WHERE’S THE WHIMSY?!

The other day, I asked my fiancé to grab me a snack while he was out. I said “something fruity”. He did his best word association and came home with Fruit by the Foot. Literal. Earnest. Technically correct. Honestly, I was delighted.

There is something oddly comforting about that foot-long roll of sugar. So I unwrapped one, expecting the full experience. Not just the snack, but the small moments that used to come with it… to my horror there was no cryptic phrases. No dumb jokes on the wrapper.

Just… packaging. Even the logo had been dulled down.

And the disappointment I felt was more than the familiar ache of nostalgia. It surprised me- because this wasn’t about wanting my childhood back. It was the realization that a whole layer of experience had quietly disappeared. Not just for me, but for kids now, who will never know that packaging once talked back, teased you, or gave you something extra to do while you unwrapped it.

Once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

Cereal boxes used to double as entertainment. Games on the back. Mazes. Things to cut out. You could spend an entire breakfast engaged with the box before school. Now they feel designed to be skimmed by adults, not explored by kids. Muted colors. Simplified logos. Minimal copy. A lot of reassurance, very little delight.

Cracker Jack prizes used to be physical. Tiny plastic nonsense that lived in your pockets for weeks. Now so many brands have replaced that sense of surprise with a QR code, which is essentially homework.

Even juice pouches have been flattened. Capri Sun used to feel loud and slightly chaotic. Now it looks like it went through a brand refresh designed to calm parents, not excite anyone else.

Candy has followed the same path. Skittles once felt mischievous. Lunchables used to feel chaotic in a lunchbox way. Even toys and toy brands that once had personalities now feel carefully neutral.

And commercials? Forget it.

We grew up with characters. Mascots. Storylines.

The Kool-Aid Man bursting through walls.
The Lucky Charms leprechaun constantly on the run.
Tony the Tiger operating at full volume.
The M&M’s with distinct personalities and ongoing conflict.

Today, many of those characters are muted, redesigned, or quietly retired. Sanded down into something pleasant and inoffensive. Easy to approve. Easy to forget.

To be clear, not everything needs to be as unhinged as the old Quiznos commercials. The late-90s singing rats were objectively bizarre, but they proved something important: people remember what makes them feel something. They were silly and strange- they stuck.

Somewhere along the way, marketing decided that fun was risky.

I understand why. When you advertise kids’ products, you are technically selling to parents. Parents have the money. Parents make the purchase. Parents care about ingredients, safety, values, and optics.

But kids are the demand engine.

Kids are the ones asking. Repeatedly. Persistently. With conviction.

They want the cereal with the character.
The candy with the joke.
The snack that feels like it has a personality.

Whimsy is not fluff. It is leverage.

When brands strip joy out of packaging and storytelling, they remove the emotional imprint. Products start to blur together. Shelves get quieter. The difference between “fine” and “wanted” disappears. Marketing didn’t become less fun because people stopped liking fun. It became less fun because brands started optimizing for approval instead of memory.

And that is a mistake.

Whimsy builds brand love early. It creates familiarity, then nostalgia. It turns ordinary products into cultural touchstones. It is why adults still reach for the snacks they loved as kids, not because they are better, but because they meant something.

So yes, I enjoyed my Fruit by the Foot. And yes, my fiancé’s literal interpretation was genuinely sweet.

But I miss when brands winked at you.
When packaging felt like part of the experience.
When marketing trusted kids to be curious instead of just compliant.

Where did the whimsy go?

And when did we decide that being forgettable was the same thing as being mature?

Because a little silliness never hurt anyone.
But forgetting how to be memorable absolutely does.