If you are the parent or guardian of young children, then you may be familiar with the new Halloween trend known as "trunk-or-treating." For the uninitiated, it's an event in which parents gather vehicles—usually at a school or church—so that children can go from car to car to get candy rather than going from door to door. Sometimes these parents decorate their cars to add to the fun, but Ford designer Ryan McManus has them one-upped, taking things to another trunk-or-treating level with his electric F-150 Lightning.
McManus actually gave this his first try last year with a Cyber Orange Mustang Mach-E GT. Inspired by the car's color, he decided to dress the Mach-E up for a trunk-or-treat event at the local school where is wife is a teacher. He adorned the frunk with some teeth he made out of foam core board and some small strobe lights to make it look like a demon's mouth with the candy inside free for the grabbing. The Mach-E turned into a big hit with the kids and adults. "People hadn't seen that before," said McManus. "Kids were like 'where's the engine?' and parents wanted to talk about it."
Since then McManus picked up a Ford F-150 Lightning to get a feel for living with a pickup, since he's on the team working on the next-gen Ford electric truck. "The frunk on this thing [F-150 Lightning] is enormous," said McManus. The F-150 Lightning's frunk is indeed massive and has plenty of tricks up its sleeve that make it a great trunk-or-treat vehicle—if you're clever and know how to take advantage of them.
Should those ideas require power, well, "It's got four household electrical outlets in the front plus USB [ports] and in the [truck] bed I've got eight outlets and a 220 volt outlet," reminds McManus.
With all that power available, McManus saw the opportunity to go farther than he did last year with his Mach-E. "I knew I couldn't just fill the frunk with candy," said McManus. "Mostly because I'd go bankrupt!" Jokes aside, McManus wanted to take advantage of all the power that F-150 Lightning could offer, so he went shopping. "Everything's pretty much off the shelf," said McManus.
He started off with a small HDTV, for which he created a quick "spooky" rendering of red clouds and swirling mists to create a "hellmouth" effect. Next came a smoke machine, which he tucked behind the TV and red strobe lights, which may have freaked out his neighbors a bit. "I ran my first smoke test and I'm sitting there in my driveway with the hood open and smoke billowing out," said McManus. "My neighbor slammed on her brakes in front of my house and yelled out 'Is that supposed to be happening?!"
He then added foam core teeth similar to those he used on last year's Mach-E effort. However, this time McManus omitted the bottom row of teeth to make it easier—and less toothier—for the kids to reach the candy which will be in the "cooler" area of the frunk. To dial up the ambience, he added a "Fast and Furious-style" underglow kit that is sound reactive and changes color to music.
The pièce de résistance is a set of inflatable tentacles that, believe it or not, are actually specifically made to be used in vehicles. The tentacles fit McManus' chosen theme of his F-150 Lightning: drawing power from a dark dimension. The theme was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and the Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange. Because McManus considers himself a "completionist," he even created a fake Ford patent for a "method and system for interdimensional harvesting of dark energy transfer for electric vehicles."
More impressive is that every bit of the theatrics runs off the Ford F-150 Lightning's battery. "I could run that non-stop for like five days," said McManus. "I ran it for hours and it barely affected the range." His plan for Halloween is to park the truck in his driveway and have it running all night while the kids are trick-or-treating. It seems like McManus' creation is sure to be a hit again, and he may just be on the verge of rendering trunk-or-treating obsolete. It's now "frunk-or-treating" or bust, we say.
