Have a Glow-in-the-Dark Lolly Hunt on Halloween

Some parents opting to skip trick-or-treating this year are borrowing an idea from that other lolly-friendly holiday: Easter. I’m talking, of course, of the lolly scavenger hunt. Sure, you could host your hunt indoors or outdoors in broad daylight, but why do that when you could give it a Halloween twist — by making it an after-dark, glow-in-the-dark hunt.

They want to go hunting for mini Mars bars and M&Ms, but you don’t want all those lollies getting lost in the night. Here’s are a few ways to make it glow:

Glow-in-the-dark paint

Coat those plastic eggs in glowing paint (or simply mark them with an X) to assure they’re a) findable and b) appropriately spooky-looking. We like our paint non-toxic and it needs to adhere to plastic, like this SpaceBeams paint, which is available in bright aqua and bright green.

Charge it in the light for just 10 seconds — bonus points if you happen to have a UV flashlight — and your glow-in-the-dark Halloween eggs should shine all night.

Glow sticks

Most of us might think of glow sticks as long enough to double as a halo or necklace, but these tiny two-inch options are perfect to slip inside oversized plastic eggs. If your plastic is too thick for the glow to shine through, simply tape the stick to the outside of the egg.

Tea light candles

Obviously, don’t stick a flaming candle inside a plastic egg. But one of those LED tea lights should fit nicely inside an oversized egg. If you’re eggless, tape a small piece of (wrapped!) lolly to the bottom of the tea lights, and hide those around your yard instead.

If you want to take your hunt to the next level, borrow Andrea Kuszewski’s idea on Twitter by making it a full-on Halloween hunt, complete with costumes and clues:

Do an “Easter Egg Hunt”, but for Halloween candy, a “Halloween Candy Hunt”. Have it inside and outside the house, wear costumes, decorate w spooky decorations, like a haunted house (not too scary!); you can just have it be an open hunt, or have clues, like a spooky scavenger hunt

— Andrea Kuszewski ???? (@AndreaKuszewski) October 11, 2020

If you don’t have any plastic Easter eggs — or you don’t want to go digging in storage to find your spring décor — Pop Sugar offers a fantastic alternative, borrowed from TikTok and Instagram, in which the lolly gets dressed up as mini-ghosts:

“All you need to do is wrap individual pieces of lollies (or small toys, [TikTok user Ashlee Nicholas] suggests) in white tissue paper, tie them with a ribbon, draw a face, and then hide the DIY ghosts around your home.”

Hand out some flashlights and have them go on a ghost hunt.