Amazon just wrapped up a successful holiday shopping season. It sold 36.8 million items on Cyber Monday alone, or 426 items per second.
The company also revealed the most popular holiday purchases in a range of categories. Some of the items are kind of surprising…
The most popular grocery item was…
A Miracle-Gro AeroGarden kit, which is a dirt-free herb and plant-growing aparatus that allows its owners to raise their own herbs in the confines of their kitchen. The Miracle-Grow beat out the well-known K-Cup Keurig coffee-makers, which topped Amazon’s list last year. This is what it looks like:
The most popular jewelry item was…
A pair of “Sterling Silver Amethyst Flowers Earrings,” which beat out the “Sterling Silver ‘I Love You To The Moon and Back’ Two Piece Pendant Necklace.” What’s surprising isn’t that the most popular jewelry item is purple. These earings just seem a bit elaborate to have garnered such wide appeal.
The most popular kitchen item was…
A Tovolo Ice Mold, which makes spherical ice cubes. The ice mold is a neat but strange choice given that the ice cubes it makes are large, and don’t fit into many standard cup sizes. It beat out a far more traditional non-stick baking mat set and Cuisinart griddle. Everyone fashions himself a mixologist these days: Amazon says it sold enough Tovolo Sphere Ice Molds to fill Mad Men‘s Don Draper’s whiskey glasses for 251 years.
The most popular home good was…
An art set. The Darice 80 piece deluxe art set, which comes with everything from color pencils to watercolor cakes and crayons, sold better than any vacuum cleaner, ornament, or decoration. It even outsold Swarovski’s perpetually popular crystal star ornament.
The most popular health and personal care item was…
The Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband, a sleep, exercise, and health tracker that straps onto one’s wrist. Amazon sold more Fitbit wristbands this holiday season than it did Philips electronic toothbrushes and Braun electric shavers. The popularity of the little gadget is a pretty clear nod to the growth of the internet of things and growing comfort with mini, wearable computers, as well as the skyrocketing trend in health obsessiveness.
