How often are you currently using your building’s vending machine? Let me stop you right there, if your answer was less than once, it’s time to seriously re-evaluate your life choices, or more specifically, your vending machine choices. As a child, vending machines were viewed as the secret money muncher to my parents, so in the rare family road trip pit stop, I chose only the choicest of snacks to cease my hunger. As I have grown older and have worked various jobs that receive paper money in tips, my vending machine visits have become as common as a stuffy nose in the midst of December. I have purchased just about every sugar-coated snack on each row of the snack trophy case that rests conveniently on the basement floor of my building, and boy do I have a psychoanalytic Yelp review for you!
There was a night when I was rich enough to buy two candy bars for my nightly viewing of adult cartoons when an old business lecture had resurfaced into my cranium. I had purchased a red packaged KitKat bar and a yellow wrapped Butterfinger. The lesson was on marketing colors in the fast-food industry and the science behind it. We were taught that each color had an associative message relating to the food; for example, the colors red and yellow are associated with hunger… and they happen to be the colors of McDonald’s: the most popular fast-food chain on the planet, with golden arches and red smiling clowns. Once I had noticed I had fallen right into the manipulative marketing trap well performed by both KitKat and Butterfinger, I looked closer at each color of all the sugary snacks that sit on their high horse in the vending machines.
The color green, when associated with food marketing, aligns with healthy-Esque food habits. That seemed fitting for the popular Mike and Ike sugar-coated fruit-flavored gummies. Especially with all of the fruits that dance on the wrapper like a hectic scene in Fruit Ninja.
Blue is associated with trust and security, and I think that there isn’t a better color to package Poptarts in than that. The Poptart that could save you from puking on the way to your 8:00 am, the Poptart that you’ve known since your middle school years, ole’ reliable if you will.
Brown and Black packaged snacks suggest a sense of luxury, which is probably why Snickers continues to stay at the top of my list of favorite snacks in the vending machine. Twix is a risky snack though, I mean what is her deal? Is she considered to be a brown packaged snack? Or red because of her bold colored letters?
It is very interesting to see which section of the textbook people choose to represent in their snack choices, and I wonder if any of you have ever considered maybe the subconscious reason you choose your snack could be because of the color of the package it’s wrapped in.
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