Another Star Wars Day is nearly upon us, which means, of course, yet further opportunities for unhinged merchandise. The Disney parks are no exception to this rule, which means we’re already starting to see what they’ve got planned for this year’s festivities—and what’s planned is popcorn logistics nightmares.
The Disney Parks Blog has revealed a first look at some of the food-based merchandise attendees will be able to pick up around the May 4th celebrations. There’s some fun things, like light-up lightsaber swizzle sticks, or an oddly spherical bantha masquerading as a drinks sipper, but where things really start getting a bit silly are the popcorn buckets. Because while the cinema industry is still trying to make increasingly absurd vessels for snacks to chase that Dune: Part Two high, theme parks have long been on board with the idea of basically selling you a giant plastic toy that could ostensibly hold some popcorn.
First up is the more acceptable vessel of the two, so long as you believe that carrying around a severed droid head while queuing for Star Tours is acceptable: a “salvaged droid” popcorn bucket, which features light-up eyes and, presumably, a giant vacant head for which to put a sizeable amount of popcorn in. What’s fun about this is that the design is actually explicitly inspired by the stylized appearance of C-3PO and other protocol droids in the Star Wars 3DCG animated series Clone Wars and Rebels, rather than being a take inspired by the realistic proportions of the movies. That, and that it feasibly looks like something that could open up to contain snacks.
That’s less of a case for the Jabba’s Sail Barge bucket, which you can see in the top art above. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a neat model of the Khetanna, right down to the blaster cannons on the top deck (what popcorn bucket needs blaster cannons?) and even has a small compartment that opens up to reveal a replica model of Jabba, Salacious Crumb, R2-D2, and C-3PO that lights up so you can see them all. But as a popcorn bucket? It’s unwieldy, too wide for the strap that comes with it, and also, attempting to store popcorn in it is just an impracticality with the barge’s shape. The biggest, most feasible storage area is already taken up by the modeled interior, so you have even less space!
At that point, just release a model of the barge that you can sell in Galaxy’s Edge. Humanity has gone too far in its lust for popcorn bucket trends, and simply got back round to making statues again.
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