Prize (marketing)

Prizes are promotional items—small toys, games, trading cards, collectables, and other small items of nominal value—found in packages of brand-name retail products (or available from the retailer at the time of purchase) that are included in the price of the product (at no extra cost) with the intent to boost sales, similar to toys in kid's meals.

Collectable prizes produced (and sometimes numbered) in series are used extensively—as a loyalty marketing program—in food, drink, and other retail products to increase sales through repeat purchases from collectors.

Prizes have been distributed through bread, candy, cereal, cheese,[1] chips, crackers, laundry detergent, margarine, popcorn, and soft drinks.

Wills in 1888, were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements and, a couple of years later, lithograph pictures on the cards with an encyclopedic variety of topics from nature to war to sports — subjects that appealed to men who smoked.

Bazooka Bubble Gum has a successful loyalty marketing program, through the prizes (comics) and the premiums (mail-order merchandise).

[29] The first breakfast cereal prize was The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Book given to customers in the stores by merchants at the time of purchase of two packages of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

Cracker Jack had introduced plastic flats in its popcorn confection in the United States in 1948, and beginning in 1950, Fri-Homa, one of the leading German manufacturers of margarine owned by Fritz Homann, inserted prizes into its retail packages to promote brand loyalty.

[33][34] The first plastic margarine prizes were made by SIKU toy company owned by Homann's friend Richard Sieper.

Most of the plastic prizes from German margarine were molded in a light cream color designed to make them look like tiny carved ivory figures — though made of polystyrene.

Other businesses and attractions that distributed these prizes with purchase were Markt-Apotheke Pharmacies, Siebenhaar and Braunschweig shoe stores, and Berlin and Magdeburg Zoos.

More than casual collectibles among nostalgic adults today, these tiny plastic loyalty marketing tools are a noteworthy element in the cultural history of German-speaking countries.

Besides being the current owner of Cracker Jack, the U.S. popcorn confection brand known for the "Prize Inside",[38] Frito-Lay also regularly includes tazos and tattoos in packages of Lay's chips worldwide.

In parts of Latin America, Frito-Lay has even introduced a brand called Cheetos Sorpresa (English: Surprise), which includes a licensed prize (from movies, television, and video games) in every 29–gram bag.

A key promotional aspect of Chocopunch since 1997[41] has been, packaged with the product, colorful injection molded plastic cucharitas (mini spoons) — in the shapes of different characters from movies, television, and video games — that are collected as prizes.

The invention of a screw injection molding machine by American inventor James Watson Hendry in 1946 changed the world of prizes forever.

By 1948 the process was widely available, and injection-molded plastic prizes began to appear by the millions in boxes of Cracker Jack, breakfast cereal, and German margarine (1950-1954).

[43] Hendry also developed the first gas-assisted injection molding process in the 1970s, which permitted the production of complex, hollow prizes that cooled quickly.

This greatly improved design flexibility as well as the strength and finish of manufactured parts while reducing production time, cost, weight and waste.

[44] Lenticular lens technology, a major development in printing with significant applications in consumer marketing, brought numerous prizes — sometimes called tilt cards, flickers, or wiggle pictures — including images illustrated to morph from one view to another, show motion, or show depth (3D).

[46] In the 1950s, Vari-Vue produced lenticular prizes under the "Magic-Motion" brand that were inserted into packages of numerous consumer products, including Cracker Jack popcorn confection in the US, and Locatelli's popular Formaggino Mio cheese in Italy.

The first mass-produced ink-printed "parallax panoramagram" (a black and white 3D photograph of a bust of Thomas Edison) was published in Look Magazine on February 25, 1964, and sold 8 million copies.

[47] Optigraphics Corporation of Grand Prairie, Texas[48] was formed in 1970 and—under the guidance of Victor Anderson, the inventor of the modern lenticular production process who worked well into his 80s[49]—produced Kellogg's 3D Baseball Cards from 1970 to 1983.

[48] C. Carey Cloud, sometimes called "year-round Santa Claus", was best known as a designer and producer of hundreds of different prizes for Cracker Jack from the 1930s through the 1960s through his company Cloudcrest.

[55] Beginning in 1948 with the implementation of the newly developed screw injection molding process, NOSCO quickly became a major early producer of tiny plastic toys called "slum" (very cheap prizes that are bought in bulk, sometimes for as little as $1 a gross or less)[56] sold to wholesalers as carnival merchandise, used by the millions as prizes in packages of Cracker Jack popcorn confection, and mail-order flats that were heavily advertised in American comic books as "100 Toy Soldiers for $1" by E. Joseph Cossman & Company.

[54] NOSCO also held a number of patents on plastic molded products including mechanical toys, storage containers, pallets, and medical syringes.

[60] R&L designed and manufactured unique and innovative toys that became hugely popular both in Australia and in the United States.,[61] ultimately exporting them around the world.

[63] R&L's big breakthrough came with Stan Barton joining the firm as engineer, who conceived and developed the idea of miniature model kits, called snap-togethers — small plastic model kits that didn't need glue — issued in clear glassine bags, inside breakfast cereal boxes.