The popcorn bucket arms race continues unabated. At this point, you simply can’t have a tentpole movie release without the accompanying novelties, and the popcorn buckets that used to be the purview of theme parks like Disney and Universal are all over movie theaters. However, I’m not sure any of them are as adorable as the one being released alongside the remake of How to Train Your Dragon.
It’s not exactly a surprise to see that the popcorn bucket for the live-action How to Train Your Dragon is all about Toothless, but I’m not sure anybody expected the bucket to be this adorable. In the short look posted to Instagram, Toothless’ head pops open and his mouth is full of popcorn. Of course, it makes me feel like I’m stealing his popcorn, and why would I do that to somebody so cute?
It does seem clear that at least part of the mandate for novelty popcorn buckets is that they look nice sitting on your shelf, and that’s certainly the case with this one. My kids already like to play with some of my Disneyland popcorn buckets, and there’s no way they’d be able to keep their hands off of this one. The only thing cuter than this would be Dave Filoni's idea for a Grogu popcorn bucket.
Considering that movie theater popcorn buckets can trace their existence back to theme parks, it’s little shock that a very similar bucket can be purchased inside Universal Orlando’s new Epic Universe theme park. How to Train Your Dragon - Isle of Berk is one of the lands in the park, and it has its own Toothless bucket, though that one lights up and the popcorn is stored in the egg that Toothless is sitting in.
If there’s a single downside, it’s that while the scale of the popcorn bucket is difficult to judge, it doesn’t look to be all that big. Certainly, I need my popcorn bucket to hold a significant amount of popcorn. The fact that it’s cute is great, but I also need it to fulfill its function as a popcorn bucket. It needs to hold enough popcorn to last me for what will probably end up being a two-hour movie.
It’s going to be the battle of adorable characters and the adorable popcorn buckets at the movies this summer. How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action remake comes out in theaters just a couple of weeks after the Lilo & Stitch live-action remake, and while that popcorn bucket has not seen an official reveal, we can bet it will all be about everybody’s favorite blue troublemaker.
Considering both How to Train Your Dragon and the original Lilo & Stitch were both created by Dean DeBlois, clearly the big winner this summer will be him... well, him and anybody who likes popcorn.
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