Cultural pecularities in branding

[Iori_Yagami]

I just recently pondered upon interesting fact - most of old Soviet candy is branded very differently then western.

Lots of typical western branding here.
http://www.candyblog.net/

Come to think of it, western is typically either
1) showing the contents inside as a brand
e.g. 'Froot loops' literally says 'there is something fruity and loopy about it'. ('Frosties' - duh, it's frosted with sugar)
'Nuts' candy bar is as literal as it gets.
Twix - obviosly something about 'twins' in the package. 'Cinnamon crunch' - can it get more on the nose than that?
2) Sometimes the name of the brand is just historical 'Mars' etc, or just reflects the name of the owner, owners organization, and such. 'Reese's pieces', 'Werther's originals', 'Kellogg's'.
3) Obviously there is some external brading, too, all those Shrek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle biscuits and whatnot.
4) Very rarely it does not describe the contents or the owner. 'Bounty' (true case), 'Mountain Dew' (metaphor for contents), 'Cheetos' (mascot association).
Pictures on the packaging also usually show the contents or the association with it - berries, nuts, coconut palms and such. Or they are abstract twirlies, whirlies and dots.

Now have a look at that collection of candy wrappers.
https://monakova.ru/collections/fantiki/part-1.shtml
https://monakova.ru/collections/fantiki/part-2.shtml
there are many parts, in top left corner here
https://monakova.ru

Conversely - Soviet type candy is almost nothing like that. Nah, that's too mundane and primitive for artists. Instead there is a huge, gigantic variety of all type of names, associations, phrases, cultural memes and whatnot.
Caramel 'Theatric', chocolate candy 'Bears in the woods', 'To Stars', 'Pilot', 'Mask', 'Schoolgirl', 'Orbit', 'Muse', 'Youth', 'Gulliver', 'Mowgli', 'Cinderella', 'Red Poppy', 'Karakum', 'Little squirrel', 'Autumn', 'Little Cow' (this one is actually has someting to do with it - made with milk), 'Goose feet', 'Golden key', 'Spark', 'Kitty-Kitty'.

Why is that? What is going on? Was western branding like that earlier, like maybe late 19th early 20th century? The concept is entirely different. It was used as some kind of cultural message spreading. Kinda like cigarette packs had baseball player cards in them. Like literally all types of thing that kids might like are included. Interesting, right?

[Jaglavak]

I had no clue. How are they supposed to know what's inside? American advertising has been as you described for well over 100 years.

[Iori_Yagami]

I guess, if you have same type of candy for like 40 or more years, you'll learn exactly what's inside Tootsie roll, right? Variety was quite low.
Remember, no private firms whatsoever. Illegal and harshly punished. You either work for the state, for your own consumption (garden or something) or you are tried for 'exploitation of working people'.

Those pictures, if you paid attention and can read a bit of Russian are coming from many different cities and even different soviet republics (there's some Armenian and Georgian alphabet text, too), as well as different time periods but have the same names across them and maybe have slightly different packaging, printing and so on, depending on how local printing facility interprets 'Puss in Boots' or 'Track'n'Field' or whatever. 'Bear cubs in Forest' always was wafers in it, 'Red Poppy' - bits of hazelnut (no poppy seeds, ironic, right?), etc

Since it was very standardized, you seldom encountered new stuff, and it was quite an event to taste something unusual. The queues for something exotic, like bananas (no, really) were huge. The appearance of western type of packaging, flavourings, etc really blew the minds of late 1980s people. Like whoa!

[Rat Diva]

My mind is being kind of blown here too 😃. Here in the USA branding was all about getting your name in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and competition to come up with the new gimmick and product no one else had was fierce.

But when the factories are owned by the government and are all making the same flavors, you can get more creative with names and stuff because you still want to make it appealing. And what do kids like? Sports, fairy tales, animals, etc.

[Detroit Hoser]

I'm curious -- was it good candy?

[silenus]

Not any that I've had. But then, by the time it got to me it was older than Brezhnev.

[Iori_Yagami]

It was different, but some types were quite elaborate - various nuts, berries, wafers mixed in, covered with chocolate glazing. Was kinda hard to find, though - you had to keep your eyes peeled when they appeared in stores or they'd be gone very, very soon.

Now, other types, more lackluster, such as simplistic hard candy, or soy 'mockolate' covered ones were way more abundant, as I recall. But my kid memories only reflect late 80s, which by itself not 'classical USSR' but 'Perestroika USSR' with way too many supply problems.

So yeah, nice solid quality (nothing exquisite, though), but so-so variety and sucky availability, especially in more remote cities. I mean, just in those candy wrapper web pages I linked, you can sorta guess which ones were printed in Moscow etc, and which in some backwater town.
Also interesting to note, there are no memorable producer names Mars or Hershey's or whatevers - just plain old "Cityskovski confectionery factory Nr. 25 of Produce Ministry of USSR" or something like that. The only exception is probably that 'Krasnyi Oktyabr' aka 'Red October' factory.

[Detroit Hoser]

Iori Yagami, I feel like you have a unique and fascinating life story to tell. Have you ever posted about any of it and I somehow missed everything?