Earl the Squirrel has become a popular character at Universal Orlando during the Holidays and is considered the Resort’s official mascot for the Christmas season.
What started as a lighting mishap and turned into an inside joke within the entertainment team now has become a core part of the Holiday event. Recently, Universal has shared the official story of how Earl the Squirrel came to be.
The inside joke started after the Christmas tree lights wouldn’t turn on. One of the techs climbed up the tree and discovered not only that a squirrel had made his home inside the tree, but that the squirrel had chewed through the blue strands of lights.
Since then, Earl has been a fixture of Holidays for more than 15 years, mainly as a small hidden stuffed squirrel inside Universal Studios Florida’s Christmas Tree – but his popularity started to climb during the 2020 Holiday event after being featured in the very first Holiday Tribute Store.
Rob Cametti, senior director for visual merchandising and store design, and his team were working on the Holiday Tribute Store. Due to a series of last-minute changes, they found themselves with an entire room that had no design at all. “We decided to create this kitschy, maybe a little bit tacky, Christmas room, but we still didn’t have a theme for it,” Rob says. That’s when the idea of using Earl as the mascot came to be.
Once the Tribute Store opened, they quickly realized that Earl’s fanbase was much larger than they had anticipated. Before long, they launched the first official line of Earl merchandise. Since then, Universal has not only expanded Earl’s merchandise line but is also featured in a Meet & Greet inside the park. This year, Universal released an official storybook titled “The Tale of Earl The Squirrel,” and he is once again featured inside the Tribute Store.
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