As Alley Cats and Hound Dogs aren’t yet available we can only presume that they taste like percy pigs, a similar sweet and brand leader. For this reason we tracked our thoughts whilst devouring these ‘soft gums’.
Percy Pigs
These are described as “Fruit Flavoured” on the packaging. The word fruit is extremely vague, it’s like ordering ‘Meat and Chips’ and hoping for the best. When looking further and at the ingredients you discover that the actual fruits are:
“Elderberry, Grape, Blackcurrant, Raspberry, Strawberry and Cherry”.
When looking at a single Percy Pig it’s split into two sections, (three if you count the ears separately, but let’s not) The face and the ears.
The ears are flavoured with real fruit juices, much like the Cats and Dogs will be.
When it came to eating the pigs, the fun part, we noticed that they actually have quite a sickly aspect to them, and although being desperately more-ish, we did feel a bit ill after eating a large amount of them.
It became increasingly clear that the face area of the pigs were suspiciously bland with the majority of the flavour resting in the ears, with the real fruit juice.
The tastiest and presumably healthiest part of the pig is the part with the real fruit juice, something to think about for the Cats and Dogs.
Penny Pigs
Percy’s female counterpart is “Lemon Flavoured”, more specific and comforting than merely ‘fruit’, you know what you’re getting.
Penny’s face is still lacking in flavour but overall is stronger tasting than Percy, particularly in the ears. Penny Pigs attain a certain sharpness that’s reminiscent of Lemon drizzle cake/slices and sherbet lemons, it’s a very specific flavour and carries a sense of nostalgia.
Again the real fruit juice filled ears were the tastiest section.
Packaging
The packaging of both products is very similar to some of Gratterpalm’s work, particularly their work for M&S. It’s important to note at this point that Percy/Penny Pigs are owned by M&S.
A very simple packaging design that will appeal to children.
Percy Pigs are extremely popular
“More than £10,000,000 was grossed between June 2009 and 2010 in Percy pig sales in Marks and Spencer's UK branches alone”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/high-on-the-hog-how-percy-pig-came-to-dominate-the-sweetie-market-and-win-the-nations-hearts-1989583.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/high-on-the-hog-how-percy-pig-came-to-dominate-the-sweetie-market-and-win-the-nations-hearts-1989583.html
Competition
There are already a few similar brands to Percy Pigs and so Alley Cats and Hound Dogs are entering an already busy market:
Sainsbury’s Eric the Elephant
Tesco’s Cool Cats (Obviously extremely close to the Alley Cats, both reminiscent of the cartoon Top Cat, for me at least)
Asda’s Stanley Snails
Although potentially the least spectacular of the animal shaped gummy sweets, they have received this particularly funny review:
Great review, it's good that you looked at the ingredients and compared that to what you could actually taste... seems there was a bit of variation! Also, I'm glad you had a look at the work that Gratterpalm had done, remember that we need to impress the agency as well as the client.
ReplyDeleteYou pasted a link to a review of 'Stanley's Snails', the woman who wrote the review talks about her husband, which realistically means she is at least 16 years old...but she writes like a child. A bit irrelevant but it annoyed me so I thought I'd tell you.
Anyway, good work :)
Chloe and Myles