LOS ANGELES — Standing in her kitchen, Nicole Fontanez let out a gasp as she cut open a cardboard box, revealing a plastic figure of Yoshi, Mario's dinosaur-like friend. The bulky toy was holding a hollow, polka-dotted egg.

Fontanez, 31, and her husband, Brian Fontanez, 36, were filming their reactions as they unveiled the newest addition to their novelty popcorn bucket collection for their YouTube channel, "Our Guilty Collections," where they chat about movies and memorabilia.

"It almost looks like a toy, like something you'd get [at a] Toys 'R' Us," she said in the video.

"This is definitely a display piece," he added. "There's no popcorn going into the egg."

At a time when theaters are struggling to sell tickets, exhibitors are betting on increasingly elaborate popcorn buckets like the $50 Yoshi container to capitalize on millennial nostalgia, drum up excitement for movies and ultimately increase profits.

The popcorn bucket business was in high gear in the run-up to "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie's" release Wednesday. In addition to Yoshi, theaters are selling $45 star-shaped Luma buckets, which light up and come in several colors. There are also mini Bowser cauldrons capable of holding five to 11 kernels of popcorn. The $8 cauldron set a world record for the smallest popcorn container.

The booming bucket business

Disney began selling simple souvenir popcorn pails in the 1990s and in 2010 introduced a 3D container modeled after Micky Mouse. But over the past few years, the novelty popcorn bucket business has reached new heights and expanded into cinemas.

Fan-favorite popcorn receptacles have included the pink convertible bucket released for the "Barbie" movie, a Wolverine bucket with his mouth open wide for "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" Galactus-shaped bucket, which, priced at nearly $80, is the biggest and most expensive popcorn container ever made. Some have even gone viral, like the "Dune 2" sandworm bucket parodied on "Saturday Night Live" for its resemblance to a sex toy.

AMC Theatres made its foray into 3D novelty buckets in 2019, when it started selling R2-D2 droid collectibles to promote "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," said vice president Nels Storm, who oversees food and beverage product strategy at the chain.

"We started to wade into this world carefully because it was new [and the buckets] were expensive to produce," Storm said. The "Star Wars" buckets quickly sold out, so the company took it as a sign that guests wanted more "tangible moviegoing memories," he said.

In 2023, the Leawood, Kan., company sold collectible concession vessels — the industry term for the buckets — for nine movies. In 2026, AMC plans to sell vessels for more than 40 movies. Storm said AMC locations have seen an increase in theater attendance when popular buckets are released. AMC merchandise sales, which are primarily driven by collectible concession vessels, totaled about $54 million in 2023, and have increased since then, said spokesperson Ryan Noonan.

Cinemark Theatres, which started experimenting with creative vessels around the same time as AMC, has also poured resources into expanding its popcorn bucket business. The Plano, Texas, company plans to sell vessels for about 10 movies in 2026, said Cinemark senior vice president David Haywood, who oversees food and beverage. "Super Mario" was a natural choice.

"One thing about people who work in this industry is we are all a bunch of nerds," Haywood said. "We look for some things that we love, and Mario really holds a special place in so many generations' hearts, from the first Nintendo to kids that grew up and played it on their Wii."

The fancy buckets are expensive to produce, but Cinemark considers them worthwhile because they augment popcorn and soda sales, he said.

"From a margin basis, it's probably not the most brilliant thing in the world," Haywood said. But "something that we really appreciate is how much fun and joy that it brings to the experience. ... At the end of the day, that's all we do here as a movie theater, right? We're here to sell that joy."

Limited releases drum up hype

For some collectors, the scarcity is part of the appeal. The day the Yoshi bucket was set to drop, Brian Fontanez woke up two hours earlier than usual and repeatedly refreshed the Cinemark merchandise website in the hopes of securing one before scalpers could snatch up the stock.

"I got lucky with this one," as the bucket sold out within the hour, he told The Times by phone. Though Cinemark is taking pre-orders, the next batch won't ship until August, according to the company's website.

The first bucket the Fontanezes bought was Billy the Puppet from the horror movie "Saw X." Also in their collection is a "Scream 7" bucket with Ghostface bursting through a door — which Nicole Fontanez plans to use as a vase — and a crystal ball featuring Madame Leota, the ghostly fortune teller from Disney's "Haunted Mansion." The Cranford, N.J., couple estimate they've spent more than $500 on buckets since they began collecting them in 2023.

"It's a way to commemorate ... the movies we love, and showcase them, obviously for ourselves, but also for people that come over or people that view our videos," Nicole Fontanez said.

Some movie buffs, like Yuba City resident Mark Sullivan, will travel far for the buckets.

Sullivan, 40, said in an email that he once drove more than two hours to a Bay Area theater to buy a dragon head popcorn bucket released in conjunction with 2023's "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," only to learn that the theater ran out minutes before he arrived. He watched the movie anyway and later purchased one from an eBay reseller for a premium.

Sullivan, a hospital mobility technician, started a Facebook group for popcorn bucket collectors in 2024. The group, which focuses specifically on movie theater containers, not theme park buckets, now has more than 15,000 members who share tips on how to score new drops, trade or resell buckets, or simply show off their collections. Sullivan said the group gets thousands of new members whenever a horror movie debuts a container.

Haywood said that while Cinemark has increased the amount of popcorn buckets it orders to keep up with rising demand, it can be hard to predict months ahead of the movie opening which ones will catch on with a fandom.

AMC tries to make sure all its vessels sell out because it drives excitement among fans, Storm said.

"We want to have just enough," Storm added. "In some cases we miss short and in some cases we miss long."

Popcorn was once a lifeline for struggling movie palaces

Popcorn became the go-to movie snack during the 1930s as theaters sought new revenue streams during the Great Depression, said film historian Ross Melnick, a professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Before that, most movie palaces across the U.S. did not allow food and drinks inside auditoriums, as they wanted to preserve their carpets, rugs and upholstered seats, Melnick said.

After the Wall Street crash of 1929, theater attendance plunged as customers looked for ways to cut spending. In a bid to survive, theaters lowered ticket prices, introduced incentives like giveaways of dinnerware and began to sell concessions, which people previously bought from vendors or nearby sweet shops, Melnick said.

Around the same time, popcorn was popping off, buoyed by a surge in American corn production and the snack's popularity among soldiers. The snack was initially sold in small bags, but cardboard boxes and cylindrical tubs later became the norm in theaters, likely because the containers didn't make noise to access and were less prone to butter leakage, Melnick said.

Collectible popcorn vessels may be popular now because of rising interest in analog living, much like vinyl's growth, according to Melnick. Digital tickets have become commonplace, and ticket stubs have largely disappeared. People now turn to apps like Letterboxd to keep track of the films they've watched.

"The popcorn bucket creates a physical memory of that moment," Melnick said.

Nostalgia was what led Cypress Park food truck manager Fanor Sanchez, 32, to buy an alien head-shaped popcorn bucket. A longtime fan of the "Alien" franchise, he has since purchased three more collectible vessels and has planned trips to theaters on premiere nights just to snag one. He would buy more, but admits they take up a lot of space.

"It makes me feel like a kid again," Sanchez said. "It's like going to the store and buying a brand new toy that you're going to end up forgetting about in a week."

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