Fun's the focus

In August, the Tarrytown, NY-based company introduced "kid-friendly" graphics to an outer film wrap for its Laughing Cow® Cheezbits®. This pasteurized cheddar cheese snack "was always a children's product, but didn't look like it," confesses Becky Ryan, director of marketing. "Packaging graphics for kids' products have become much more colorful and vital in the past few years, and we felt we were out of step." Not any longer. Enlisting the help of strategic branding firm Cornerstone Design Associates (New York, NY), the product's graphics communicate in a fun and colorful manner how kids can "interact" with the snacks. It's more than just eating the cubes whole, or squishing the cheese onto a cracker. It also includes reading fun facts and trivia questions inside the foil-based wrapper around each cube. According to the overwrap's converter, Clark Container (Lyles, TN), the 1.4-mil cellulose overwrap is coated on both sides with polyvinylidene chloride, which provides moisture barrier and heat sealability. Clark flexo-prints the material in six colors. A 24-pt clay-coated paperboard tray contains 24 individually wrapped cheese cubes. The 4-oz 24-pack retails for $1.99 to $2.69 and is now available nationwide. Ryan says the product has about a nine-month shelf life and "was very promising in consumer research" conducted previous to its launch last summer.