Stranger Things‘ immense popularity has led to similarly coloured LED lights selling out across the UK, as fans in the region seemingly look to celebrate Christmas with decorations that ape Winona Ryder’s clever method of communicating with her son.
In the Netflix Original series, Ryder’s character discovers that she can communicate with her son, who is trapped in an alternate dimension referred to as the “upside down”, using LED lights hung above letters of the alphabet scribbled on her wall. With Christmas being the ideal time of year to hang a bunch of tacky lights across your house without anyone saying a damn thing about it, many Stranger Things fans have therefore decided to make the show their Holiday theme, leading to unexpected shortages of multicoloured LED lights.
In a statement, B&Q’s market director for Christmas (yes, that is apparently a real thing) Mike Norton said: “The popularity of Stranger Things has had a completely unexpected effect on the sale of our multicolour Christmas string lights this year. We’ve seen a huge spike in demand and the lights are by far our bestselling range thanks to the show’s huge following.”
He added: “Despite the similarity in the lights, we’d like to remind customers that this product should not be used to try to contact the ‘upside down’. B&Q cannot claim any responsibility for Demogorgon-related damage to homes this Christmas.”
Oh, Mike. You absolute card.
Stranger Things was one of the breakout successes of 2016, with its quartet of central child actors becoming some of the most talked-about celebrities in the process. Despite the show having first aired on Netflix way back in July, it seems that its popularity has not dwindled during this time, with it also having been announced that a second season has been given the go-ahead for 2017.
It also looks like B&Q has been taking advantage of the extra spot of publicity Stranger Things has granted their lights, with one customer noticing this sign in one of the DIY store’s branches:
@BandQ strange things seem to be happening in my local store today… @Stranger_Things found your lights! #StrangerThings #TheUpsideDown pic.twitter.com/nJgeOmP0ah
— April Flanagan (@Flanners_85) December 6, 2016
