Prize (marketing)
Encyclopedia
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. 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, chips, crackers, laundry detergent, popcorn, and soft drinks. The types of prizes have included comics, fortunes, jokes, key rings, magic tricks, models (made of paper or plastic), pin-back button
s, plastic mini-spoons, puzzles, riddles, sticker
s, temporary tattoo
s, tazos
, trade card
s, trading card
s, and small toy
s (made from injection molded plastic, paper, cardboard, tin litho, ceramics, or pot metal). Prizes are sometimes referred to as premiums, although historically the word "premium
" has been used to denote (as opposed to a prize) an item that is not packaged with the product and requires a proof of purchase and/or a small additional payment to cover shipping and/or handling charges.
in 1888, were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements and, a couple 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. By 1900, there were thousands of tobacco card sets manufactured by 300 different companies. Children would stand outside of stores to ask customers who bought cigarettes if they could have their card. Following the success of cigarette cards, trade cards were produced by manufacturers of other products and included in the product or handed to the customer by the store clerk at the time of purchase. Other inserts in tobacco included tin litho prizes, called tobacco tags (in plug tobacco), and tobacco silks (popular from 1910 to 1916) that could be collected to put in quilts were inserted in or attached to tobacco tins and sometimes catalogued as cigarette cards. World War II put an end to cigarette card production due to limited paper resources, and after the war cigarette cards never really made a comeback. After that collectors of prizes from retail products took to collecting tea cards in the UK and bubble gum cards in the US.
, the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada, and Cabañas, a Cuban cigar manufacturer. In fact it is a baseball set, known as the T-106 tobacco card set, distributed by the American Tobacco Company
in 1909 that is considered by collectors to be the most popular set of cigarette cards. In 1933, Goudey Gum Company
of Boston issued baseball cards with players biographies on the backs and was the first to put baseball cards in bubble gum. Bowman Gum
of Philadelphia issued its first baseball cards in 1948 and became the biggest issuer of baseball cards from 1948 to 1952.
; "Bring 'em Back Alive" cards featuring Frank Buck
on big game hunts in Africa; and All-American football cards. Topps introduced the topic of baseball in trading cards in 1951, and Sy Berger
created the first modern baseball card, complete with playing record and statistics, produced by Topps in 1952. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card is one of the most desirable baseball cards for collectors. Topps purchased the Bowman Gum company in 1956. Topps was the leader in the trading card industry from 1956 to 1980, not only in sports cards. Many of the top selling non-sports cards were produced by Topps, including Wacky Packages
(1967, 1973–1977), Star Wars
(beginning in 1977) and Garbage Pail Kids
(beginning in 1985). Topps inserted baseball cards as prizes into packs of gum through 1981, when the gum became a thing of the past and the cards were sold without the gum.
appeared on comics in Topps' Bazooka Bubble Gum beginning in 1953. There have been numerous kids (and adults) who have collected the Bazooka comics as prizes for over 50 years. Bazooka started issuing premium
catalogs in 1956, and the comics prizes doubled as coupons that, when collected in certain quantities, could be exchanged for premiums, such as bikes, microphones, or plastic rings. Bazooka Bubble Gum has a successful loyalty marketing
program, through the prizes (comics) and the premiums (mail-order merchandise). Over the years, Bazooka Bubble Gum has been shipped to over 100 different countries and it has been translated into over 50 different languages. Topps sells a half a billion pieces of Bazooka Bubble Gum a year.
brand popcorn confection. Prizes have been inserted into every package of Cracker Jack continuously since 1912. A familiar jingle to people who watched television in the United States in the 1960s and '70s goes "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize. That's what you get with Cracker Jack!" Although Cracker Jack sales are not what they used to be, with much more competition in the snack industry, the prize is what keeps loyal customers buying more. The most valuable prizes found in Cracker Jack are the baseball cards distributed in 1914 and 1915. In 2004, a complete set of 1914 Cracker Jack baseball cards — including the highly sought after "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb cards — was sold for a record $800,000.
s that have been distributed by the tens of billions. 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
. In 1909, Kelloggs changed the book give-away to a premium
mail-in offer for the cost of a dime
. In 1945, Kellogg inserted a prize
in the form of pin-back button
s into each box of Pep cereal. Pep pins have included U.S. Army squadrans as well as characters from newspaper comics. There were 5 series of comic characters and 18 different buttons in each set, with a total of 90 in the collection. Kellogg’s 3D Baseball and Football Cards produced by Optigraphics were a big hit from 1970 to 1983 in packages of Kellogg's cereals, initially Corn Flakes and later other brands. Other manufacturers of major brands of cereal (including General Mills
, Malt-O-Meal, Nestlé
, Post Foods, and Quaker Oats
) followed suit and inserted prizes into boxes of cereal to promote sales and brand loyalty.
