How Nerds candy became cool again — and found its way to the Super Bowl

If you’re a child of the ’80s, you likely remember Nerds, the pebble-shaped novelty candy that came colorfully packaged with two separate flavors per box. This was far from your typical sweet: It wasn’t chocolatey, nor was it quite like other oddball creations of the era, such as Pop Rocks. It had a nerdish vibe all its own. Now, some four decades later, that vibe is back.

Nerds has become an unexpected star of the candy aisle once again. According to the people who run the brand, annual sales have skyrocketed from $50 million to $500 million in recent years. And, on Sunday, Nerds is making its debut as a Super Bowl advertiser. It’s an unlikely success story that echoes the rise of a select number of other suddenly hot old-school brands. Think of Nerds as the candy equivalent of, say, the Stanley water bottle. Stanley has been around since 1913, but its drink containers have only recently become buzzworthy sensations. With Stanley, the transformation has been driven in part by the brand’s introduction of colorful and often limited-edition models that soon became collectible. With Nerds, which is owned by Ferrara, a Chicago-based candy company, the growth has been particularly tied to the launch of a spinoff candy: Nerds Gummy Clusters. “It was absolutely like a runaway train,” Ferrara’s chief marketing officer, Greg Guidotti, told MarketWatch of the response to the product, …

Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source