The viral Halloween bucket hunt has a smaller sibling. As shoppers chase the $2.98 Halloween trick-or-treat buckets at Home Depot, Petco, and Lowe’s, they keep running into a different item entirely: a tiny, palm-sized version of the same hardware-store bucket, sold as a collectible for one or two dollars. Searches for “mini bucket,” “lowes bucket,” and “home depot mini bucket” have all climbed alongside the Halloween ones, and the two crazes are getting tangled together.
They are not the same thing. The mini buckets hold almost nothing and are built to collect, display, or gift, not to haul candy. Here is what each retailer is selling.
Lowe’s mini buckets: $1.98, and they come in colors
The center of the craze is Lowe’s, which sells a scaled-down replica of its full-size bucket, logo and metal handle included, for $1.98. It is a 0.4-quart food-grade plastic pail with a snap-on matching lid, small enough to sit on a desk. Lowe’s pitches it for craft storage, paint touch-ups, party favors, and gifting, and reviewers have made it a runaway hit, with thousands of ratings across the colorways and a “100+ bought last week” flag on the pink one.
There are three versions in rotation right now, all at $1.98:
- The pink mini bucket (Item #7516610) is the one that went viral, with a 4.9-star average across 816 reviews. It was listed out of stock at the time of writing, with a “notify me” option for a restock.
- The blue mini bucket (Item #6763129) is the standard color and was in stock.
- The “Lowe’s Celebrates 250” Americana bucket (Item #8147364) is a blue pail with a red-and-white 250th-anniversary design and three stars, and it was in stock with 927 reviews.
The pricier drops: a glitter bucket and a free cooler cup
Two limited Lowe’s drops are what a lot of the breakout searches are actually chasing. The Silver Glitter Mini Bucket with Lid ran $4.98 for a roughly 0.37-quart sparkly version, released first to MyLowe’s Rewards members, and it sold out in under half an hour before disappearing from the site. If you see it now, it is on a resale listing, not on Lowes.com.
Lowe’s also gave away a free mini cooler cup on August 22, handed to the first 150 MyLowe’s Rewards members in stores that morning. That is the “lowes mini cooler cup” people keep searching for. It was a one-day freebie, not a stocked product, so there is no product page to order one.
Home Depot’s version is $0.98, and it is in-store only
Home Depot has its own entry in the craze: a 3.75-inch plastic mini bucket with a metal handle and the white Home Depot logo, at about $0.98. Shoppers have described it flying off shelves as a novelty collectible.
The catch is that it is a store item. A search of homedepot.com on August 25 turned up only the full-size buckets, the 2-gallon orange and Halloween versions and the 5-gallon Homer, with no online listing for the mini. If you want the Home Depot mini, plan on checking a store rather than ordering it.
Why they sell out, and how to actually get one
These are cheap, collectible, and produced in limited runs, which is a recipe for empty shelves. The Lowe’s colors and the glitter and cooler-cup drops move first through MyLowe’s Rewards, the retailer’s free loyalty program, so signing up is the realistic way to catch early access and restock alerts. On an out-of-stock color, the product page’s “notify me” button is the best tool you have. Lowe’s ships free on orders over $45 and most single-bucket buyers are looking at in-store pickup or adding to a larger cart.
A reminder: these are not trick-or-treat buckets
If you came here from the Halloween bucket hunt, the mini buckets will not do the job. They hold well under half a quart, which is enough for a few pieces of candy at most. For an actual trick-or-treat haul, the full-size Halloween buckets from Home Depot, Petco, and Lowe’s are the ones you want, and we track every price and which ones ship in our multi-retailer guide.
More 2026 retail coverage from HAN
- Halloween Buckets 2026: Every Retailer’s Price and Where They Actually Ship
- Home Depot’s Viral Halloween Buckets Are Back for 2026
- Home Depot Debuts the 2026 Halloween Collection
- Target’s 2026 Halloween Collection
Prices, sizes, and stock as listed by each retailer at the time of writing. The Lowe’s mini buckets were verified in-browser on August 25, 2026, and the glitter bucket, cooler cup, and Home Depot mini bucket details were confirmed against retailer and deal-tracker reporting on the same date. Stock on these limited-run items moves fast, so check the product page before a trip.
