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OMY is installing its first dedicated displays at Relay Lagardère Travel Retail, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, with MIKY as the headliner.
A life-size milk bottle, planted at the entrance of a Relay shop at Paris-Charles de Gaulle.
Not a visual stuck on a shop window, not a sticker: an entire display unit, topped with a blue milk-carton roof, with OMY's signature eyes set on it and an “omy EXP.” sign like the one above a neighborhood storefront. On the floor, the character's name in big red letters: MIKY.
Around it, the usual terminal decor: a rack of travel accessories on one side, a bookstore display on the other, gray, smooth, signage. In the middle, a little blue house looking back at you. It is OMY's first dedicated display in an airport, and it does not go unnoticed.
MIKY, the object that shouldn't be here
An airport terminal follows a very codified aesthetic: gray, smooth, signage, shop windows you find identical from Roissy to Frankfurt. Everything is designed for flow, nothing for stopping.
MIKY works in exactly the opposite way. It is an everyday object, a milk bottle, given a face, and which the brand has this time turned into architecture. The display is not a stand placed at the end of an aisle: it is a little shop within the shop, with its roof, its sign and its name written in red letters on the base.
You will find the same big round eyes as everywhere in the brand's universe, right down to the creative vending machine installed at Gare de Lyon. That signature does all the work: you recognize the shape before you have even read the name, and an object that looks at you is not something you walk past like a shop window.
On the shelves, the assortment plays the same short-format card: packs of temporary tattoos cut into the shapes of monsters and animals, coloring kits, sticker sheets, small colorful accessories hanging up. Nothing that needs a table, a pair of scissors or half an hour to spare.
MIKY had already taken its first steps in retail at Selfridges in London. Its arrival at Paris-Charles de Gaulle confirms that the character travels well and that it speaks to adults as much as to children.
Kidult: when creativity becomes a way of life
The display at Relay is not aimed only at families heading off on vacation. It is also aimed, and perhaps first of all, at adults traveling alone.
They are called kidults; the word is also written kidulte in French, sometimes kiddult. A contraction of “kid” and “adult”, it does not describe adults nostalgic for their childhood, but adults who have simply stopped seeing play and creation as activities you give up when you grow up. A way of living, just like reading or listening to music.
One figure sums up the shift: 40% of European adults said they had bought a toy for themselves in 2023. Not for a nephew, not for a birthday, for themselves.
The airport is an excellent revealer of this behavior. It is one of the few places where you buy without guilt, for yourself as much as for others, at a moment when you are temporarily excused from being productive. You dare to do things there that you wouldn't allow yourself on a Tuesday afternoon at the office.
Why coloring works so well for adults
Long relegated to the kids' aisle, coloring has changed audience. Not through regression, but because it ticks rare boxes: no prior skill, no complicated equipment, a visible result in a few minutes.
Above all, it produces an absorption effect, that state where attention locks onto a single thing and time stops being monitored. That is exactly what scrolling a screen does not provide, and what explains the longevity of the phenomenon.
Waiting at the airport, that time we don't know how to fill
There is an hour and forty minutes left before boarding. Security is behind you, the gate is identified, the coffee is already drunk. This moment is like no other: too long to do nothing, too short to start something serious.
An airport is a suspended space, an airlock that belongs neither to departure nor to arrival. In practice, this time is almost always filled the same way: you scroll a screen, you watch the departure boards, you walk around the shops again with no intention of buying. And you board with the feeling of having lost two hours without enjoying them.
It is also, paradoxically, a moment when you are more available than elsewhere, temporarily excused from being productive, and therefore more inclined to allow yourself what you wouldn't allow yourself at the office.
What really survives a boarding-gate seat
Three criteria matter. The format, which must slip into a carry-on that is already full and unfold in a small space. The simplicity of the materials: a surface and something to draw with, no more, because anything that requires scissors, glue or water becomes impractical in a terminal as well as in the cabin. And easy pick-up, because the wait is broken up by announcements and gate changes.
This is the grid that guided the selection installed at Paris-Charles de Gaulle.
Dedicated displays at Relay Lagardère Travel Retail
OMY is therefore continuing its growth in travel retail with the installation of its first dedicated displays at Relay Lagardère Travel Retail, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport.
This is not a simple stand placed at the end of an aisle, but furniture designed for the brand, with its own silhouette and its own sign, which shows the OMY universe at a single glance in the middle of a terminal's flow. That is an essential difference in a travel retail store: people don't come here to search, they find. The object must therefore be understandable in three seconds, and a blue house with a milk-carton roof fulfills that contract better than a gondola.
The ambition is simple to state: to turn waiting times and journeys into true creative breaks. Before a flight, between two connections or at the start of a trip, OMY invites young and old to rediscover the joy of creating, everywhere.
Where to find them in the airport
The setup is not limited to a single point of sale. Three locations host the brand at Roissy:
- Terminal 1, in the public area, level -1
- Terminal 2F, after security, at the Relay Press Sky Priority
- Air de Paris shop
The first is the only one accessible to everyone, including those accompanying a traveler without flying themselves. The other two are located on the boarding side, in the waiting time that follows the formalities, precisely the one the brand is seeking to occupy.
A strategy that unfolds from terminal to hall
This installation marks an important step in OMY's expansion strategy, with the goal of making its universe travel well beyond traditional shops.
It is part of a series. After Selfridges in London and Relay at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, the brand has also installed its first creative vending machine at Gare de Lyon, in partnership with Selecta. A department store, a terminal, a train station hall: three places, three formats, and the same conviction — creativity doesn't have to wait for people to come looking for it in a shop.
What comes next is already being written, and it holds a few surprises.
Updated on 07/08/2026