is a world icon in the field of in-package prizes. Besides being the current owner of Cracker Jack, the U.S. popcorn confection brand known for the "Prize Inside", 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. Cheetos Sorpresa Era de Hielo (available in Mexico) included plastic ice molds with characters from the film Ice Age 3 in 45–gram bags.
, a Peruvian brand of chocolates owned by Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A.
, has a confectionary product called Chocopunch
that is a cream chocolate in small individual packages. A key promotional aspect of Chocopunch since 1997 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. Chocopunch El Chavo comes with two flavors (chocolate and vanilla) combined in one 17 gram container. Packaged with Chocopunch El Chavo are mini spoons in the shape of characters from the syndicated cartoon television series El Chavo del Ocho. The injection molded plastic mini spoons come in 12 different shapes and five different colors, with a total of 60 different items in the collection.
machine by American inventor James Watson Hendry in 1946 changed the world of prizes forever. Thermoplastics could be used to produce toys and other plastic objects much more rapidly, and much more cheaply, because recycled plastic could be remolded using this process. In addition, injection molding for plastics required much less cool-down time for the toys, because the plastic is not completely melted before being injected into the molds. In the late 1940s, injection-molded plastic prizes began to appear by the millions in boxes of Cracker Jack and breakfast cereal. 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.
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). Victor Anderson, a leader in the commercial success of lenticular printing
, co-founded the Vari-Vue company in New York, which by the 1950s had produced millions of lenticular products, and lenticulars had become a pop culture craze. 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. Two Japan companies provided prizes around the world in the 1960s and 70s, Toppan, with their "Top Stereo" brand, and Dai-Nippon.
Slurpee
lenticular sports coins from 1983 to 1987, and in 1986 it produced the first set of 3D traditional baseball cards marketed as Sportflics, which ultimately led to the creation of Pinnacle Brands
. In 1999 Performance Companies bought Optigraphics after Pinnacle Trading Card Company went bankrupt in 1998.
Loyalty marketing
Loyalty marketing is an approach to marketing, based on strategic management, in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives...
program, in food, drink, and other retail products to increase sales through repeat purchases from collectors. Prizes have been distributed through bread, candy, cereal, chips, crackers, laundry detergent, popcorn, and soft drinks. The types of prizes have included comics, fortunes, jokes, key rings, magic tricks, models (made of paper or plastic), pin-back button
Pin-back button
A pin-back button or pinback button, pin button, button badge or simply pin-back, is a button or badge that can be temporarily fastened to the surface of a garment using a safety pin, or a pin formed from wire, a clutch or other mechanism...
s, plastic mini-spoons, puzzles, riddles, sticker
Sticker
A sticker is a type of a piece of paper or plastic, adhesive, sticky on one side, and usually with a design on the other. They can be used for decoration, depending on the situation. They can come in many different shapes, sizes and colours and are put on things such as lunchboxes, in children's...
s, temporary tattoo
Temporary tattoo
A Temporary Tattoo is a non-permanent image on the skin resembling a true tattoo. Temporary tattoos can be drawn, painted, or airbrushed, as a form of body painting, but most of the time these tattoos are transferred to the skin. Temporary tattoos of any kind are used for numerous purposes...
s, tazos
Tazos
Tazos are round circular disks, which are found in packets of chips made by Frito-Lay and its subsidiaries around the world. The idea behind Tazos started out similar to Pogs, whereby each Tazo contained a score value, and a game was played to 'win' Tazos from other players.Tazos have been...
, trade card
Trade card
Trade card describes small cards, similar to the visiting cards exchanged in social circles, that businesses would distribute to clients and potential customers. Trade cards first became popular at the beginning of the 17th century in London...
s, trading card
Trading card
A trading card is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing and a short description of the picture, along with other text...
s, and small toy
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
s (made from injection molded plastic, paper, cardboard, tin litho, ceramics, or pot metal). Prizes are sometimes referred to as premiums, although historically the word "premium
Premium (marketing)
Premiums are promotional items—toys, collectables, souvenirs and household products—that are linked to a product, and often require box tops, tokens or proofs of purchase to acquire. The consumer generally has to pay at least the shipping and handling costs to receive the premium...
