Christmas is coming, which means annoying music in shops, an inevitable lack of snow, and Kim Kardashian charging $148 for the contents of her bathroom drawer.
Kim's 'SKIMS Accessories Advent Calendar' has achieved that rare festive miracle: making a chocolate-based advent calendar look like a sound financial investment. Because what we have here, for a cool $148/£158, is twelve days of tat. Hair ties. Scrunchies. Bobby pins. Keychains. A squishy toy. Something called a 'bra elastic headband'. It's essentially the contents of a lost property box.
Unsurprisingly, the internet is having a field day. A viral TikTok unboxing has attracted tens of millions of views, with its creator becoming visibly more exasperated as each compartment reveals another object you could reasonably expect to find down the back of a sofa, culminating in the grand finale: a furry compact mirror keychain.
It's worth saying that from a branding packaging design perspective, it's almost impressive. It's a nice-looking object with pretty illustrations, and the SKIMS wordmark is striking in a bold, festive red. But there's something beautifully 2026 about taking a handful of mundane objects, putting them in expensive-looking packaging and asking people to cough up the cost of an actual spa day. Like so many of this year's main characters (AI, subscription-based everything, $10 matcha lattes), it's overpriced, overhyped and underwhelming. But unlike AI, that $148 leaving your bank account definitely isn't artificial.
In response to the backlash, SKIMS has emailed customers who purchased the advent calendar: “We wanted to reach out personally about your recent purchase of the Holiday 2026 advent calendar. We understand the product did not meet customers’ expectations, and we are truly sorry. We want every customer to be happy with what they receive, and we fell short this time.”
Believe it or not, this isn't the first time we've seen a celebrity's brand take a hit as a result of an underwhelming advent calendar. Back in 2017, popular vlogger Zoella faced backlash for her own calendar. Like Kim's it contained only twelve doors, all of which were filled with items that might be found down the back of a sofa. Unlike Kim's, it was a mere $60. Inflation, eh?
