Dive Brief:
- Candy Crush Saga is an online game from King.com. The game, which involves moving pieces of candy into groups of three, became the most popular game on Facebook earlier this year—collecting 46 million monthly users. The game's smartphone versions are also wildly popular.
- King.com has partnered with Healthy Food Brands to manufacture and market candies based on the game pieces. Healthy Food Brands specializes in making candies for other brands and is best-known as the maker of Sunkist Real Fruit Candy and Sweet 'n Low Candy. The company also makes candy tied to the Angry Birds video game
- Initial offerings under the Candy Crush Saga name include Jelly Fish and Fruit Gummies. The candy will debut at Dylan's Candy Bar stores, but Walmart and other major retailers are signing on too.
Dive Insight:
When people talk about brand extensions, this is the sort of thing they mean. We're hard-pressed to see how this couldn't work out for King and HFB. Sure, brand extensions can be risky. But this seems like a no-brainer. And turning someone's obsession into a food is often best type of brand extension. On the other hand, we never really saw the logic in the Harley Davidson Cake Decorating Kit.
