Peeps – The Sweet Smell Of Success Redux
This is a reprint of a post from April 5th 2010. Enjoy!
I have a confession (which is easy as I don’t know if anyone is reading this dribble). It’s the day after Easter. I have a Peeps hangover.
If you’ve ever experienced the first sugary, delicious bite into a yellow chick or pink bunny at Easter, you know the odd textured, puffy sweetness that is a Marshmallow Peep.
Did you know as many as 4.2 million Peeps are made in the USA every day? Holy cripes…that’s somewhere north of 72 million Peeps every month!
Peeps Factory Circa 1954
It began in 1954.
It was pretty basic manufacturing and retailing. Make a boatload for Easter, ship ‘em and get ready for next Easter.
Then there was a paradigm shift. Peeps for year-round. Halloween and Christmas were just the beginning. Customizable Peeps, packaging variations, ordering online – whew! Marketing made its mark on Peeps. (Update: Today there’s a chocolate version that I believe deserve the name “Poops” and there is a Peeps store at the Mall of America!) And for that I’m a happy consumer!
For the record I am a member of a secret Peep society. We subscribe to a variation of Ernest & Julio Gallo’s creed, “We will sell no wine…before its time”. Our society of Peeps coniseurs prefers an aged Peeps to one off the shelf. The day after Easter when all Easter Peeps are 50 – 75% off – WE BUY. Then we stow ‘em away for a minimum of 9 – but preferably 12 months. Only then do Peeps posses the the unnatural combination of hard exterior marshmallow surrounding squishy interior marshmallow. Our creed is “We’ll eat no Peeps until they’ve aged”.
Check out their website for a glimpse into the genius of marketing sugar, food coloring and packaging so that Just Born, the company that produces Peeps, reports annual sales of $1.5 billion.
http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/
So the whole Peep thing seems to resonate with folks. I’ve heard from multiple closet, Peeps-freaks today. Then the Peep thing got a little weird. I opened Google and the featured video is “Project Peepway”. It’s exactly as camp as you’d expect.
