If you spent the long weekend in a chilly theater for an Alien: Romulus matinee, there is a good chance you witnessed a few superfans munching popcorn pulled from a matte-black Xenomorph head. The novelty popcorn bucket is available at Cinemark and AMC theaters, and it retails for a hefty $28.99. (A latch at the top of the skull can be flipped backwards, allowing patrons to fill the interior with the snack of their choosing.)
It’s an unwieldy canister, an object that favors aesthetics over utilitarianism, and yet, the bucket has been a huge hit, and is already commanding a premium on eBay. That’s great news for Zinc Group, an international advertising firm that has carved out an unlikely niche: designing maximalist, and often grotesque, popcorn receptacles for some of the world’s most dedicated fandoms.
Most moviegoers became familiar with Zinc’s work in the run-up to the release of Dune Part Two, where the company unveiled their wonderfully weird sandworm-themed popcorn bucket. To retrieve their mid-movie snack, audiences had to reach into the moist, gaping mouth of the shai-hulud, an orifice that unintentionally resembled a gnarly sadomasochistic sex toy. (The bucket was widely parodied online and elsewhere, to the point of earning its own Saturday Night Live sketch.) But no puritanical backlash followed. In fact, the Dune buckets flew off of shelves, leading to an incursion of mega-brand imitators hoping to snag a fraction of the same viral ubiquity. (Deadpool and Wolverine gratuitously amped up the lewdness in its version, and an eldritch Beetlejuice model—designed by a different company—followed suit.)
Despite the cheesiness of the subject matter, it’s always been clear that a lot of craftsmanship goes into these buckets. That’s why I reached out to Zinc’s Vice President of Business Development Rod Mason, and Global Creative Director Marcus Gonzalez, who are the auteurs behind the novelty popcorn bucket renaissance. We talked about the creative satisfaction they find in the medium of novelty swag, the huge number of factors that must be considered when developing a popcorn receptacle, and yes, how they reacted to the internet’s interpretation of that sandworm mouth. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When did dreaming up different popcorn bucket sculptures become a real part of your day jobs?
Rod Mason: Back in the early 2000s I was working for a different company and we started doing this with a theater chain in Mexico, where we actually started creating collectible popcorn buckets for the cinemas. I remember having a conversation with one of the major cinema chains in the U.S. about it in 2009 or 2010. I said, “We’re really doing huge business with this in Latin America. Would you guys like to be involved?”
They were like, “No, no, we’re good. We’re fine.” Years later, here we are.
Marcus Gonzalez: I worked for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and I was responsible for developing their novelty programs. If you go to the parks, I made anything related to food—tiki mugs, popcorn buckets, sippers, globe products, you name it. I joined Zinc almost three years ago, and they had already been working on an R2-D2 combo bucket [snacks and a drink in the same vessel]. It’s, uh, really big. The dome is the sipper and the cylindrical part is the popcorn bucket. It’s pretty amazing.
Mason: When we first started working on the R2-D2 bucket, I was talking to our creative director at that time, and he was like, “What do you think?” I said, well, it’s going to be very expensive, but let’s throw it out there and see what people say. The response we got was so great that we kept doing it.
Since then, we’ve been improving things incrementally. Three or four years ago, there were no lights on the buckets, there was no sound, and they didn’t have any bells or whistles. Now, there is light, there is sound, and in some cases, there is articulation or movement. It’s an evolutionary process.
Gonzalez: We did a few other ones, too, prior to Dune. We had good success, but they didn’t exactly go viral. One was Dungeons and Dragons. We did the 20-sided die as a popcorn bucket, which wasn’t something that Hasbro were even remotely interested in. It wasn’t in the contract. I did a little doodle of it and I said, “I’m thinking about this.” Wizards of the Coast ultimately said, “Well, we weren’t thinking about that, but it’s pretty cool, so let’s figure out how to make it happen.”
Was it the SNL sketch about the Dune popcorn bucket that made you realize these items were having a real moment?
Mason: Interestingly enough, even before the SNL sketch came out, my son, who was 26 at the time, said, “Hey, dad, did you do the Dune bucket?” I said, “Yeah, why? It hasn’t been released yet.” He said, “Yeah, check out Twitter.” I guess someone got a hold of it, and it showed up on Reddit first, and then on Twitter, and the rest is history.
It was a little concerning because there was what could be construed as “negative press” for the IP’s home, which is Legendary Pictures, and the client, which was AMC. But both of those companies decided to just embrace it. Then, when the SNL sketch happened, that was the beginning of the craziness.
You must be referring to that fairly puerile meme spawned by the Dune bucket. It sounds like the studio ultimately embraced it, but were there any moments of anxiety when people started commenting on the, let’s say, anatomical parallels in the design?
Mason: The funny thing with Dune Part Two, as you’re probably aware, was the actor strike last year. The movie was supposed to be released in November, but it got moved to March 2024. Still, all of the popcorn buckets were produced last summer. They were delivered and they were just sitting in warehouses all over the world. During the approval processes that you have to go through with the studio, everybody reviewed the bucket and made sure it was all good. I don’t remember anybody having any concerns.
