AMC's collectible popcorn buckets are hot—here’s how to score a pink Barbie Corvette
Limited availability and cool designs have turned promo items for Star Wars, Ant-Man, and Transformers into prized commodities
Concession packaging themed to current releases is nothing new at movie theaters, but if you’ve been to an AMC Theatre in the last year or so, you’ve probably noticed that the chain has been stepping up its collectible popcorn bucket game in a big way.
One of the most anticipated movie collectibles of the year will debut at AMC Theatres when Barbie opens on July 21. It’s a convertible Corvette in Barbie’s signature shade of pink, big enough to fit the fashion doll herself (which AMC will also be selling, along with other exclusive Barbie merch). In case you’re wondering, no, there won’t be any equivalent official tie-in with Oppenheimer, despite what you may have seen on Reddit.
It’s no secret that movie theaters make most of their money on concessions, so it makes sense that AMC would want to focus on premium offerings to offset slower ticket sales in the aftermath of the pandemic. But even before Covid forced theaters to close, the chain was trying out new shapes and packaging for food and drinks, inspired by the elaborate and highly prized designs sold at theme parks like Disneyland and Universal Studios. Back in 2019, AMC offered this exclusive R2-D2 combination popcorn and drink holder to promote Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. Originally priced at $50, which included a large drink and popcorn, we’ve seen it listed recently on eBay for as low as $55 and up to $125 for one that had never been used.
If you got a chance to see Birds Of Prey in 2020 before everything shut down, you may have also seen AMC selling a bucket in the shape of Harley Quinn’s signature hammer (the bucket was in the head of the hammer, with an attached handle). In 2021, AMC introduced the first in what is now a series of popcorn vehicles, a light-up ECTO-1 model to promote Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was so popular it crashed AMC’s website on its first day of release. The pace of promo items has only increased since then.
Here are some of the other special popcorn bucket offerings AMC has created to go along with major blockbuster releases within the past year and a half. There have been others, but these are the most distinctive and most sought after by collectors.
- A Batman cowl from The Batman
- A “Popcorn Vessel” from Doctor Strange And The Multiverse of Madness
- Thor’s hammer from Thor: Love And Thunder
- A light-up Ant-Man helmet from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
- A giant 20-sided die from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
- Dom’s Charger from Fast X
- An Optimus Prime popcorn and drink holder from Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts
- Miles and Gwen’s heads from Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
Which brings us to the latest offering: Barbie’s popcorn car. It’s likely to sell out quickly, so your best chance of getting one is to pick it up at the earliest available screening. We’ve heard they’ll be priced around $30, which includes the popcorn. You can ask AMC employees at the concession counter to give you the popcorn separately, to keep your collectible free of grease and residue. If you don’t want to wait in line at the theater, the popcorn buckets will also be available for sale directly on AMC’s website. You won’t get any popcorn with it, of course, but it does come inside the original box (a must for any serious collector).
For those who miss their chance, there’s always the secondary market. Based on the popularity of past promotions, expect to see Barbie’s car selling on eBay and other reseller marketplaces within a week of the film’s release. You may or may not find promotional buckets for Fast X, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, and Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts in theaters right now, but they’re selling for as much as $200 on eBay.
Other theater chains like Cinemark and Regal have started catching onto the trend by offering their own promotional items, like this hard-to-find sculptured container for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (AMC’s Wakanda Forever tie-in bucket was a simple trapezoidal shape with Wakandan markings that lit up). Cinemark’s Barbie collection will reportedly include a studded cup, a beach ball sipper, a blanket, a poster, print-on-demand apparel, and more. It will be available in theaters as well as Cinemark’s online merchandise shop. Leave it to Barbie to have all the best accessories.