An article about the success of the Snuggie in AdAge on Monday prompted me to compare the popularity of the two competing ‘blankets with arms’ – the Snuggie and the Slanket. I’m sure everyone has been plagued with the problem of cold arms when tasked with any type of activity while using a blanket, so these products were just in time for the holiday season to help chilly consumers. During holiday season, visits to getsnuggie.com were significantly higher than to theslanket.com, which may be tied to the Slanket’s higher price point. Visits to the Snuggie’s website peaked during the week before Christmas as shoppers placed gift orders and checked where to to buy the blankets in-stores.

Search volume was also significantly higher for the Snuggie and searches have remained stronger for a longer time frame. The share of searches for ‘snuggie’ were 3.7x greater than that of ‘slanket’ during the peak week of search activity before Christmas.

The popularity of the Snuggie has also extended over to YouTube, where the television commercials can be viewed online, as well as several videos that mock and parody the Snuggie as well. For the 4 weeks ending January 24, 2008, YouTube ranked third among websites that received traffic from the search term ‘snuggie’, behind the official website and Amazon.

Everyone seems to love or hate the Snuggie & Slanket, although perhaps the real barometer is on Facebook where the Snuggie has over 6,000 fans.