Vintage blow molds disappeared from store shelves. Collectors kept the flame alive. Then a new generation discovered that hollow plastic Santas, ghosts and snowmen still had plenty of life left in them.
There was a time when spotting a light-up plastic Santa in somebody’s yard didn’t require explanation.
He was simply Christmas.
The snowman stood beside him. Candles flanked the front door. A choir boy glowed near the shrubs. At Halloween, jack-o’-lanterns and witches took over. They weren’t called “retro décor,” “nostalgia pieces” or even “collectibles.”
They were decorations.
Then something interesting happened.
They disappeared.
And now, walk through the seasonal department at Lowe’s, browse Target or Walmart online, or wander through the holiday merchandise at other major retailers and you’ll see something that would have seemed unlikely 15 years ago:
The blow mold is back.
Not necessarily the blow mold your grandparents bought.
Not necessarily the one collectors are driving three hours to rescue from an estate sale.
But unmistakably its descendant.
And few companies have played a more interesting role in that comeback than Gemmy Industries.
The Blow Mold Never Really Died
To understand today’s revival, you first have to understand what vanished.
The golden-age holiday blow molds produced by companies such as Empire, General Foam, Union Products and others became fixtures of American yards during the second half of the twentieth century.
Their appeal was beautifully simple.
Hollow molded plastic. Painted details. A light inside.
Plug one in after sunset and an ordinary piece of plastic suddenly came alive.
But changing tastes, manufacturing economics and the rise of newer decorating technologies gradually transformed the seasonal aisle. Giant inflatables, LEDs, projections and animated decorations offered retailers entirely new categories of holiday spectacle.
Ironically, one of the companies most responsible for changing that landscape would eventually become an important player in bringing the blow mold aesthetic back.
Enter Gemmy
Gemmy didn’t begin as a blow mold company.
Founded in 1984, its first product line was actually ballpoint pens. The company moved into novelty products and eventually became famous for something that anyone alive around the turn of the millennium probably remembers:
Big Mouth Billy Bass.
Yes.
The singing fish.
In 2001, Gemmy introduced its Airblown inflatable line. Those self-inflating yard decorations fundamentally changed seasonal decorating. Suddenly homeowners could put an enormous Santa, snowman or Halloween monster in the yard and collapse the whole thing into a box afterward.
Gemmy followed with LightShow products, projection technology, animated figures and smart lighting.
For traditional blow mold collectors, there is a delicious irony here.
The company that helped usher America into the giant-inflatable era would eventually help introduce another generation to molded plastic yard decorations.
The New Blow Mold Arrives
By the 2010s, something had changed culturally.
Nostalgia was becoming a major force in holiday decorating.
People who remembered the Christmas decorations of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s were now homeowners themselves.
Estate-sale hunters were discovering old Empire Santas.
Facebook groups connected collectors.
Photos of enormous vintage displays circulated online.
Shows like The Great Christmas Light Fight popped up and you could see huge collections alive in living color on your 4K flatscreen television.
Suddenly that glowing plastic snowman didn’t look outdated.
It looked wonderful.
Gemmy moved into vintage-inspired blow molds during this period. Collector documentation places its early modern blow mold production in the 2010s, with the line expanding significantly later in the decade.
And eventually Gemmy began doing something the old manufacturers rarely could:
Combining the visual language of the traditional blow mold with modern licensed pop culture.
The Grinch.
Rudolph.
Mickey and Minnie.
Jack Skellington.
Oogie Boogie.
Frosty.
Star Wars.
Casper.
Suddenly the blow mold wasn’t merely being reproduced.
It was evolving.
Lowe’s and the New Blow Mold Aisle
Walk into Lowe’s during the right part of the holiday season and the influence is obvious.
Gemmy has developed numerous exclusive blow mold offerings for the retailer. Its 2024 Lowe’s Christmas assortment, for example, included 24-inch Santa, snowman, elf, penguin, teddy bear and Nativity figures.
The following year brought items that would have been almost unimaginable during the Empire era: a four-foot Grinch, Casper holding a jack-o’-lantern, Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie, and even a Christmas Stormtrooper holding a candy cane.
Read that last sentence again.
A Stormtrooper Christmas blow mold.
Somewhere, an Empire Plastics Santa just felt a disturbance in the Force.
The 2026 Lowe’s seasonal assortment continues to list modern blow molds, including Gemmy’s Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie designs alongside other manufacturers’ pieces.
Meanwhile, Target currently lists Gemmy blow mold-style products ranging from licensed Halloween characters to Frosty the Snowman. Its Frosty, for example, is a 24-inch internally illuminated figure explicitly described as using “classic blow mold construction.”
And Walmart now maintains entire shopping categories around modern Halloween blow mold décor, including pumpkins, ghosts, mummies, black cats and haunted-house designs.
This isn’t an obscure collector phenomenon anymore.
The style has returned to mainstream retail.
Vintage vs. New: What’s Actually Different?
This is where collectors occasionally start fighting.
Mention modern blow molds in the wrong Facebook group and you’ll discover that people can become remarkably emotional about illuminated polyethylene.
So let’s settle something.
New blow molds aren’t vintage blow molds.
They aren’t supposed to be.
A genuine decades-old Empire, General Foam or Union piece has characteristics a new retail decoration cannot manufacture on demand.
Age.
Production history.
Regional associations.
Old manufacturing techniques.
Paint wear.
Variations.
Scarcity.
And, most importantly, provenance.
