Well, it's the start of the best time of year! That's right, we got our first HHN preview merch drop of the year! This year, the look and feel is very dark dark and spooky graveyard. Let's take a quick look before we go into what it could mean.

Like you can see, there's a scary looking glass window with a creepy statue and the return of everyone's favorite "Never Go Alone" tagline.

The statue is definitely creepy. It has some sort of key fob on its finger? I feel like past years have had similar bangles.

Next let's take a closer look at the merch itself:

I like the look of this merch a lot more than past ones. It seems a lot more somber and fitting for a serious Halloween look and feel for the event.

Does It Matter?

Then the next question is inevitably, does this mean anything for our event? Given that last year's preview merch didn't have a ton to do with what the event ended up feeling like. Let's break it down! Let's only look at the preview merch since 2021 since that's what I'm defining as the start of the HHN era:

Year	Preview Merch Link	Did it Foreshadow the Event Meaningfully?	Explanation
2024	link	Somewhat	I give this a somewhat since this punk look ended up being part of one of the houses. SS2 featured Heavy Metal Hell, which contributed characters to the bar and was the lead character in the house announcement at Spooky Empire
2023	link	No	None of the houses in 2023 had a meaningful connection to this merch
2022	link	No	There's not a lot to go off of for this. Bloody handprints didn't feature a ton in any of the houses as far as I can tell
2021	link	Yes	Pretty self explanatory. Jack was the star of one of the houses and the icon of the event

So what should you take away from this merch? 2 of the last 4 years the look and feel of the preview merch had no noticeable connection with the content or look and feel of the event. Last year I'd argue it had a tenuous connection and in 2021 I'd argue that it was intimately linked to the event. That means that (small sample size excepted) we'd expect this preview merch to NOT have a connection to the upcoming HHN with 50% confidence. Now I will tell you that obviously, maybe you'd take those odds given that one of the strong rumors is of a graveyard house. If that's the case, that might make this merch part of the 25% that is connected. The fun part about this time of year is that we're in the home stretch, there's not much longer to have to wait!