" has been used to denote (as opposed to a prize) an item that is not packaged with the product and requires a proof of purchase and/or a small additional payment to cover shipping and/or handling charges.
Smokers become collectors
Some of the earliest prizes were cigarette cards — trade cards advertising the product (not to be confused with trading cards) that were inserted into paper packs of cigarettes as stiffeners to protect the contents. Allan and Ginter in the U.S. in 1886, and British company W.D. & H.O. WillsW.D. & H.O. Wills
W.D. & H.O. Wills was a British tobacco importer and cigarette manufacturer formed in Bristol, England. It was one of the founding companies of Imperial Tobacco.-History:...
in 1888, were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements and, a couple 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. By 1900, there were thousands of tobacco card sets manufactured by 300 different companies. Children would stand outside of stores to ask customers who bought cigarettes if they could have their card. Following the success of cigarette cards, trade cards were produced by manufacturers of other products and included in the product or handed to the customer by the store clerk at the time of purchase. Other inserts in tobacco included tin litho prizes, called tobacco tags (in plug tobacco), and tobacco silks (popular from 1910 to 1916) that could be collected to put in quilts were inserted in or attached to tobacco tins and sometimes catalogued as cigarette cards. World War II put an end to cigarette card production due to limited paper resources, and after the war cigarette cards never really made a comeback. After that collectors of prizes from retail products took to collecting tea cards in the UK and bubble gum cards in the US.
The home run of prizes
The first baseball cards were trade cards featuring the Brooklyn Atlantics produced in 1868 by Peck and Snyder, a sporting goods company that manufactured baseball equipment. In 1869, Peck and Snyder trade cards featured the first professional team, the Red Stockings. Most of the baseball cards around the beginning of the 20th century came in candy and tobacco products produced by such companies as Breisch-Williams confectionary company of Oxford, Pennsylvania, American Caramel CompanyLancaster Caramel Company
The Lancaster Caramel Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1886. It was Hershey's first successful candy company and helped him build a reputation. The Hershey Chocolate Company became a subsidiary of the Lancaster Caramel Company in 1894...
, the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada, and Cabañas, a Cuban cigar manufacturer. In fact it is a baseball set, known as the T-106 tobacco card set, distributed by the American Tobacco Company
American Tobacco Company
The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company...
in 1909 that is considered by collectors to be the most popular set of cigarette cards. In 1933, Goudey Gum Company
Goudey
The Goudey Gum Company was an American chewing gum company started in 1919. The company was founded by Enos Gordon Goudey of Barrington Passage, Nova Scotia. Formerly an employee of Beemans, he opened a factory in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919 and later in Allston. It operated there from 1924...
of Boston issued baseball cards with players biographies on the backs and was the first to put baseball cards in bubble gum. Bowman Gum
Bowman Gum
Bowman Gum was a Philadelphia-based manufacturer of bubble gum and trading cards in the period surrounding World War II founded by Jacob Warren Bowman. Originally known as Gum, Inc., the company produced a series of cards known as the "Play Ball" sets each year from 1939 to 1941...
of Philadelphia issued its first baseball cards in 1948 and became the biggest issuer of baseball cards from 1948 to 1952.
Topps in cards
Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., now known as The Topps Company, Inc., started inserting trading cards into bubble gum packs in 1950 — with such topics as TV and film cowboy Hopalong CassidyHopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of popular short stories and twenty-eight novels based on the character....
; "Bring 'em Back Alive" cards featuring Frank Buck
Frank Buck (animal collector)
Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...
on big game hunts in Africa; and All-American football cards. Topps introduced the topic of baseball in trading cards in 1951, and Sy Berger
Sy Berger
Sy Berger was an employee of the Topps company for over 50 years. He is credited as being the co-designer of the 1952 Topps baseball series.-Topps:Berger's first day at Topps was also the first day that Topps began to produce Bazooka Gum...
created the first modern baseball card, complete with playing record and statistics, produced by Topps in 1952. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card is one of the most desirable baseball cards for collectors. Topps purchased the Bowman Gum company in 1956. Topps was the leader in the trading card industry from 1956 to 1980, not only in sports cards. Many of the top selling non-sports cards were produced by Topps, including Wacky Packages
Wacky Packages
Wacky Packages are a series of trading cards and stickers featuring parodies of North American consumer products. The cards were produced by the Topps Company beginning in 1967, usually in a sticker format. The original series sold for two years, and the concept proved popular enough that it has...
