The day came, after more than 50 years of being in a cereal box, Melvin, the iconic advertising mascot for Choco Krispis cereal, disappeared. Like him, other characters will gradually disappear from the packaging.
The Official Mexican Standard NOM-051 establishes, in addition to the new seals that already appear in the different packages on the shelves, that pre-packaged products that contain one or more warning seals or that bear the legend of including sweeteners among their ingredients, They will not be able to show children’s characters, cartoons, athletes or pets, among others, since they encourage the purchase and therefore the consumption of products with excess nutrients that are harmful to health.
The foregoing appears in article 4 of said rule and will come into effect in April 2021. Several brands decided to go ahead and have already list of companies in bahrain with email address begun to remove the characters from their packaging. Such is the case with Kellogg’s products.
Melvin is the advertising mascot of the Chico Kris pis and like other advertising mascots, it was born to provide the product with a visual element that helps children’s consumers recognize the brand through its parts. Likewise, it creates a differentiation between the brand and others in the same category.
The first advertising mascot emerged in 1898 and since then brands have used them to give their product a friendly, recognizable character that creates a strong bond with the consumer.
From an early age, children are exposed to different advertising elements, which are accompanied by figures that represent animated and colorful characters that manage to make the child identify a brand long before learning to read.
It is at a certain age that children begin to identify products through graphic elements such as typology, colors and of course the characters that accompany them, resources used in advertising to persuade users about their consumption.
However, this does not happen overnight. There are different cognitive stages in children’s lives that are also accompanied by a facilitator, who in this case would be one or both parents or guardians caring for the minor.
Around the year and a half of the child’s life, a pre-symbolic phase appears, in it the elements of the environment are presented to him only as objects that he can handle and group within categories of similar thought. For example, an elephant in a package and an elephant in a video are still an elephant, as is a photograph of a shoe and the same object in three-dimensional form.
By two or three years of age, the child begins to distinguish between two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures and begins to give symbolism to the graphic representations that are presented to him. It is in this symbolic phase that children understand that cartoons or animated characters are a representation of reality.
It will be after four years and around seven, when children begin to recognize that the photograph or drawing of the object was given unique elements that may differ in colors and size from the real object. It is now when you will be able to distinguish the emotions and intentions transmitted by the object and will incorporate all the knowledge that you acquired through daily exposure to these objects.
Children learn about the world what their family and / or social group makes available to them, a product will not have the same influence and symbolism in a house whose consumption model is vegan than in one that has presented as part of their eating habits a cereal with a picture of an elephant.
According to the researchers K. Desai and W. Hoyer “a brand has a greater possibility of entering and remaining in a set of consideration based on memory when it is more noticeable or familiar, basically because of having had repeated occasions to interact with the consumer ”.
Thus, depending on the familiarity, scope and experience that the child has with the object, in this case the products that use animated characters in their packaging, the minor will be able to form an opinion about it.
But it is the adult who makes these products available to children and that is when they can relate the character with the taste and feeling that it produces and therefore, have a remembrance of the brand.
Almost all the characters who today say goodbye to packaging, grew up with a generation that today we are adults and it seems that we are the ones who are really going to miss Bimbo Bear, Sam the toucan of the fruit-Loops or Melvin.
Because if we ask those who are currently children, surely they will not be able to if you have already found a product that you want to buy, before adding it to Buy Leads the basket googlo it; You will be able to discover if in another store the price is lower, mention more than two or three names because they have not built a symbolic and meaningful relationship with them.
Throughout its history, Melvin has undergone different changes in his appearance from him to represent a less robust character and that the brand was not related to overweight or obesity.
