Thirsty for … crayons?

I noticed this stuff on the shelf at my local Kroger yesterday. It raised a few questions for me. I don’t immediately associate crayons with something I’m supposed to swallow.

It seems particularly odd to brand an “all natural” fruit juice this way. What’s all-natural about crayons? I don’t have the slightest idea how they’re made (Wikipedia says the key ingredient is paraffin wax, “a petroleum product,” and maybe that’s true) but I’m pretty sure it’s a synthetic process that happens in a factory, and they’re not plucked fresh from a field.

Obviously, though, they’re going after kids with this, and there seems to be a feeling out there that a healthy drink for kids could be a big hit.

Apparently Crayons has no direct connection to Crayola, despite the fairly indisputable attempt to suggest that connection. A Seattle Times story on the company’s site says the founder “bought the Crayons trademark for use with food beverages” in 2003. He got it “from someone who had been tinkering with using it with juices on the East Coast.” But it’s “not the same as Crayola.” I guess maybe “crayon” is a generic term that pre-dates Crayola. (Side note: Refreshing my memory about Crayola packaging led me to a collector site with some cool old designs).

Anyway, the Seattle Times article says this beverage is in 2,000 supermarkets nationwide, but there was no sales data.

What this seems to be is a kind of case study in the power of recognizability and familiarity. I’m sure that the stuff caught my eye on the shelf because I recognized the word crayon. In my case, I wasn’t tempted to see what crayons taste like, or whatever, but I guess it does “engage” the shopper on some level. Maybe others — again, children seem to be the main target — will be curious enough to try a can, and if it’s good they’ll come back for more.

One would assume that this strategy has limits, and that the recognizable word has to be not only recognizable, but relevant to the category at hand. But maybe this simply stretches the definition of “relevance,” in that “crayon” is sort of a fun, happy, feel-good word. (Compared to, say, “nylon.”) Interesting experiment.

Bonus link: Metafilter “All you ever needed to know about crayons.”