The latest craze among kids these days are bracelets (bands) in various shapes and themes such as animals, sports or letters. A recent article in AdAge discussed how marketers are hoping to take advantage of their popularity by creating branded bands for sports teams and entertainment companies such as Disney and Marvel Comics. While the bracelets have become so popular that schools are beginning to ban them for being distracting in the classroom, searches for Silly Bandz, Crazy Bandz and Zany Bandz have continue to climb each week. Last week, the volume of searches were 75x higher than the beginning of the year (week ending January 2, 2010).

Last week, there were 3 different queries around the banning of the bands in schools among the top 25 search terms in a portfolio of ‘Bandz’ related terms, but the searches were far outnumbered by the demand to find out where to buy them along with which ones are the rarest or most difficult to find. The top branded bands being searched last week were Disney (#15) and the Yankees (#27).

The official Silly Bandz website received the highest share of clicks from ‘Bandz’ related searches, followed by Amazon and The Official Seen on TV Store. Facebook is also a popular destination as well with a page where over 230,000 people ‘liked’ Silly Bandz.