Pumpkin spice season has officially reached the funeral aisle, with Titan Casket selling a bright orange Pumpkin Spice Casket for people who apparently want fall vibes to last forever. According to Titan Casket’s current product listing, the steel casket costs $1,599, features a white interior, and is part of the company’s Orion Series.
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The seasonal marketing is just as bold as the color. Titan promoted the casket on Instagram alongside pumpkins, cinnamon sticks, and fall foliage, using the line “Pumpkin spice forever.” The ad continued, “PSL season doesn’t have to end when you do.” Titan also captioned the post, “#PSL is back.”
Titan Casket cofounder and president Joshua Siegel told PEOPLE the idea was partly a joke about how unavoidable pumpkin spice marketing has become.
“Pumpkin spice… I think after 20 years reached a point where there’s a collective groan when there’s a lot of marketing around that,” Siegel said. “And so we thought it would be a fun chance to think about ‘what if we had a pumpkin spice flavor,’ which ultimately is just our orange casket that we offer every day.”
“By putting pumpkin spice on it, we thought it would just be really, really funny,” Siegel added. He also described Halloween as “a good chance for people to engage with talks about end of life.”
Titan has previously experimented with food-inspired marketing involving donut and jelly bean concepts, while customers can also choose colors tied to personal interests, including “orange because they were a Tennessee Volunteers fan.”
Behind the jokes, Titan is pushing a consumer education message. Siegel told the outlet, “Funerals in the US are too expensive, and people don’t often plan ahead or know what things should cost, all reasonably so.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule confirms that consumers may provide a funeral home with a casket or urn purchased somewhere else. Funeral providers cannot refuse to handle that merchandise or charge an additional fee simply because it came from an outside seller.
“We are very bold in how we market the company in ways that’s pretty unusual for the funeral space,” Siegel told PEOPLE. “And it’s because every time we turn a head, that’s an opportunity for us to educate them about their federal rights, the funeral rule, or encourage them to have a conversation about planning ahead.”
That approach has also crossed into entertainment. One of its caskets appeared in Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” music video. The company later named actor David Dastmalchian its first brand ambassador in 2023. Dastmalchian initially considered the partnership “gimmicky and funny” before connecting with its larger mission.
“I’ve lost two parents in the last few years, as well as a number of really other close, important people to me —and it was like, wow, yes. For a person who spends a lot of time telling stories from the dark side, this is a great introduction into the conversation of death, which is usually pretty head-scratchy,” Dastmalchian told PEOPLE. He said that kind of personalization could mean deciding, “I want a fabulous purple casket with a hot pink interior.”
And Titan is far from alone in betting that people want more personality in funeral products. Sky Caskets currently advertises custom caskets starting at $2,995, with galleries showing sports themes, photo memorials, bold colors, and even a PlayStation gamer design. The company also sells a golf-themed casket built around a fairway and green design. Caskets of Honor offers custom sports, racing, hunting, fishing, and other themed designs, while Designer Caskets sells custom casket wraps using photos, colors, symbols, and other personal imagery.
The Pumpkin Spice Casket may be designed to get a laugh, but the larger trend is serious. As funeral merchandise becomes more customizable and easier to buy outside the traditional funeral home showroom, even something as specific as a favorite season, sports team, hobby, or signature color can become part of a person’s final sendoff.
