By Mark Seavy  

Halloween and Holiday displays are increasingly creating opportunities for licensing as elaborate outdoor decorations go viral on social media and drive demand.  

This push for TikTok- and Instagram-ready displays is driving a cottage industry of professional designers and installers, which has in turn given rise to ever-larger licensed inflatables. 

Spirit, best known for its Halloween-themed pop-up stores, is selling a 15-foot Bumble character of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer fame as well as a seven-foot animatronic Frosty the Snowman. Walmart has a seven-foot Gary character from SpongeBob SquarePants and home improvement chain Lowe’s is offering a 3.5-foot light up Chewbacca from the Star Wars franchise and a four-foot Stitch from Disney’s Lilo & Stitch.  

“What is driving the overall decorating for [the holiday season] is social media and people are getting inspired by the displays of their nearby neighbors and those 10,000 miles away,” said Eric Morse, VP of New Business Initiatives at Spirit. “Fandoms have also gone mainstream and if you look at the rise of the Disney adult and the cruise ship experiences, people have their fandom in their lives. It makes sense to incorporate some aspect of this into their décor for Christmas.” 

For its part, Spirit is expanding its holiday-themed pop-up stores to 30 locations this year (up from eight a year ago). Each one features a 10,000-square-foot showroom, many converted from previous Halloween displays. The chain is also borrowing from its deep roots in Halloween, launching light-up Christmas-themed Ghost Face and The Exorcist sweaters, a Santa costume with The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Jack Skellington, and a Santa jumpsuit inspired by The Grinch. The retailer is also having real-life “Santas” in 19 of its stores, with Cherry Hill Productions handling installation and photography.  

And while the majority of Spirit’s inflatables and other products are DTRs, the licensee/supplier Gemmy is a major supplier for Home Depot, with Bluey and Grinch characters, and for Walmart. 

The recent growth in outdoor inflatables has also been driven by the addition of high velocity (71-200 rpm) fans that allow the decorations keep their shape and LED lights that are brighter and draw less electricity. In fact, the business has extended into homegoods chains, with Williams-Sonoma’s Pottery Barn highlighting a National Lampoon Christmas Vacation-inspired collection that it expanded this year to 30 SKUs (up from 13 SKUs when it was introduced in 2022). 

“It is not just the Christmas classics and Disney only being featured anymore,” a licensing executive said. “There has been a pivot, and those traditional Christmas brands are seeing fans blend them with pop culture. The inflatables started with Christmas and then moved to Halloween, and I am sure the pandemic led to increases in décor because everyone wanted to celebrate outside and it became a trend. But, at some point, consumers will stop rushing out to buy more décor because they have enough already. Then we will see whether the trends hold.”