The Daily Carnage

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Smart Play

At CES 2026, The LEGO Group teamed up with Sphere Studios, Disney Consumer Products, and Lucasfilm to launch the LEGO Star Wars SMART Play experience on the Las Vegas Sphere’s Exosphere.

For the first time ever, the Sphere was transformed into a giant LEGO Death Star, and guests could sit in a life-size LEGO X-Wing cockpit to reenact the iconic “trench run,” blasting the Death Star live on the world’s largest LED screen.

The experience celebrated the reveal of LEGO’s new tech-enhanced bricks, minifigures, and tags (which launch on March 1) that respond with sound, lights, and reactions.

This is my house, I have to defend it!

😱 It’s Home Alone’s 35th anniversary.

To celebrate, Disney+ and Hulu rigged a life-size gingerbread house pop-up at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine.

The structure breaks the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest gingerbread house, a title untouched since 2013.

It’s more than 25 feet tall and 58 feet long, and it’s made of 5,700 pounds of flour, over 4,200 eggs, 4,400 gingerbread bricks, and 800 roof tiles, all held together with edible glue and fondant.

Eat Chicken, Do Crime

KFC Canada is promoting tax evasion this holiday season.

Since Canada won’t have a GST tax rebate this year, KFC’s “Tax Evasion Menu” will cover the tax itself for online and app orders.

A :30 spot from Courage features a shadowed and voice-altered Colonel Sanders encouraging viewers to visit ChickenTaxEvasion.com.

The campaign extends to mobile digital trucks that read “Commit Tax Evasion” parked outside of… banks.

Yay, a fun new search term for KFC’s SEO team.

Taylor ❤️ Travis

Congratulations to Taylor and Travis on the engagement!

Taylor Hayes and Travis Wickboldt, obviously.

Zola is borrowing some of the viral attention for the celebrity couple to highlight and elevate real customers in a new campaign called “Wedding of the Year.”

The brand is turning the couple’s Wisconsin wedding into a full-scale moment complete with Times Square billboards, subway takeovers, and a Netflix-debuting hero film.

All Soaped Up

Will 2026 be the year of the serialized microdrama? The market is projected to hit $11B globally.

Native has produced a 50-episode, mobile-first soap opera called “The Golden Pear Affair.”

The narrative will naturally promote Native’s Global Flavors with scent-inspired plot lines. Swoon!

The Claw!

Dave & Buster’s just dropped an $80 claw machine–inspired purse. Created with Chain, it even features a tiny sculptural claw charm suspended inside.

The launch ties into D&B’s viral Human Crane attraction, which is expanding to 112 locations nationwide. It’s OTT, just like this purse.

Put a Ring Pop on It

First, the Alex + Ani Polly Pocket collection. Now, this.

Brilliant Earth has launched a limited-edition capsule collection with Ring Pop, in which the colorful candies are reimagined as oversized gemstones set in 14-karat gold, hidden halo settings.

Y2K euphoria. It really takes you back to when your favorite flavor of anything was simply “blue.”

Ringing a Bell?

You know the iconic 1989 Hershey’s Kisses holiday ad? The one with the bells?

The brand recently transformed it into a multi-channel world for the Rockefeller Center tree lighting, featuring an LED-powered interactive mat (like the keyboard from “Big”) that lets visitors play the classic “Holiday Bells” melody themselves.

Naturally there is also influencer content, TikTok and Snapchat effects, SiriusXM integrations, Candy Crush rewards, and even a Lainey Wilson music video.

At a Moment’s Notice

Eurostar and DDB Paris are bringing back serendipity with “Unexpected Tickets.”

The campaign celebrates the reopening of the direct Amsterdam–London route. In an age when itineraries are exhaustively pre-planned, the work reframes spontaneity as a real luxury.

Using Eurostar Snap, the brand’s last-minute ticket service, the campaign hid disguised “tickets” inside everyday objects: a baguette that sends you to Paris, fish and chips that whisk you to London, a rented bike that takes you to Amsterdam.

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