Something About Disneyland's New Mickey Mouse Popcorn Bucket Was Freaking Me Out, And I Just Figured Out What It Was

The popcorn bucket industrial complex has continued to grow unabated, leading to all sorts of wild creations. We have Mission: Impossible buckets that require keys and Karate Kid buckets that you “chop” to open. But the theme park world has been doing the popcorn bucket thing so long that they’re well beyond this. Our popcorn buckets talk... though that’s not always a good thing.

As part of Disneyland’s 70th anniversary, the park dropped a new popcorn bucket of Mickey Mouse. What sets this one apart from all the others is that it talks, and more specifically, can respond to you when you talk to it. I’ll admit, something about this talking popcorn bucket wasn’t sitting right with me. It felt strange. It felt wrong. It felt creepy. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it until I saw this post on Twitter, which pointed it out.

For the last two years, Universal Destinations and Experiences has sold a Chucky popcorn bucket during Halloween Horror Nights. The doll bucket also talks, in much the same way that the Mickey bucket does. I’m pretty sure this is the reason I’ve found the Disney bucket unsettling. I’ve been subconsciously concerned that Mickey might kill me in my sleep. There's a reason I don't own the Chucky popcorn bucket either.

It’s hard not to see the similarity when they’re standing side by side like this. The two buckets look so much alike that it’s probable they were designed by the same company. Chucky might even have been the base design, simply modified from that to look like Mickey Mouse. Most of the studios go to the same place to get popcorn buckets for their films, and while we don’t know where Universal or Disney get their popcorn buckets, it's likely they all are going to the same suppliers.

Both products are, at the end of the day, popcorn buckets. So they're designed to do nothing more insidious than provide you with a snack. When you talk to one of them, it says happy, fun things, while the other threatens to kill you. And both of them are smiling. Since one of those smiles isn’t exactly friendly, it’s easy for the other smile to feel the same way.

While I have seen some Disney Parks popcorn buckets I love, talking Mickey just isn’t doing it for me. I’m sure this won’t be the last talking popcorn bucket from Disney or Universal. I hope that as more are designed, they find new ways to differentiate them visually, otherwise they might all look like Chucky. That’s great for Halloween, but the rest of the time, maybe a different look would be better.

We'll have to wait and see if the Chucky bucket returns for Halloween Horror Nights in 2025. If so, Mickey may need to watch his back.