The supermarket’s festive campaign features Kevin and his family for a third year running, with shoppers clamouring to get their hands on the toys.
Aldi’s Christmas character Kevin the Carrot has inspired shoppers to queue at supermarkets to get their hands on newly launched stuffed toys in his likeness.
Queues were reported ahead of stores opening as families woke up early to get their hands on the toys.
Earlier this month, Aldi released its Christmas campaign featuring Kevin for a third consecutive year.
His popularity has led the retailer to describe him as “just a humble carrot who stole the nation’s heart”.
This year’s campaign also introduces new character Pascal the Parsnip, who is determined to cause misery to Kevin, his wife Katie and their three children Chantenay, Baby Carrot and Jasper.
Shoppers took to Twitter to record their efforts to secure their toy, with some having an early start to ensure their place at the front of the queue.
An Aldi spokeswoman said: “Demand for our Kevin the Carrot toys has been exceptionally high. To avoid any disappointment, this year we increased the range by adding new characters such as Pascal the Parsnip, as well as the amount of soft toys available in each store.
“We also limited purchases to two variants per customer so as many people as possible had the chance to buy these products. As with all our Specialbuys products, these are only available while stocks last.”
The small Kevin the Carrot plush toy, available for £3.99, has already sold out online.
Customers can also buy a large Kevin the Carrot plush toy for £19.99, plush carrot kids for £2.99 each, Katie the Carrot for £3.99 and Pascal the Parsnip for £3.99, all of which have sold out online.
The discount grocery chain Aldi is expanding rapidly and plans to open more than 180 U.S. stores this year as more Americans skip nights out at restaurants and cook at home due to anxiety over the nation's economy.
The chain, with U.S. operations based outside of Chicago, went on an expansion tear soon after inflation began to spike in 2021 and opened a record number of new stores last year.
Food inflation has slowed, but it was still up 2.4% last year, according to U.S. data, and has soared about 25% since the pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.S. Labor Department said that grocery prices jumped 0.7% in December from the previous month, and that price hikes accelerated faster in 2025 than they had in the previous two years.
Last month beef and veal prices climbed 1% from November, and are up 16.4% from last year. Coffee prices increased 1.9% in a month and are up almost 20% over a year. Egg prices dropped 8.2% in December, continuing to fall after surging last year after a bird flu outbreak.
Trump's message on inflation during his presidential campaign and his promises to lower prices immediately if elected have rankled some Americans who feel it is not a priority for the administration after all.
The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries and electricity in recent months, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Aldi has sought to snap up market share as more families trade down, meaning they are changing where they shop to cut costs.
Americans are dropping trusted name brands for cheaper store-brands and swapping out the places they've shopped for years in favor of discount or thrift stores. It's been a boon for national bargain stores chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree.
That shift had begun before President Donald Trump’s trade war began, but appears to have accelerated over the past year.
Aldi said in 2024 that it planned to open 800 new stores by 2028 as inflation worries spread. It announced plans to open a record 225 locations last year in the U.S.
Aldi said Tuesday that it will add new distribution centers in Florida, Arizona, and Colorado and is still committed to investing $9 billion in the U.S. through 2028. The company is also looking to open more than 50 stores in Colorado within the next five years and plans to double its Las Vegas store count by 2030.
The expansion will give Aldi almost 2,800 stores by the end of the year, which gets its closer to its goal of 3,200 stores by 2028.
Traditional grocers are under pressure from bargain chains, massive retailers like Walmart, and also relatively new players like Amazon.com. In December, Amazon said same-day perishable grocery delivery had been expanded to more than 2,300 cities and towns, and the online giant said it has more expansion plans for this year.
FILE - An Aldi's Food Market in Salem, N.H on June 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
