So long, party city and thank you for all balloons

Updated February 27, 2025 at 05:05 a.m.

What came first: America’s ownership of Halloween or Party City?

Steve Mandell started in 1986 Party City as a single shop in New Jersey. He sold cups, napkins and other stocks for birthday and vacation agreement. But it was the costumes that became the gold mine.

“I never expected Halloween to be something like that,” says Mandell. “After my first financial year I said: ‘Wow!'”

Fast lead 39 years and Party City sweeps away the confetti and switches off the light. Two bankruptcy proceedings have not put the chain’s finances in order.

“I am really upset that it closes. I will really miss this place,” says Sherri Swartz and browsing the evening before the sixth birthday party of her grandson in a Gaithersburg, Md., Md.

Where will she go next time?

“I think I have to be organized and make it from Amazon, because now Amazon will have the world,” she says with a sigh.

The corridors for dealing with up to 75% on sweets, placemats, sparkling streams and Easter baskets. The workers here say that they still have not made their exact last day aware, but a banner that covers the front window does not reduce words: “Closing the memory.”

Several franchisees of the party city say that they plan to keep a few shops going, including in Hawaii and Virginia. Company representatives did not respond to the inquiries from NPR. They said in December that the plan should liquidate by the end of February. Hundreds of locations have already been auctioned, many of them to dollar Tree and five below.

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Bloomberg via Getty Images

The shop that decorated unforgettable moments

The business became a main support after Baby Boomers decided that Halloween was not only for children, but also for adults. They raised new generations who love to dress up as a film characters and to wrap their houses in ghostly spider websites.

Party City had the goods and earned the money.

Initially, Mandell enlarged its original shop on a Halloween warehouse. Then came more shops and a franchise. When Mandell left in 1999, Party City was a national chain in the era of category murderers – a megastore that dominated a facet of shopping. This was the heyday of Barnes & Noble, Toys R US and for parties, Party City.

With the kind permission of Theresa Peverly /

“The first and only place we shop was a party city – they went there,” says Theresa Peverly from Illinois. In the late 90s, she equipped her entire wedding reception in the back yard in Party City.

She remembers it well because she still used the remaining party city to bind silverware and napkins.

“I think I bought nine or ten coils. 26 years later we still have some of these coils of ribbons,” says Peird. She used her to bind baby and final gifts and laugh every time when she reaches for the party City Ribbon Stash.

The retail chain dressed generations of Americans in creepy masks, dramatic cloaks and vampire teeth. But if they ask people according to memories of Party City, the buyers remember meaningful milestones: the 40th birthday, a nurse reunion, the retirement of VAT, the last day of mums chemotherapy, so many birthdays during the pandemy barrier.

After the attacks on September 11, a woman thinks back to the lack of miniature flags. A teacher describes a 35-foot balloon arch that she had bought for a school run.

“My 6-year-old daughter found her best friend in Party City,” says Allie Mushlin from Massachusetts.

The friend was a clearance object during a spontaneous visit to Party City: a pink mud bubbles that now calls Cupcake two years later and is still a favorite toy.

With the kind permission of Allie Mushlin /

“We saw in the news that the shop is closing,” says Mushlin, “and my daughter asked that maybe we should see if they have more cupcakes in the back. ‘”

Chase the balloon business into the air

Well if you ask Worker Party City memories talk about talking about balloons.

“My fingers may have a permanent curve when they make all these balloons,” says Jonathan Darcangelo, who came in Florida as a manager in Florida in the late 1990s.

He got the job in the high school for the first time, like many people. The Teenager employees of Party City gave the shops a mood that drove around Halloween outfits and made themselves through poorly prepared buyers who fill a dozen balloons into a two-door car.

“They came in a small limousine,” says former deputy manager Cali Gordineer, “and it was funny to only see how: ‘You probably need a bigger car. You don’t get it through the door.”

Gordineer worked in a party town in New York from 2011 to 2016 and met her fiancee through the job: a friend of the colleagues who saw a Facebook photo of her who wore a Catwoman costume over her work uniform.

In a shop in Rockville, Md., Cashier Christina Marin remembers the first time when someone reached her sealed results of an ultrasound scan and asked for a gender -specific balloon.

“They came directly from the doctor and I was the first person who knew the gender. It was something very special,” she says. “I was nervous because the balloons got really big and I didn’t want it to pop and come out all the confetti.”

Alina Selyukh / NPR

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NPR

What did the party kill

The balloons, wigs and costumes are fun to buy personally that protected the party city for a long time from the online competition. The shops have been installing a Halloween image wall for years: dozens of photos of every costume in stock. It was like searching online, but they could try the stuff right there and then.

In 2012, Party City was bought by Private Equity in a deal with massive debts that was invited to the company. It was manageable – during sales continued to grow.

“Unfortunately, there was no reason to go there with the Internet retail trade, except for balloons,” says Darcangelo, who is now a rare buyer. “And you can’t make so much money with balloons, I think.”

In fact, a helium deficiency made the balloon business difficult. Party City left the debt payment little scope for improving its extensive network or online presence. The prices rose. The buyers who are against the competition of Spirit Halloween, Amazon and Walmart, even with their huge skeletons, even to the home depot.

Then the pandemic killed the parties. And then the high inflation tightened the party fostation. And the debt of the party town pursued the chain to death.

Party City first filed for bankruptcy in January 2023, hoping to curb the debts of 1.7 billion US dollars. A few months later it was resumed just to get bankrupt again. It was finally “cleared” by December 2024. Buyers say that they now have to re -calibrate, have to contact grocery stores for balloons and dollars or the Internet for supplies.

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