'Frozen' freezes out Halloween costume competition

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This year, the costume mania award goes to . . . Hollywood!

The frenzy over Walt Disney Pictures' 2013 film Frozen has continued well into 2014. SLI Systems, a worldwide e-commerce provider for mid- to large-size Internet retailers and B2B sites worldwide, reported that consumers conducted more than one million site searches this Halloween season for Frozen-related queen, princess and snowman characters, making it the most-searched category in the study.

Other popular films, including Paramount Pictures' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Despicable Me's "Minions," Maleficent, and Book of Life also made 2014's Top 15 List.

SLI studied site search activity across 17 costume retailer websites based in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, and analyzed a total of more than 80 million consumer searches that took place between Sept. 1 and Oct. 26, 2013 and between Sept. 1 and Oct. 26, 2014. Combined, the e-commerce sites studied have monthly revenue of approximately $20 million.

"Our data team compared the most popular site search terms across costume retailer e-commerce sites using our Learning Search service during the 2013 and 2014 Halloween seasons," said Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems. "Disney's Frozen-themed costume searches simply 'freeze out' all competition, including Paramount's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in Halloween 2014. In fact, 'Frozen' received 122 percent more search activity than 'TMNT' this year, and nearly 160 percent more search activity than any movie in 2013 – the most popular film-related costume search being 'Batman' in 2013."

The Top 15 Most-Searched Costume Themes of 2014, in order:
(seven are movie themes)

1.    Frozen – 1,192,000 (includes searches Elsa, Olaf & other characters)
2.    Zombie – 863,000 
3.    Ninja – 863,000 
4.    Pirate – 796,000 
5.    Clown – 659,000
6.    Witch – 588,000
7.    Vampire – 565,000 
8.    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (TMNT) – 536,000
9.    Book of Life – 308,000 (includes searches for "day of the dead")
10.  Flapper – 277,000
11.  Batman – 251,000
12.  Despicable Me – 233,000 (78% of related searches for minion characters)
13.  Maleficent – 227,000
14.  Monster High – 206,000
15.  Star Wars – 148,000

Additional findings from the Halloween study include:

• Frozen-related costume searches in 2014 received 38 percent more search activity than the number two theme of zombie and nearly 160 percent more search activity than any film in 2013.
• Costumes with film- and branded-toy relevance made the Top Ten 2013 list (but none made Top Five): Batman (461,000), Despicable Me/minion (441,000) and Monster High (405,000).
• The top three most popular searches in 2013 were: pirate (873,000), zombie (828,000) and ninja (706,000).

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