The New Taste of LifeSavers
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The votes from a major LifeSavers Web promotion are in. Raspberry, watermelon and blackberry will replace orange, lemon and lime. Pineapple and cherry escaped eviction from the LifeSavers roll. This is the first change in the lineup
since the candy hit the shelves in 1935. Experts predict the new flavors won't last as long as the original. With candy sales down and the market flooded with alternatives, LifeSavers will probably change the roll's flavors more frequently to keep up with the changing times.
Comments
It is both a sad commentary of the times, and an affirmation that the corporate individuals running the life savers legacy are not only clueless but also outright incompetent. Candy sales have been going downhill for a few years and the executive decision is to change flavors according to some market report fed to them as they learned to do in their schooling. Sorry, but no cigar! The old timers like me are the ones that made life savers, and now miss and no longer buy the current taste of life savers, simply because we do not like the new current flavors. I used to buy up to twenty of the packets a week, and no longer do I do that simply because I find the new current flavors too tart and unappealing. Just like, I no longer buy many American company chocolates that are now too sweet to my taste and instead buy German or Austrian chocolates.
Instead of offering a new line of new flavors alongside the old flavors to grab all sectors of the market, you have the executives who made this fiasco as far as I am concerned, kill the old flavors and instead try to ram they new one down the throats of us who were loyal customers. All for the sake of trying to get a new generation of buyers who have neither loyalty to the product nor a preference to it. Maybe I should learn to make my own candies and replace the idiocy of removing the old flavors from the market.