(1967, 1973–1977), Star Wars
Star Wars canon
The Star Wars canon consists of the six Star Wars feature films, along with all officially licensed, non-contradicting spin-off works to the six films. As once defined by Lucas Licensing:- History :...
(beginning in 1977) and Garbage Pail Kids
Garbage Pail Kids
Garbage Pail Kids , "La Pandilla Basura" or "Basuritas" in Latin America, "Gang do Lixo" in Brazil, "Sgorbions" in Italy, "Les Crados" in France and "Die total kaputten Kids" in Germany) is a series of trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985 and designed to parody...
(beginning in 1985). Topps inserted baseball cards as prizes into packs of gum through 1981, when the gum became a thing of the past and the cards were sold without the gum.
Prize or premium coupon; or both?
Bazooka JoeBazooka Joe
Bazooka Joe is a comic strip character, featured on small comics included inside individually-wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. He wears a black eyepatch, lending him a distinctive appearance...
appeared on comics in Topps' Bazooka Bubble Gum beginning in 1953. There have been numerous kids (and adults) who have collected the Bazooka comics as prizes for over 50 years. Bazooka started issuing premium
Premium (marketing)
Premiums are promotional items—toys, collectables, souvenirs and household products—that are linked to a product, and often require box tops, tokens or proofs of purchase to acquire. The consumer generally has to pay at least the shipping and handling costs to receive the premium...
catalogs in 1956, and the comics prizes doubled as coupons that, when collected in certain quantities, could be exchanged for premiums, such as bikes, microphones, or plastic rings. Bazooka Bubble Gum has a successful loyalty marketing
Loyalty marketing
Loyalty marketing is an approach to marketing, based on strategic management, in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives...
program, through the prizes (comics) and the premiums (mail-order merchandise). Over the years, Bazooka Bubble Gum has been shipped to over 100 different countries and it has been translated into over 50 different languages. Topps sells a half a billion pieces of Bazooka Bubble Gum a year.
"A Prize in Every Box"
The most famous use of prizes in the United States (and the word "prize" in this context) is Cracker JackCracker Jack
Cracker Jack is a U.S. brand of snack consisting of strong molasses flavored candy-coated popcorn and peanuts, well known for being packaged with a prize of nominal value inside. Some food historians consider it the first junk food...
brand popcorn confection. Prizes have been inserted into every package of Cracker Jack continuously since 1912. A familiar jingle to people who watched television in the United States in the 1960s and '70s goes "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize. That's what you get with Cracker Jack!" Although Cracker Jack sales are not what they used to be, with much more competition in the snack industry, the prize is what keeps loyal customers buying more. The most valuable prizes found in Cracker Jack are the baseball cards distributed in 1914 and 1915. In 2004, a complete set of 1914 Cracker Jack baseball cards — including the highly sought after "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb cards — was sold for a record $800,000.
Cereal prizes
W.K. Kellogg was the first to introduce prizes in boxes of cereal. The marketing strategy that he established has produced thousands of different cereal box prizeCereal box prize
A cereal box prize is a promotional toy or small item that is offered as an incentive to buy a particular breakfast cereal. Prizes are found inside or sometimes on the cereal box...
s that have been distributed by the tens of billions. 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
Corn flakes
Corn flakes are a popular breakfast cereal originally manufactured by Kellogg's through the treatment of maize. A patent for the product was filed on May 31, 1895, and issued on April 14, 1896.-History:...
. In 1909, Kelloggs changed the book give-away to a premium
Premium (marketing)
Premiums are promotional items—toys, collectables, souvenirs and household products—that are linked to a product, and often require box tops, tokens or proofs of purchase to acquire. The consumer generally has to pay at least the shipping and handling costs to receive the premium...
mail-in offer for the cost of a dime
Dime (United States coin)
The dime is a coin 10 cents, one tenth of a United States dollar, labeled formally as "one dime". The denomination was first authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. The dime is the smallest in diameter and is the thinnest of all U.S...
