Its popularity is an interesting choice to note since it breaks two cardinal rules of the Halloween business. One, TV show characters don't do as well as movie characters and two, women like to be glamorous and sexy on Halloween.

There are some favorites, however people come back for year after year regardless of what is on the big screen. I don't think people will ever get sick of angels and devils; priests and nuns; witches and vampires or cops and robbers. These themes that adults can wear as a couple will always be the backbone of our business.

In the nearly 20 years I've been with the company, it's been interesting to see new categories be introduced, rise and become standards. Ten years ago, we didn't have pimps, fairies, Renaissance or Goth costumes and now they are staple products. When I first started, people complained that the costumes were "too skimpy" and now people come in and ask, "Where are the sexy costumes?" We even have "official" Playboy costumes.

Every year, I go to buying shows and get catalogs and I think, "This'll finally be the year where there are no new ideas" and then I get hit with Count Chocula, Peter Griffin and Beer Keg costumes and I say to myself, "I have the most hilarious job in the world." It's great.

OMC: You see more and more people going all out for Halloween decorations in homes and yards. How long has this been a trend and what products are popular in these categories?

LM: According to industry statistics, Halloween is second only to Christmas in the amount of money people spend on seasonal decorations and outdoors is probably the biggest component of that.

Although people have decorated outdoors for Halloween for over 100 years in America, the real craziness that you see today started for us with the economic boom of the early 1990s. We have seen steady growth ever since then. In fact, since the early Clinton years, we've had to quadruple the amount of floor space we dedicate to outdoor decorations.

Tombstones are our No. 1 outdoor decoration by far. We figure this is because installing them doesn't require climbing ladders or the use of duct tape on your house. It might also be that since they look better in a grouping, it's fun to add one or two to your collection every year.

Other big items for outdoor decorating include cauldrons, Halloween-themed fencing, spider webbing and fake police crime scene tape.

The fastest growing trend in outdoor decorating is life-size figures of ghouls, skeletons, vampires and the like. Because they are so big, these used to the kind of decoration that only the rich enthusiast could afford, but as with so many other things in the modern marketplace, competition and overseas manufacturing have taken over so know most people can afford to have a life size Grim Reaper lurking in their yard.

My personal favorite has always been the Skeletons dressed as a bride and groom.

It's also interesting to note that the perennial outdoor favorite jack o' lanterns have not been immune to the changing times. Companies now offer computer software for making carving patterns, electric cutting tools and multicolored LED lights that are a lot safer than candles and don't require re-lighting.