Hershey’s Tries to Woo the Youths With Emojis

Hershey has been in the chocolate game since 1894. Though the Pennsylvania-based confectioner has since expanded its brand portfolio and even built an amusement park, its flagship milk chocolate bar isn’t all that different from when it was first introduced in 1900.

Well, that’s about to change—slightly. In what feels like a “how do you do, fellow kids?” move, Hershey’s is bringing its milk chocolate bar into the 21st century with emojis. Each of those little chocolate squares that combine to form a single Hershey bar will feature one of “25 of the most popular emojis across six different emoji packaging designs,” according to a press release.

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You ❤️ emojis. Now you can ? them! And guess what? They taste like really delicious chocolate. The new Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Emoji Bar, coming this summer! ???

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Are the emojis just an attempt to sell more chocolate to youths? Probably. But they’re also designed to do the one thing that advertisers and brand managers speaking at industry conferences love most: starting a conversation. The press release states that the selected emojis were chosen because they “feature meanings that would help to spark a conversation.” The idea that chocolate could get people talking was based on market research which concluded that 87% of kids would want to share chocolate that features emojis with others. What they’d talk about is anyone’s guess, but I’m sure the word “yeet” would come up a few times.

Maybe this chocolate can be a useful and clever ploy to teach your kids some manners.

“Our classic Hershey’s bars were made to be shared with others,” said Hershey’s senior manager Kriston Ohm. “By adding an emoji design to each pip of chocolate, we hope that parents and kids are inspired to share a chocolate emoji and make a connection with someone new.”

Lest this news of emojis send your great grandmother Ethel into a panic, it’s worth noting that the Hershey’s bar is still going to taste the same, and that this is only a limited time offer available through the end of the summer. I feel like releasing them when the weather is at its hottest will just lead to melting chocolate bars and illegible emojis, but then again I’m not a chocolate company who’s been around since Grover Cleveland’s second term.

Now, if Hershey’s could devise a way for pieces of chocolate to taste like how an emoji is supposed to make you feel, that’d be something. Just skip the poop one.

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