Don’t be surprised if you have Princess Leia, Darth Vader or Yoda knocking at your door this Saturday, looking for treats. Star Wars mania is in full swing and is dominating the 2015 Halloween costume craze, as Hollywood blockbusters are again leading the costume trend this year.
Data from SLI Systems found Star Wars is an unmatched force with nearly 37% greater interest than Minions – the next closest film. In fact, this Halloween season, consumers conducted twice as many costume searches for Star Wars characters than Frozen characters, which were the most-searched costumes in 2014. Anticipation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is clearly attracting new generations, adding to decades of loyal fan numbers.
The top 5 most-searched movie-themed costumes of 2015 were:
- Star Wars (combines searches for Leia, Darth Vader and other characters)
- Minions (includes searches for Despicable Me)
- Frozen (includes searches for Elsa, Olaf and other characters)
- Marvel Universe (includes Hulk, Thor, Ironman, Spiderman and other characters)
- Maleficent
As noted in a recent Multichannel Merchant article, SLI studied site search activity across e-commerce costume retailer websites based in the U.S., Canada and Australia, analysing a total of more than 10 million consumer searches taking place between Sept 1 and Oct 20, 2015.
The SLI data team compared the most popular site search terms across costume retailer websites using our Learning Search® service and found interest in current events as well. For instance, searches for ‘Trump’ increased significantly, with 33x more searches than the same timeframe in 2014. The data also revealed, the search term “Trump” was 38% more popular than “Ironman”!
Here are some of the additional findings from SLI’s 2015 Halloween Costume Site Search study:
- The top three most popular non-movie searches in order were: witch, pirate and zombie
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-related searches remain popular but missed the Top Five movie-themed list, coming in 6thplace
- Supergirl (and Superwoman) was 3.5x more popular than Trump and nearly 5x more popular than Ironman, the least popular Marvel super hero this season
- Spiderman was the most popular Marvel super hero
- Maleficent saw 3x the searches compared with (Princess) Leia
So if you haven’t already bought your Halloween costume for Saturday, there is still time. You can either buck the trend or join the legion of fans who will pay homage to the Star Wars franchise.
May the force be with you!
