The Big Disney Issue Exposed by the Figment Popcorn Bucket

If you’ve been keeping up with Disney World news recently, then you’ve definitely heard about the Figment popcorn bucket!

Figment popcorn bucket with other Pop Eats! items

For the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, Disney released a new popcorn bucket made to look like the beloved purple dragon. Before the release, we knew that Figment definitely had a cult following, but no one could have predicted the mass mania that followed his popcorn bucket debut. And that mass mania brings to light an important Disney issue.

The Saga of the Figment Popcorn Bucket

To understand what’s going on here, we have to take it back to the beginning. A few days before the kickoff of the festival, it was announced that a Figment popcorn bucket would be available at the Pop Eats! food booth throughout the fest. He would be modeled after the Journey Into Imagination character and would come with rainbow popcorn for the guests who purchased him.

Figment Popcorn Bucket

When that announcement went live, the Disney corner of the internet erupted into mass excitement. Figment has been a staple of EPCOT for decades, and it turns out that his fanbase is bigger than some may have guessed. Of course, these fans flocked to the park on the first day of the festival to try and grab a bucket for themselves. So many people came to pick one up, though, that the line swelled to an estimated 6.5 hours long!

First-day lines for the Figment popcorn bucket

Almost immediately after the park opened, we saw listings for the Figment popcorn bucket on eBay. People were reselling them, listing them for much higher than the purchase price of $25. After a few minutes, some of the prices skyrocketed, even reaching nearly $300 with the online bids. Many guests were buying multiple buckets so that they could sell them for a profit online.

©eBay

But what about purchase limits? Well, Disney put in place a 2-per-person purchase limit for the Figment buckets, but those who had plans to resell would simply bring multiple people along with them. If they had more than one person in their party, they would be able to have each person purchase 2 at a time.

There were, in fact, purchase limits.

This Isn’t a New Issue

Unfortunately, things like the Figment bucket mania have happened in Disney World before. It has been particularly prevalent recently with all the limited-edition merchandise. It was incredibly common during the 50th Anniversary when long-distance guests were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to get their hands on the items that they wanted, so they turned to internet resellers to purchase the special souvenirs.

Crowds in The Emporium on October 1st

It was also a particularly big deal when the parks reopened in July 2020, shortly after Disney announced that Splash Mountain would be getting a retheme to The Princess and the Frog. During the big reopening, we saw many guests leaving with large bags of items, and dozens of those purchases made their way to eBay shortly after. 

Virtual Queue Sign-Up Line for Splash Mountain merchandise in July 2020

The big problem with this phenomenon is that it causes incredibly long lines for merchandise, making it difficult for regular guests to purchase the souvenirs they want. It can also cause safety issues with crowding…and sometimes with angry guests. (We saw this on the 50th Anniversary!)

The line for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure merchandise on October 1st

How is Disney Dealing with it?

So what’s Disney doing to combat this? In recent months, Disney has started to make the purchase limits stricter on popular items. For a while, these were set at 10 items per customer, but now that limit has dropped down to 2 per customer for most purchases.

Limit on purchases

However, resellers still have some tricks to get around this limit. Sometimes they’ll bring multiple other people with them (including children) so that each guest can get their 2 items. With apparel, the purchase limit only extends to items of each size, so they’ve worked around it by purchasing 2 of each size for things like shirts, Spirit Jerseys, and other hot items with varying sizes. So even though Disney has the rules in place, we still see resellers walking away with big bags of merch.

The limit applies to most items now.

So What Do You Need to Know?

Thankfully, that doesn’t mean that you WON’T be able to get the merchandise that you want – it just means that you have to be clever about it. Know that if a limited collection or item is coming out, there will probably be resellers present, so you’ll want to arrive early if you can.

Crowds at World of Disney in Disney Springs

Also, if you want the item but it’s not a necessity, you can try another good strategy – waiting it out. What do we mean? Well, most of the time recently when these incredibly popular collectibles have been released, we’ve seen things come back in stock later on. It happened with the Starbucks tumblers that were so popular on October 1st, with the Splash Mountain merchandise that had multi-hour lines, and the Figment popcorn buckets are even still available at this point.

Starbucks Tumblers have been POPULAR for the 50th Anniversary!

Basically, if you’re hoping to score a popular souvenir, patience is key. Whether that patience involves standing in a line for a long time, dealing with crowds, or just simply waiting out the panic…just be patient. And as always, stay tuned to AllEars because we’ll keep you updated on the latest releases!

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6 Replies to “The Big Disney Issue Exposed by the Figment Popcorn Bucket”

  1. Strangely enough this same phenomenon has been going on for years with craft beer. A lot of popular breweries had to set strict limits on purchases because of after market sales or trades but even still you might have a 3 hour wait and have to call out of work to get some limited release. Some people even made a bit of a side hustle being paid “mules” to either accompany people to circumvent the per person cap or as “proxies” to go in their stead.

    The only real solution that has worked is just more availability. The problem is that puts the risk on the seller of making too much and get to stuck with the surplus.

    The other alternative is for the company to target specific resellers if they find it to be problematic with things like banning them from the parks but that gets pretty dicey.

    I feel like this is just the newest iteration of ticket scalping.

  2. Disney can fix this if they really wanted to. Put it all on shop Disney. It cuts out the resellers and allows any fan to purchase anything they want. But they won’t. The hype is the best marketing Disney could ask for.

    1. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really fix it, either. I was buying the Minnie The Main Attraction mugs because I absolutely love them. The first month went by just fine. I was able to order my mug on Shop Disney, and I actually forgot about it that day until dinner time. The months after that, though, there were virtual queues online for them, and I had to be on the website when they dropped. I have had to purchase every one of those mugs after the first one on Ebay for usually double what Disney was charging. All while there were purchase limits in place online. My husband and I both would be on the site at drop time trying to buy them

    1. Hi Valerie,

      Thanks so much for reaching out! The Figment popcorn buckets are currently sold out, unfortunately. We will update if or when they return!