David Elliott: Back to the future?

Alongside the drinks, in the year of its 125th birthday M&S has a startlingly wide range of biscuits, sweets and treats wrapped in packaging that evokes a bygone era, and it’s not the only one – packaging, it seems, is increasingly looking back to find the future, with more and more brands tapping into their history to coax misty-eyed shoppers towards their latest offering.

Nestlé has announced that, alongside an ultra-modern-sounding move in stripping all the plastic from its adult eggs, among its Easter 2010 range will be two retro favourites: a Smarties egg complete with 1980s-style mug and, a throwback to the 1990s, a Rolo egg featuring an individually wrapped ‘last Rolo’.

Walkers, too, has realised the potential nostalgic packaging holds – its Monster Munch brand reverted to its 1980s branding last year, and it went the whole hog, bringing back much-loved but long-forgotten flavours, packaging and the original on-pack cartoon monsters. The brand has reportedly seen growth of around 14% since the switch.

In a further move to create a nostalgic hankering for its history-revisiting packs, the brand recently launched a 1980s-esque snip-out-and-send-off promotion, offering fans of the corn-based snack the chance to snap up a retro Monster Munch T-shirt in exchange for three coupons and a fiver – something of a refreshing concept in this age of interactive online tie-ins and access codes to extra internet content.

These are just some recent examples, but the list goes on. Burton Foods recently rolled out Wagon Wheels proudly decked out in 1970s livery; Cadbury’s slightly disturbing Caramel Bunny was once again allowed to gaze seductively out of morning newspapers and down into tired commuters’ cars from billboards, including on one astonishingly large ad on the wraparound hoarding outside the IMAX cinema in London’s Waterloo. And we all know how successful the revival of 1980s favourite Wispa has been.

But who is all this aimed at? The models promoting the Monster Munch T-shirts on the front of packs and supporting website are not kids, but twenty-somethings pulling tongue-in-cheek catalogue poses – in fact, Walkers targeted the relaunched snack at the adult market after research revealed a nostalgic affection for the brand among many 18- to 24-year-olds.

Perhaps all this is unsurprising. After all, it’s hardly a revelation that people like things that remind them of their childhood. What I find interesting as a consumer, though, is just how easily I am wooed by these promotions, and it’s apparent that I’m not alone. Brands and their packaging, it seems, may have a long future in resurrecting popular moments from their past.

David Elliott is production editor of Packaging News

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