Prepare to have your mind blown -- Campbell's soup now comes in a bag.
That's right, the staple of American lunchtimes everywhere was repackaged and rebranded as Campbell's Go soups, with hip looking spokespeople, a tumblr-y website and new flavors like "Creamy Red Pepper with Smoked Gouda" and "Moroccan Style Chicken with Chickpeas."
Campbell Soup Co., which is 143 years old, embarked on this mission to recruit the Millennial masses last year, reports The Courier-News, trying to figure out how to appeal to younger customers with supposedly "on the go" lifestyles that just couldn't deal with cans.
Their research showed that the target generation likes "bold, adventurous flavors," reports San Francisco Weekly, and new soup flavors dutifully include such "bold" ingredients as tomatillos, coconut milk and shitake mushrooms.
The remake could be a do-or-die task for the company, according to The Courier-News, since canned soup consumption is down 13 percent over the past decade, according to the research firm Euromonitor International. The wider availability of fresh soups has helped hasten this trend, and Campbell now has lost over 10 percent of its market share in the past decade.
However, it doesn't seem like everyone is buying these new, cooler soup bags, meant for convenience in a world that Adage writes is "so obsessed with on-the-go food that even a bowl of cereal is seen as a hassle for some, and the last thing we want to do is turn on an appliance."
On the "Colbert Report" Thursday night, host Stephen Colbert critiqued the marketing move, with some hilarious results.
"This generation will go down in history for demanding different soup," he says. After all, the soups "come in a bag now, biatch." Basically, "it's like Capri soup."