Sweets and Snacks Expo Recap -- Diana Style

Howdy friends. It's been a minute, have we all recovered?

Man, what a show. Sweets and Snacks in Indianapolis did not disappoint. It wasn't necessarily the products themselves, but just a well-oiled tradeshow machine that had wide aisles, clean floors and really fun and unique network offerings. (Indianapolis Motor Speedway being one!)

A heads-up - this reacap is my personal review, and may not align with others. So feel free to disagree!

Let's start here:

We are beginning to see the Mattel co-branding machine start up. Barbie of course, but Hot Wheels made its debut at this show, so there might be some interesting long term LTO’s given Mattels’ strategy to leverage their brand assets across categories.

Girl Scouts I think has jumped the shark. Too many brands working with them I think is diluting what they're up to. I could be wrong on this – but my feeling is that there are too many products/brands that are using the Mint flavor and I think it’s a long-term backfire.

Flavor Profiles – I feel like the pickle flavor craze is crossing over into other categories like meat snacks. Given the growing popularity of pickle and savory flavors I think these sorts of flavors would do will as line extension or limited time offer for an existing brand.

What’s new – Freeze dried everything. And melty candy-type products. I am definitely not the demographic for this trend, nor do I see any evidence that this is a long-term extendable trend, but it could make for some interesting LTO’s.

Nostalgia – Spangler is a strong winner here. I saw products that haven’t seen in the market for a while like Velamints. Maybe a good opportunity for some limited-time-offers from the way-back machine of some of our heritage brands?

There were a couple of fun ideas from Europe that I wish could take flight here in the US like this one: https://www.theshuktexas.com/product/bonbo-dream-puffs-3-5oz-/3013, specifically.

Innovation was poor this time around. Didn’t see anything of interest on the energy side. Here’s what I did see that was fun:

• Low and Slow Snacks – smoked chips. Smoked with a real smoker, not just liquid smoke. This product is legit. If you like smoked food – get your hands on these today.
• Rap Snacks – not new, but I love anything that Snoop Dog does. But this brand is also laser-focused psychographic that no one is really paying attention to (without sanitizing or pandering to). This brand is going to explode, fast!
• Bad Monkey Popcorn – heat and eat popcorn in a compostable bag! Sign me up. C-store and grab-and-go retailers were excited about having fresh popped popcorn, without having a machine. (Time will tell if the compostable bag does what the manufacturer says is does. But it looks legit, and Canadians don’t lie….)

What I didn’t see:

At Expo West, there was an influx of new/copycat groovy design language from the 60’s/70’s. (Wacky type, maximalist bold colors and patterns) Most of it was found on emerging brands and poor fast-moving consumer packaged good execution. I saw only a couple of samples of really well-done logo’s/typeface at this show. For those more established brands, here’s an idea for a limited-time offer design that doesn’t defrock a legacy brand. And for those small and emerging brands, beware: This trend will go stale in a short time, and you’ll date yourself and need to redesign - post haste. A little goes a long way with this design trend, use it sparingly, unless you've got an endless budget.

Very little Maximalist design systems - and there's room for a lot of beautification by moving away from the start minimalist design language we've been seeing in packaging for the last several year.

What do you think? What did you see?

PS - Special thanks to my friends Elizabeth Corbett Duncan Alney Nick Mendoza for making this show extra fun!