These aren't your grandma's prunes

It's fun to think about how things are perceived differently based on their packaging, specifically food packaging. Recently, I saw an article that talked about Tropicana having recently changed up their packaging. For as long as I can remember, cartons of Tropicana orange juice had been adorned with a picture of an orange with a straw coming out of it. Recently, Tropicana decided to change it's packaging up and some people didn't like that one bit. In fact, enough loyal customers disliked the change that Tropicana is switching back to their original packaging.*

Lately, I've noticed several brands changing their packaging (i.e. the entire line of Pepsi products) but one innovation that I never saw coming was a product called "Ones". I saw a commercial on TV for these and they're basically individually wrapped prunes. According to the ad, the individual wrappers are supposed to lock in the juicy sweetness, but I bet it's just so that they can charge more. Plus, if you've ever bought a package of prunes and seen them all squished together, it's not very appetizing. I'm curious how many people my age or younger have ever actually eaten a prune. Prunes have a bad rap as a food only eaten by people who are either old or constipated. I admit that I started eating prunes when I was a kid at my grandma's house, and I know she was at least one of those things. The stigma is so strong, in fact, that a few years back, prunes stopped being marketed as "prunes" and instead are now called what they actually are...dried plums. It would be like if everyone got together and started hating raisins, so manufacturers changed up the packaging and started calling them "dried grapes" until people realized that they're not so bad after all. I would certainly hope they wouldn't start individually wrapping grapes though, because eating those guys would take all day!

The same company that's selling "Ones" have also started marketing prune juice as "PlumSmart Plum Juice". I have never actually had prune juice, so I can't speak to either the flavor or "digestive benefits" of it. I will admit though, petty marketing change or not, I would feel much less awkward standing in the check out line with some stylish new Plum Juice in my cart than I would with a bottle of prune juice.


*On a side note, I would be interested in knowing if companies get as many complaints about changing a product's formula as they do about the packaging. In fact, I can think of tons of products who's packaging I've seen change over time, but I can't think of a single product that I've stopped using because I thought they had changed the formula on me.