That faded Santa at the estate sale may have spent 35 Christmases standing beside the same family’s driveway.
You can’t injection-mold that history.
The Plastic Tells a Story
Older blow molds can also feel physically different.
Collectors learn to notice plastic thickness, translucency, seams, paint application, light openings, manufacturer markings and even the particular way a figure glows.
That knowledge is enormously useful when identifying an unmarked piece—which is one reason I devote significant attention to those details in The Glow That Won’t Go Out.
Modern production is designed around modern manufacturing, safety requirements, shipping, retail pricing and contemporary lighting.
Many newer figures employ LEDs rather than the simple incandescent lighting associated with older pieces. Gemmy’s current Frosty, for example, uses an energy-efficient internal LED.
That changes the experience.
Not necessarily for better.
Not necessarily for worse.
Just differently.
The Biggest Difference May Be the Design Philosophy
Vintage manufacturers generally created holiday archetypes.
Santa.
Snowman.
Angel.
Candle.
Toy soldier.
Witch.
Ghost.
Pumpkin.
Carolers.
Nativity figures.
Modern manufacturers still make those—but licensing has radically expanded the vocabulary.
Today’s blow mold can be a traditional Santa standing beside Darth Vader’s employee.
That matters.
Because licensed characters may be one of the best gateways into the hobby.
A 19-year-old Nightmare Before Christmas fan might buy a Jack Skellington blow mold because she loves Jack.
Then she notices an old General Foam ghost at an antique mall.
Then an Empire pumpkin.
Then a Union Products witch.
And suddenly she owns 47 illuminated pieces of plastic and is explaining to her family why the guest bedroom is now called “seasonal storage.”
Congratulations.
A collector has been born.
What About the Blow Molds at Cracker Barrel?
Stores such as Cracker Barrel are interesting because they illustrate another branch of the same nostalgia economy.
The appeal of old-fashioned seasonal décor isn’t limited to exact reproductions of vintage lawn figures. Retailers increasingly sell holiday products designed to evoke the same emotional territory: classic Santas, glowing pumpkins, nostalgic tabletop decorations and retro Christmas imagery.
That’s an important distinction for collectors.
“Vintage-inspired” does not mean vintage.
“Blow mold style” does not necessarily mean traditionally blow molded.
And “looks like Grandma had one” definitely does not mean Grandma actually had one.
If you’re collecting rather than simply decorating, flip it over.
Look for marks.
Look for labels.
Check construction.
Research the manufacturer.
Don’t date an object based solely on its aesthetic.
A decoration manufactured last Tuesday can be extremely convincing after somebody gives it a faux-1957 paint job.
So Are New Blow Molds Collectible?
Absolutely.
But they’re collectible for different reasons.
Some collectors pursue discontinued modern pieces.
Others collect licensed characters.
Some want every variation in a particular Gemmy series.
Retail exclusives can develop their own following.
Certain designs sell quickly and become difficult to find after the season.
The 2025 Gemmy Casper debut, for example, was described by Halloween Daily News as one of that year’s most sought-after new pieces.
Will today’s $60 blow mold become tomorrow’s $400 treasure?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
And that’s the wrong reason to buy it anyway.
Buy it because when you plug it in, you like what happens next.
That’s how most vintage collections started too.
New Doesn’t Diminish Old
I think collectors sometimes make the mistake of viewing modern reproductions as competition for vintage pieces.
I see the opposite.
Every new blow mold sitting under fluorescent lights at Lowe’s introduces the form to somebody who may never have seen an Empire or General Foam original.
Every new Grinch or Jack Skellington creates another opportunity for someone to discover why collectors get excited about a faded Santa manufactured before they were born.
Gemmy isn’t recreating the original blow mold era.
Nobody can.
That world existed because of a particular combination of American manufacturing, postwar consumer culture, suburban expansion, department stores and the wonderfully excessive holiday decorating tastes of several generations.
But companies such as Gemmy are proving something collectors already knew:
The basic idea still works.
Make a hollow plastic character.
Put a light inside.
Wait until dark.
Watch people smile.
More than half a century later, that’s still the trick.
The Glow Really Won’t Go Out
That’s ultimately why I called my book The Glow That Won’t Go Out.
The story of the blow mold isn’t simply the story of old plastic decorations.
It’s the story of persistence.
Companies disappeared.
Factories closed.
Molds changed hands.
Decorating trends moved on.
Inflatables arrived.
Projectors arrived.
Smart lights arrived.
And yet somewhere along the way, people began rescuing those old Santas from trash piles. Hat tip to Brandon (who you meet in the book).
They hunted down missing bulbs.
They repaired cracked plastic.
They compared base markings.
They drove across state lines for snowmen.
They built online communities.
And eventually retailers noticed.
Now the grandchildren of the original blow mold generation can walk into a big-box store and leave carrying a brand-new glowing plastic figure.
It isn’t 1974 again.
It shouldn’t be.
But when that new snowman lights up beside a weathered Empire Santa that’s been glowing for 50 years, something wonderful happens.
You can see the entire history of the hobby standing together in one yard.
Old glow.
New glow.
Same magic.
And judging by what’s showing up on store shelves again, the glow isn’t going anywhere.
Curtiss Wayne Andrews is the author of The Glow That Won’t Go Out: The Complete Collector’s Guide to Vintage Holiday Blow Molds, exploring the manufacturers, history, identification, restoration and collecting culture behind America’s illuminated holiday icons.