Just in time for Halloween, Snapchat has released its iconic dancing hot dog as an adult costume available exclusively on Amazon.
In April, Snap Inc. unveiled their “World Lenses” augmented reality filters that can be used with a phone’s rear facing camera to add avatars into the user’s surroundings. Arguably the most popular lens is the dancing hot dog, which spurred thousands of memes, Youtube Videos, and social media appearances. Now, Snapchat has brought augmented reality into physical reality and created an $80 Halloween costume modeled after the famous food. In less than seven days the costume has completely sold out on Amazon and second-hand sellers are listing the getup for over $150.
This venture into the real world could be Snap Inc.’s response to the growing competition in social media platforms. With only 166 million users Snapchat’s largest competitors, Instagram and Facebook, largely trump the platform with 700 million and 2 billion users, respectively. As Facebook and Instagram being to imitate many of Snapchat’s revenue driving features this costume acts as the push back needed to remind consumers that Snapchat just wants people to have fun.