Why your childhood snacks are back on shelves

If you’ve been catching whiffs of nostalgia on your latest grocery runs, you’re not alone. In recent years, a growing number of companies have been bringing discontinued brands back from the dead.

• Slice soda, a PepsiCo brand discontinued over two decades ago, was relaunched in January by organic juice brand Suja Life.
• Jolt Cola, a supercaffeinated soda popular in the ‘80s and ‘90s, returned this year after a failed revival in 2017. 
• Creme Savers, the fruit-and-cream swirled hard candies that were discontinued in 2011, are back this year.  

Other recent revivals include Odwalla smoothies, Diet Cherry Coke, Dunkaroos, and Hydrox.

Why revive a dead brand?

By relaunching familiar old brands, companies are able to bypass the expensive and time-consuming development process of building a brand from scratch, and endowed with built-in name recognition, while both indulging nostalgic consumers and attracting new ones. 

• About 15k new food products are introduced annually.
• An estimated 90% fail within the first 12 months of launching, per Food Dive.
• A recent study found that two in three Americans would pay extra to have their favorite retired products return, with food brands driving the most loyalty. 

But brand revivals come with their own challenges, and not all are successful…

Risk it for the biscuit

… In fact, Mike Kostyo, a food-and-bev industry consultant, told Food Dive the number of successful brand relaunches are few. 

Challenges can include recreating a product’s formula and sourcing the tech to make it — but the biggest hurdle, industry experts told Food Dive, is modernizing the product to attract new customers while honoring the way legacy customers love and remember it. 

• Slice, for example, which has 50% brand awareness among US consumers ages 35-44, was relaunched as a better-for-you soda with probiotics and less sugar, plus retro branding.

The bottom line: Brand revivals can be tricky to pull off, but with the endless stream of new products launching — and failing — every year, you can trust that companies will continue to shoot their shots.