Four major companies in America continued to produce snow globes of varying quality and subject including souvenirs, but also holiday globes and novelty gifts. It was a similar landscape in Europe, with a few manufacturers dominating the snow globe scene. By the 1980s, snow globes were still a staple of the gift industry, but they’d also become the epitome of kitsch—probably because everyone and everything from Disney’s Bambi to the Lone Ranger to Niagara Falls and the White House could be put under glass and forced to endure frequent and bewildering snowstorms. But what does the market look like today? Oddly enough, snow globes remain big business. There is a sizable collector’s market for both antique and novelty domes. And Erwin Perzy III’s company is still healthy. The Vienna shop produces upwards of 200,000 snow globes a year, and that’s just a small part of the market. It’s perhaps a mark of how familiar a form a snow globe is, and what innocent—almost saccharine—kitsch they’re meant to be that they can be so gleefully perverted, as this collection of weird, macabre, and wonderful snow globes demonstrates.
Most people get location-based snow globes as souvenirs to remember particularly eventful vacations, but apparently some people want mementos of the donut chains they visited. Or at least, that’s the only logic I could come up with for this Dunkin’ Donuts snow globe. The Grumpy Cat snow globe is perfect for anyone who loves memes, anyone that adores Tardar Sauce or anyone who simply hates snow globes. Best of all, it’s not even officially for sale right now, so if you pre-order it, you can claim that you ordered the Grumpy Cat snow globe before it was cool … but it was still awful. Extra information at custom snowglobes.
To become a wide spread global gift, globes needed to be manufactured more efficiently. In 1927, an American, Joseph Garaja pioneered production improvements filling snow globes underwater. They went from an expensive individually crafted object to a cheaply made mass-produced item. Mass popularity grew in the 1940’s with the increased use of plastic and the development of the tourist industry. For those who could afford to travel with their families, souvenirs were in high demand. In response to this new market, the snow globe became lighter in weight, dome-shaped on top of an opaque colorful base. By the 1950’s every city and roadside attraction had its own snowglobe souvenir.
In case you forgot, gingerbread houses are linked to the Hansel and Gretel story. The most mentioned explanation for gingerbread houses stems from the fable created by the Brothers Grimm in which two little kids encounter an evil witch whose house is made out of bread and frosting. Engelbert Humperdinck’s play version of “Hansel and Gretel” premiered in Germany on December 23, 1893, which could explain why the story — and gingerbread houses — are associated with Christmas. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.