25 October,2010 02:12 PM IST | | AFP
Carrot farmers in North America have joined forces and ad dollars to make chomping on pre-packaged baby carrots "hip" and "sexy" in a "Got Milk?" campaign kind of way. For Halloween, they are adding scary to the list this October.
Halloween takes place on October 31 and although an American tradition it is celebrated in many countries around the world with costumes, parties and treats.
The carrot folks are hoping to convince people to hand out their baby carrots branded in individual packs as "Scarrots" to young and old trick-or-treaters.
According to advertising blogger Erica Nardello, the agency that created Scarrots Crispin Porter + Bogusky were paid "a mere $25 million [ 18 million] to add an 'S' to its product name," by Bolthouse farms and other farmers.
Jeff Dunn, the chief executive officer of Bolthouse Farms, said, "We've learned that there's a huge groundswell of support behind our effort to brand Baby Carrots as the ultimate junk food and we're excited to offer snackers of all kinds a new Halloween treat."
According to the National Retail Federation's 2010 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey and BIGresearch, "Americans appear ready to open their wallets for Halloween. The average person will spend $66 [ 47] on Halloween this year -- similar to 2008 -- and total holiday spending will reach nearly $6 billion [ 4.3 billion]."
About $20 ( 15) of the $66 ( 47) spend goes to candy and although healthy snacks like baby carrots, boxes of raisins and even chewing gum are promoted, CNN's food blog Eatocracy points out "As for vegetables? Candy corn, of course. There are 364 other days a year for Scarrots."
A Sparklit web poll shows candy lovers prefer chocolate at 41 percent with gummy (16 percent) and sour candies (15 percent) following.
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https://vote.sparklit.com/popup_poll.spark?pollID=683749
If you think handing out Scarrots might get your house egged, here is a list of the best/most popular Halloween candies according to bloggers on Helium:
- Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
- Pop Rocks (new flavors blue raspberry, watermelon, and pumpkin patch orange for Halloween)
- Blow Pops
- Snickers
- Halloween-themed candies ("gummy vomit, gummy insects and gummy eyeballs that squirt when you bite into them," M&Ms in orange and black, candy corns)
