In the UK, the chocolate tin at Christmas is part of our shared cultural understanding. For a lot of us there are two key players: Quality Street and Cadbury Roses. As with all nostalgia-driven, dopamine-releasing products, the packaging design is a huge part of our enjoyment of them. The tin, the foil, the little card with the different types, all of it.
Now enter someone at Cadbury UK. I can imagine the meeting, I can even imagine the way you could bend research to support it. But they've made a critical and all too common mistake: forgetting that these experiences are part product, part magic.
They've treated this like something that needs to be made more efficient, like something whose idiosyncrasies need smoothing out, where the chocolate selection and delivery needs streamlining. They've forgotten that this is a ritual. It's as much what happens in your head and the extrinsic experience as the product itself. They've used a machine approach for a uniquely human and magical experience.
So they've put them all in the same packaging. (Well it's more efficient, right? Simpler on the factory line.) But did anyone want that? Isn't part of the joy the touch, the fact that I can find what I'm looking for at the bottom of the tin without looking, whilst watching a Christmas film?
This doesn't even consider accessibility. Now the choccies are indistinguishable from each other for someone with compromised vision.
They've homogenised the opening experience too. (Well it's easier to just tear open, right? Faster mouth-to-chocolate delivery.) No. The unique unwrapping experiences are part of the joy. The untwisting of the ends, the unpicking of foil, all of this contributes to the dopamine release. I think Cadbury's slogan was "unwrap joy" for a while. They should have listened to their own marketing.
Then there's the homogenisation of packaging materials. No more glint of foil or twist of coloured plastic at the bottom of the tin to signify you've found just one more of the one you want. And, in my opinion, the worst Christmas crime: putting the name of the individual chocolates on the chocolates themselves, eradicating the joy of looking at the card. "Oh what's this one? Ah nah, don't like that one. Oh yeah, that one. That's the one I like." That can be a shared experience too. Helping your grandparents read the card. It builds an emotional, nostalgic, dopamine-releasing moment.
All these tiny cuts and sad little efficiencies, when combined, reduce the magic and joy of a Cadbury Roses tin to an unceremonious, undifferentiated experience.
Luckily, Quality Street still recognise the value of ritual. Merry Christmas.
