We’ve got a past-present-future theme going for this holiday shopping suggestion list. And each item may have historic implications, depending on how seriously you take your football.
Or we can call it an up-in-the-air list with ventures, real and imagined, into the cosmos, plus a serious weather front.
Get popping
Central Florida’s biggest theme park story of the year is the opening of Epic Universe at Universal Orlando. There’s a dearth of park merch with 2025 branding, which would have been a nice debut-year touch.
Instead, we’ll seek out gifts from the Mysteries of 2020s Collection, more specifically, the popcorn container, to represent this slice of theme park life.
Universal sells the popcorn “buckets,” which are shaped like the golden compass-inspired Epic Universe logo and give off vibes from the Chronos, the 78-foot main-gate portal of the new attraction. It comes with a carrying strap, and the background, a sort of cosmos design, lights up.
The collectibles sell for $34.99 each, and that includes a load of popcorn, too. They’re available at stores at the theme park as well as Universal CityWalk. (Also check out shopuniversal.com.)
Like the emblem, but don’t like getting things caught in your teeth? The Epic Universe symbol also appears on T-shirts, mugs, caps, backpacks, beach towels, water bottle bags and more. And other Epic popcorn container options include Mario Kart and Toothless (of “How to Train Your Dragon” fame and an Isle of Berk favorite character at Epic).
In the words of Epic Universe’s exit portal: “You wonder which path to chart, the answer lies within your heart.”
A holiday ornament shaped like the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building is available at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. (Dewayne Bevil/Orlando Sentinel)
Space case
Let’s think very big and then go back to very small. What if the Vehicle Assembly Building, the 526-foot-tall boxy building at Kennedy Space Center, could dangle from your Christmas tree?
It’s possible, if only in a fanciful way, thanks to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which offers a wee VAB — it’s about 2.25 inches tall — as a holiday ornament. It has a small row of colorful bulbs near the roofline. It sells for $19.99.
The real-life version, we’ll say, is much pricier. Among its roles in the past was a home for NASA’s space shuttle fleet.
There are several other KSC-sold ornaments, including an astronaut-styled nutcracker, Space Shuttle Atlantis and Santa Claus with Apollo 13 landing parachutes (peppermint-striped, of course).
The ornaments are sold online (kennedyspacecenter.com) and at stores at the visitor complex.
The Orlando Storm, an expansion team of the United Football League, is scheduled to begin play in the spring. (Courtesy UFL)
Storm front
There’s no need to hunker down, but you can be ahead of the curve of the local athletic scene with an Orlando Storm T-shirt.
The team, part of the United Football League, has yet to play an official game, but there’s available merchandise already, including T-shirts with the stormy, hurricane-ish logo on them. If you squint a little, you can make O.S. out of it.
The Storm are scheduled to debut in the spring, one of three new teams in the professional league, and will play at Inter&Co Stadium, which has been primarily known as the home to the Orlando City and Orlando Pride soccer clubs.
So far, the Storm tees come in orange or white (as well as a purple version that is available only in a ladies’ cut). They sell for $39.99 at theufl.com.