Kickstart: What's 12 feet tall and sold out?

Are you one of those people who prefers decorating your house for Halloween more than Christmas?

If so, perhaps you were one of the lucky individuals to get your hands on a 12-foot-tall plastic skeleton sculpture before they sold out at retailer Home Depot.

The skeletons are made of what Home Depot only calls "polyresin" on its website, cost $300 and flew off store shelves. Our sister publication Advertising Age notes that the skeletons were so popular that social media feeds for other brands, including Budweiser, Slim Jim and Sour Patch Kids, quickly attached themselves to the sculptures as well.

Conditions haven't slowed down much on the Gulf Coast, where residents and companies that had just begun to recover from Hurricane Laura now face more problems from Hurricane Delta.

Delta made landfall in the U.S. on Oct. 9 and followed a path along the Texas and Louisiana line and over Lake Charles, La., hitting many of the same communities impacted by Laura in August.

Since there are multiple feedstock and resin plants in the area, including Lake Charles, you can probably expect some impact from Delta. Frank Esposito is keeping an eye on updates from the storm.

We all know of plastics companies that shifted production to respond to medical or community needs early in the coronavirus pandemic. The Oct. 26 issue of Plastics News will feature multiple stories of these "Rapid Responders."

But it's also nice when people outside the plastics industry recognize the work that has been done.

The Association of Washington Business is honoring the Novolex plant in Yakima, Wash., with the 2020 Manufacturing Excellence Award for Innovation for its work in repurposing packaging lines into personal protective equipment manufacturing.

"When we learned there was a critical need for PPE, we immediately got to work adapting our facilities to produce medical gowns," Scott Houtz, regional manufacturing director for Novolex, said in a news release.

AWB President Kris Johnson presented the award virtually during the association's 2020 Manufacturing Week.

"By May, Novolex's nearly 1,000 employees in Yakima had ramped up to produce a million isolation gowns per week using equipment that had been used to make bags for tortillas and other food products," Johnson said.