. In 1945, Kellogg inserted a prize
Cereal box prize
A cereal box prize is a promotional toy or small item that is offered as an incentive to buy a particular breakfast cereal. Prizes are found inside or sometimes on the cereal box...
in the form of pin-back button
Pin-back button
A pin-back button or pinback button, pin button, button badge or simply pin-back, is a button or badge that can be temporarily fastened to the surface of a garment using a safety pin, or a pin formed from wire, a clutch or other mechanism...
s into each box of Pep cereal. Pep pins have included U.S. Army squadrans as well as characters from newspaper comics. There were 5 series of comic characters and 18 different buttons in each set, with a total of 90 in the collection. Kellogg’s 3D Baseball and Football Cards produced by Optigraphics were a big hit from 1970 to 1983 in packages of Kellogg's cereals, initially Corn Flakes and later other brands. Other manufacturers of major brands of cereal (including General Mills
General Mills
General Mills, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 corporation, primarily concerned with food products, which is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known brands, such as Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Pillsbury, Green...
, Malt-O-Meal, Nestlé
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...
, Post Foods, and Quaker Oats
Quaker Oats Company
The Quaker Oats Company is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by Pepsico since 2001.-History:Quaker Oats was founded in 1901 by the merger of four oat mills:...
) followed suit and inserted prizes into boxes of cereal to promote sales and brand loyalty.
Modern prize giant
Frito-LayFrito-Lay
Frito-Lay North America is the division of PepsiCo that manufactures, markets and sells corn chips, potato chips and other snack foods. The primary snack food brands produced under the Frito-Lay name include Fritos corn chips, Cheetos cheese-flavored snacks, Doritos and Tostitos tortilla chips,...
is a world icon in the field of in-package prizes. Besides being the current owner of Cracker Jack, the U.S. popcorn confection brand known for the "Prize Inside", Frito-Lay also regularly includes tazos
Tazos
Tazos are round circular disks, which are found in packets of chips made by Frito-Lay and its subsidiaries around the world. The idea behind Tazos started out similar to Pogs, whereby each Tazo contained a score value, and a game was played to 'win' Tazos from other players.Tazos have been...
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. Cheetos Sorpresa Era de Hielo (available in Mexico) included plastic ice molds with characters from the film Ice Age 3 in 45–gram bags.
Usefulness and collectability
Winter'sWinter's (chocolate)
Winter's is a popular Peruvian brand of chocolates and other food products owned by Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A.. The brand was started in 1997 by Lima-based Good Foods S.A., the largest Peruvian exporter of chocolates. On 1 February 2007, Colombian-based food conglomerate Grupo...
, a Peruvian brand of chocolates owned by Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A.
Compañía Nacional De Chocolates de Perú S.A.
Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A. is a food and beverage company headquartered in Lima, Peru. Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A. was incorporated February 1, 2007 as a subsidiary of the parent company Grupo Nacional de Chocolates S.A...
, has a confectionary product called Chocopunch
Chocopunch
Chocopunch is a popular name-brand retail confection product made in Peru under the Winter's brand owned by Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A.. The Chocopunch brand was registered in Peru in 1995 and started production in 1997 by Lima-based Good Foods S.A...
that is a cream chocolate in small individual packages. A key promotional aspect of Chocopunch since 1997 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. Chocopunch El Chavo comes with two flavors (chocolate and vanilla) combined in one 17 gram container. Packaged with Chocopunch El Chavo are mini spoons in the shape of characters from the syndicated cartoon television series El Chavo del Ocho. The injection molded plastic mini spoons come in 12 different shapes and five different colors, with a total of 60 different items in the collection.
Plastic injection molding
The invention of a screw injection moldingInjection molding
Injection molding is a manufacturing process for producing parts from both thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic materials. Material is fed into a heated barrel, mixed, and forced into a mold cavity where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the cavity...
machine by American inventor James Watson Hendry in 1946 changed the world of prizes forever. Thermoplastics could be used to produce toys and other plastic objects much more rapidly, and much more cheaply, because recycled plastic could be remolded using this process. In addition, injection molding for plastics required much less cool-down time for the toys, because the plastic is not completely melted before being injected into the molds. In the late 1940s, injection-molded plastic prizes began to appear by the millions in boxes of Cracker Jack and breakfast cereal. 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.
Lenticular technology
Lenticular lensLenticular lens
A lenticular lens is an array of magnifying lenses, designed so that when viewed from slightly different angles, different images are magnified...
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). Victor Anderson, a leader in the commercial success of lenticular printing
Lenticular printing
Lenticular printing is a technology in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles...
, co-founded the Vari-Vue company in New York, which by the 1950s had produced millions of lenticular products, and lenticulars had become a pop culture craze. 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. Two Japan companies provided prizes around the world in the 1960s and 70s, Toppan, with their "Top Stereo" brand, and Dai-Nippon.
