2024 saw the ‘war of the popcorn buckets’ begin in earnest, bringing characters from the world of cinema to life and demonstrating the power of packaging in its most playful – and lucrative - form. The rest of the packaging industry should take note

At Easyfairs, we’re big advocates for creativity in packaging. Packaging can be so much more than just a container to transport goods, it can be an experience in and of itself. It can evoke emotions and trigger intense nostalgia. So often, we in the industry talk about ‘adding value’ to packaging – and what could be more valuable than the ability to make consumers feel a rush of joy as soon as they see a product?

Few industries have capitalised on this experiential approach to packaging better than cinema. After years of seeing its revenues squeezed by home entertainment and streaming, and the disastrous effect of COVID on the industry, cinema is heading back in the right direction[1]. And the hero that swung in to save the day wasn’t a superhero with eight-pack abs, a gleaming Hollywood smile, and a colourful costume – it was packaging, with a wave of themed novelty popcorn buckets sweeping across the industry.

Value-adding innovation – for businesses and consumers
This sounds like a bold claim, but it makes sense in the light of two points. The first is that it’s been a long-established fact that concessions make up a huge chunk of a cinema’s revenue. A significant portion of every ticket sold goes straight to the film studios, so snacks sold at the counter make up the difference. These concessions can be marked up to a very high margin, and as such can be worth up to 40% of a cinema’s revenue[2].

But how do you continue to drive up the margins of these products? There is a limit to how much consumers will spend on a bucket of popcorn and a soft drink, after all. The answer that the industry came up with was to use packaging to add more value to the project – and so, the collectible popcorn bucket was born.

These increasingly elaborate packs enable theatres to charge up to $60USD for a bucket of popcorn, offering a collectible memento that persists long after the cinema experience is over. This is as plain a demonstration of packaging ‘adding value’ to a product as anyone in the industry could hope to see.

But the value they add doesn’t stop there. This feeds into the second point behind the success of these novelty popcorn buckets, which is that they double up as viral marketing tools, tapping into film fans’ senses of attachment to the cultural properties of the film. And so, we’ve seen an array of increasingly innovative popcorn buckets, some of which make use of the most cutting-edge packaging technology.

Take the limited edition bucket offered at screenings of Barbie, 2023’s summer blockbuster smash. Made to look like the iconic pink Corvette convertible featured in the film, this bucket featured a carefully-moulded food-safe plastic design with metallised elements to replicate the look of a classic car, blurring the line between toy and packaging. Crucially, the extra investment it took to create this novelty pack paid off – and then some – selling out and making the cinema operator nearly $1m in revenue on its own[3].

And this success means that virtually every major tentpole release of 2024 launched alongside a limited edition popcorn bucket of some kind. Dune: Part Two had audiences eating out of the film’s famous sandworm creatures, to the collective amusement of social media[4]. Deadpool and Wolverine filled Hugh Jackman’s gaping mouth with popcorn. Meanwhile, Gladiator II took a classier approach, treating cinemagoers to a replica of a Roman colosseum, complete with a QR code that users could scan with a smartphone to host a digital AR-powered gladiator event inside their popcorn buckets[5]. Once all the popcorn was eaten, of course.

A new frontier for packaging
As these novelty buckets grow more popular – and elaborate – they continue to lay down a lucrative yellow brick road for other industries to follow.

AR technology, for example, is increasingly being used across a wide variety of applications to enhance brand storytelling and build consumer engagement. Heritage spirit brands can incorporate it into their labels to create a guided tour of their historic brand story. Food brands can create fun, interactive experiences aimed at encouraging children to eat healthily. Nutraceuticals and over-the-counter pharma products can incorporate personalised dosage instructions to help consumers get the most out of their products. And this is just scratching the surface – the possibilities of this technology are endless.

Seasonal products can also benefit greatly from novelty packaging that engages consumers in an increasingly saturated market. With studies showing that the right packaging can boost impulse buying by 81%[6], taking a ‘more is more’ approach to creating giftable packaging is a great way to stand out from the crowd. If Alien: Romulus can encourage consumers to pay a premium to eat popcorn from the head of an iconic movie monster[7], could snack brands achieve the same results for their seasonal Halloween treats? Could a more festive take on the concept create Christmas gifts that leap off the shelf? Could brands tie into summer sporting events with packaging that resembles trophies and medals? The answer is yes – and we know that because we can see it’s already happening.

Innovative structural designs, next-generation finishing techniques, new materials, and digital technologies like AR and RFID chips can all be used to create the new frontier of experience-driven packaging design – and they all gather on the show floor at Packaging Innovations & Empack every year. This means that, at Packaging Innovations, we see how the industry continues to evolve and adapt to the success of novelty packaging every year through inspired designs and digital innovation.
What the novelty popcorn buckets have proven is that packaging can be literally anything, from classic cars to beloved cartoon characters to creatures from outer space. And if packaging can be anything, it can be used to say anything, delivering brand messaging to engage consumers in new and exciting ways. The only limit is the imagination of the industry – and at Packaging Innovations, the industry comes together to prove this limit does not exist.

Packaging Innovations & Empack takes place at the Birmingham NEC on 12 & 13 February. Register for a free visitors’ ticket today.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/288833/cinema-industry-revenue-worldwide 
[2] https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/22/movie-theaters-reopen-without-their-biggest-moneymaker-snacks/ 
[3] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/popcorn-buckets-dune-star-wars-movie-theater-revenue-1235824026/ 
[4] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240304-why-is-the-dune-2-popcorn-bucket-so-immensely-popular 
[5] https://deadline.com/2024/10/gladiator-ii-popcorn-bucket-1236151941/ 
[6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266867991_Packaging_-An_Innovative_source_of_Impulsive_and_Abrupt_Buying_Action 
[7] https://www.ign.com/articles/the-alien-romulus-popcorn-bucket-is-a-big-xenomorph-head-with-popcorn