Gonzalez: After the fact, we had a couple of people say, “I had a little chuckle about it,” but that was about it. It just went right through all the checkpoints. We certainly didn’t think that anyone was going to be looking at it inappropriately.
Now there are people combining the Dune bucket with the Xenomorph that we just put out for Alien Romulus. The back of the head conveniently fits inside the mouth of the worm, which it’s like ... what? Who takes a look at those two things and goes, “Hey …”
Mason: When the meme broke, there was some initial anxiety. There were definitely some concerned phone calls. It was like, “Oh my god, how is this going to affect AMC? How is this going to affect Legendary?” Luckily, both those organizations leaned into it and just said, “Okay, you know what? Let’s roll with it.” Really, when it comes down to it, what can you do? When it’s out there on social media, you either embrace it or you try to fight it. I think if you try and fight it, I think you tend to make it worse.
After the Dune bucket blew up—or even after a couple of these other successes—were vendors more intrigued to work with you guys? Have the wheels been greased in this industry at all?
Mason: That’s an understatement. It’s just astonishing. We are receiving very regular inquiries as to what we can do for TV shows, professional sports teams, professional sports leagues—pretty much everybody. You probably saw the whole thing with Deadpool and how they wanted to have the war of the popcorn buckets. And if you look on social media, there’s a popcorn bucket out there for a movie that I think is releasing today or next week, and they’ve referenced the Sandworm for that.
It’s really become part of the zeitgeist. It’s one of these weird things that everybody wants to have fun with. Now, as to whether the trend will continue, who knows? We’ll have to see, because obviously there’s a bar that’s been set. We’ll see where it goes.
I’m desperate to know how the sausage gets made. Do you model the buckets in 3D first? How dirty do your hands get when you’re making them?
Gonzalez: We first try to understand what the clients’ needs are and what the sales team is going to want, but we also have our own ideation sessions. Then we either sketch the ideas out, or Photoshop them, or AI them. Then we present the ideas and talk about it and see what sticks. Is that too weird? Do we think it’s going to cost $50? Is it going to be within the right price ranges? We start broad, and then we whittle it down to hone in on the ideas that we think are going to have more traction. We’re looking for the next new, big, innovative thing.
In the meantime, we also show the ideas to the licensor and have them say, “Yeah, we don’t want you to have Snoopy with a machete” or something. That’s just a hypothetical, but we make sure that we’re not including design elements that may be inappropriate for the characters or IP.
Then we go into tooling. During this phase we’ll get prototype images and figure out the paint applications. The most difficult products are the ones that have a human face, because getting skin tones and the shadows and all that stuff can be challenging. Once the paint is figured out, we make sure it functions the way we originally intended it to. Between the art director and myself, we usually review those things to make sure we’re on track. Also, at the same time they’re working with sales and are also in tune with their clients to make sure that is what they envisioned when we show the product.
These buckets seem to keep getting bigger and more elaborate. Is there something like an arm’s race going on for novelty popcorn buckets?
Mason: Absolutely. Marcus and I share a lot of stuff back and forth that we see on social media, and say “That’s a good idea.” I’m sure our competitors do that, as well. I hate saying this, but way back, a decade ago, we were the company that was really making these products in the cinema business. When we opened the U.S. office here in 2016, the biggest objection was, “Well, these buckets don’t fit in any cup holder.” Then you fast forward three years and you’ve got this giant R2-D2 item being sold.
When there’s innovation, there’s also copying. We’ve always been the innovator. Our competitors have innovated, as well. I don’t want to take anything away or speak badly of them, because they’re obviously very good at what they do. We’ve pushed the envelope over the past eight to 10 years, and as a result of that, I think the people that have benefited the most are the fans.
Everybody’s trying to outdo each other, and we’re all trying to make something that’s really cool. We all want to get social media traffic. But it’s also a destination thing. It’s like when Marcus was working for the Disney theme parks—they were the only place you could get those novelty products. What the cinemas have realized, not just here in the U.S. but all over the world, is that if you are the only company in your country that has that item, you become a destination and they have to come to you to purchase it.
Do you take an artist’s pride in this stuff? I know they’re novelty items, but they’re still impressive. I’m curious to know if you get any creative satisfaction from designing popcorn buckets.
Gonzalez: Seeing the sketches, seeing the 3D renders, it’s cool. You’re like, “This is starting to look pretty awesome.” Holding that final piece and knowing the work that everybody put in to get it done—all the approval processes with the licensors and all that stuff—is pretty amazing. So I definitely have a sense of pride and appreciation for all the work that everybody’s done. When I’m holding the product and it’s even better than I originally expected, I get that goosebumps feeling. The hair on the back of your neck tingles and you go, “We made this cool thing that everyone’s going to go batshit about.”
Mason: I had a three-year-old niece here about two months ago, and my office is just like a toy store—there are samples all over the place. For me personally, this stuff doesn’t excite me. It’s cool, but when you see a little three-year-old or a four-year-old or somebody that is really into this stuff, that’s when I get really excited about it. Sometimes I tend to forget that what we’re really doing is bringing joy to people. It makes them really happy. That’s really cool to me.