Photographic lenticular printing
Lenticulars from the 1940s and 50s had been developed from drawings or cartoon images. In the 1960s, Eastman Kodak Company in Tennessee developed "Xograph" technology for photographing and printing 3D lenticular images. 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. Look Magazine followed up with the first color 3D lenticular photograph on April 7, 1964. Optigraphics Corporation of Grand Prarie, Texas was formed in 1970 and produced Kellogg’s 3D Baseball Cards from 1970 to 1983. Optigraphics produced the lenticular prizes for Cracker Jack in the 1980s, 7-Eleven7-Eleven
7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co...
Slurpee
Slurpee
A Slurpee is a flavored frozen drink sold by 7-Eleven. In 1967, 7-Eleven licensed the product from the ICEE Company, and began selling it as the Slurpee.-Slurpee history:Machines to make frozen beverages were invented by Omar Knedlik in the late 1950s...
lenticular sports coins from 1983 to 1987, and in 1986 it produced the first set of 3D traditional baseball cards marketed as Sportflics, which ultimately led to the creation of Pinnacle Brands
Pinnacle Brands
Pinnacle Brands was a trading card company from 1988 to 1998. With its first baseball card set called Score, it changed the baseball card industry from the "Big Three" that had been in place for seven years prior...
. In 1999 Performance Companies bought Optigraphics after Pinnacle Trading Card Company went bankrupt in 1998.
See also
- Baseball cardBaseball cardA baseball card is a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on some type of paper stock or card stock. A card will usually feature one or more baseball players or other baseball-related sports figures...
- Cereal box prizeCereal box prizeA cereal box prize is a promotional toy or small item that is offered as an incentive to buy a particular breakfast cereal. Prizes are found inside or sometimes on the cereal box...
- ChocopunchChocopunchChocopunch is a popular name-brand retail confection product made in Peru under the Winter's brand owned by Compañía Nacional de Chocolates de Perú S.A.. The Chocopunch brand was registered in Peru in 1995 and started production in 1997 by Lima-based Good Foods S.A...
- Cigarette cardCigarette cardCigarette cards are trade cards issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands.-History:Beginning in 1875, cards depicting actresses, baseball players, Indian chiefs, and boxers were issued by the US-based Allen and Ginter tobacco company. These are...
- Cracker JackCracker JackCracker Jack is a U.S. brand of snack consisting of strong molasses flavored candy-coated popcorn and peanuts, well known for being packaged with a prize of nominal value inside. Some food historians consider it the first junk food...
- Loyalty marketingLoyalty marketingLoyalty marketing is an approach to marketing, based on strategic management, in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives...
- Non-sports card
- Pep CerealPep CerealPep was a brand of whole-wheat breakfast cereal produced by the Kellogg Company, and introduced in 1923. Pep was a long-running rival to Wheaties, and also the sponsor of Mutual Radio's Superman radio series. One of Pep's advertising slogans was "the Sunshine cereal".Pep became one of the first...
- Perú Cola
- Pin-back buttonPin-back buttonA pin-back button or pinback button, pin button, button badge or simply pin-back, is a button or badge that can be temporarily fastened to the surface of a garment using a safety pin, or a pin formed from wire, a clutch or other mechanism...
- PremiumsPremium (marketing)Premiums are promotional items—toys, collectables, souvenirs and household products—that are linked to a product, and often require box tops, tokens or proofs of purchase to acquire. The consumer generally has to pay at least the shipping and handling costs to receive the premium...
- StickerStickerA sticker is a type of a piece of paper or plastic, adhesive, sticky on one side, and usually with a design on the other. They can be used for decoration, depending on the situation. They can come in many different shapes, sizes and colours and are put on things such as lunchboxes, in children's...
- TazosTazosTazos are round circular disks, which are found in packets of chips made by Frito-Lay and its subsidiaries around the world. The idea behind Tazos started out similar to Pogs, whereby each Tazo contained a score value, and a game was played to 'win' Tazos from other players.Tazos have been...
- Temporary tattooTemporary tattooA Temporary Tattoo is a non-permanent image on the skin resembling a true tattoo. Temporary tattoos can be drawn, painted, or airbrushed, as a form of body painting, but most of the time these tattoos are transferred to the skin. Temporary tattoos of any kind are used for numerous purposes...
- Trading cardTrading cardA trading card is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing and a short description of the picture, along with other text...